Mayflower II & Plimoth Plantation

(Stacey writing) Brock got up this morning to do his board clearing before we headed out for our sightseeing. Mondays are unpleasant for that job because there are three days worth of alerts that he has to go through one by one; it's very time-consuming. Laundry was also on the agenda as people were running out of warmer clothing and important things like socks. The laundry facilities here at the campground don't see a lot of use because it seems to us like most of the visitors here are from fairly close. We had the room to ourselves which was good because I ran four loads at once! By the time laundry was done and put away, it was actually time for a quick lunch so we wouldn't arrive at the Mayflower completely famished.

We finally got out of the trailer around noon and drove nearly an hour to get down to Plymouth, Massachusetts and the waterfront where we could purchase our tickets for the days' festivities. We purchased a family pass called the Plimoth Pass; it was basically a group ticket that allowed us to tour the ship and go to Plimoth Plantation. Then we went aboard the Mayflower II. It is a replica of the Mayflower and has been there since 1957 when it sailed to Cape Cod from England. It is still seaworthy and goes on a few voyages each year. There were a few actors in character as crew of the Mayflower that you could talk to and some modern-day crew who would also answer questions and dispense knowledge. It was very striking just how small the ship was to have carried 102 passengers plus crew.

 

When we got off the Mayflower, we walked a little bit around to take in a few other sites and it was interesting to realize that that location was where the actual Plymouth colony was more than the re-enactment location that we would be going to. Also on the waterfront, we saw Plymouth Rock which some people believe is the first landing place, but probably isn't and we saw a statue of Massasoit and a monument to all the colonists who died that first year and were buried undercover of night and without grave markers because the remaining colonists didn't want the natives to see how their numbers dwindled. We also saw a plaque about how some native Americans celebrate a Day of Mourning on the Thanksgiving Holiday since they do not celebrate the arrival of the pilgrims and other Europeans. It was an interesting perspective.




We drove up to Plimoth Plantation. We got to tour a Wampanoag village representation first. There was a native American woman there who told us about games that the natives would have played. Then we saw how they made their boats. There was a representation of how they cooked over the fire (some rabbit stew was bubbling and smelled really good) and we saw a native actor who was making a tobacco pipe from a Sumac twig. Then we got to go inside of a typical Wampanoag "winter house" made of bark and feel several different animal skins and talk to another actress who spoke about homes. She was working on a wampum shell to make a pendant as she shared.

 

From the native village, we went up to the Craft Center where we saw a master potter who demonstrated a thumb-controlled watering pot and we saw some beautiful woodworking, really ornate.

From there, we went up the hill to the 17th century village of the first colonists. This was really fun because there were several actors there who were all in character as actual people from the 1627 in Plimoth Colony. We saw and heard from Miles Standish, William Brewster, and Constance Snow among others. It was really interesting to hear Goodwife Snow talk about how she and her husband were supposed to be on the other ship, Speedwell, and how it had to turn back several times and finally, all the colonists were crammed aboard the one ship, Mayflower. She was especially good at answering "spectator" questions in a really believable way. The character actors were going about doing activities that they would've been doing in 1627, mending clothing, creating a log beam, hauling hay for their animals (they even had sheep, a goat and a bull that were rare breeds similar to what the pilgrims would've had), sharpening an axe. We stepped into one of the houses and there was William Brewster. I felt really tongue tied in there because the kids and I have just finished reading a historical fiction book in which he was a main character, but he wasn't painted in a very positive light. He was the minister for the colony; he named his children: Jonathan, Patience, Fear, Love, and Wrestling. It was all very interesting to see with our eyes the things we'd imagined pretty recently.

All in all, an excellent history lesson.

Afterwards we went into the gift shop and things started to fall apart so I don't think I'll go into much detail. There were two busloads of girls from a school in NY that were on a 4-day field trip in the gift shop at the same time as us. I forgot to mention that they were also on the Mayflower II at the same time as we were too. Helped us to imagine how crowded those original passengers must've been. All the McFarlane kids wanted to buy something. One McFarlane kid had a COMPLETE meltdown lasting WAY too long over a bag of marbles. My minor headache turned into a MAJOR one.

On the way home, we had to stop at the grocery store. Since the fit thrower had recovered, we had all the kids stay in the car and Brock and I went after all the items on our list and we tried to come up with some idea of what we could make quickly for dinner tonight. My head was pounding and I was barely functioning.

We decided to make breakfast for dinner and when we got back to the trailer, I actually couldn't function. Brock made dinner and I ate, but then I was useless and Brock encourage me to go to bed around 8 pm, so I did. Boo. I hate headaches.