Rain, rain, go away!!!!

Oh my gosh!!! It is relentless! We usually get a break at one part of the day or another, but this has carried over from last night, when from about 5pm I watched our campsite fill with water after hearing the warning for flood watch. Clem has cancelled his golf plans, and I am not even inclined to leave the coach!

Yesterday started dry, and we met Chris at his office, where he showed us all he has done to decorate and improve the entire company space, naming offices after Star Wars, embellishing the ping pong wall with a giant pong playing figure sticker, and the phone room with Dr Who blue police phone box image on the door, complete with  blue light over it! Gotta love the high tech culture! They have also created a very nice kitchen space, complete with adult beverages and some yummy looking muffins, I must say!
                       

Included in a list of fastest growing companies , they are growing and doing very well. 

We then enjoyed a nice lunch, which we filled with interesting conversation, and a promise to chat about some dual verification to protect our devices before we leave.

I thought after lunch we could go to the Walden Pond new visitor center, where they were celebrating the bicentennial of Henry David Thoreau's birth, but it was hot and steamy, and the clouds were gathering, and we decided maybe another day would be less crowded anyway. Guess we won't be going today with this weather!! It is drumming on the roof again! Good call, canceling golf!
We stopped at the Littleton Historical Society building, which we have so often driven past, and browsed the exhibits and chatted with the friendly ladies there.

Mainly an agricultural area, there were fun old artifacts collected and donated by families in the area.  We also drive by the great old ornate train depot, but it is privately owned by a gentleman who restores old stoves, and the yard is littered with parts! He is apparently quite legitimate, having done stoves for the like of Oprah Winfrey, but he leaves parts laying everywhere!  How the society would love to have that!  Clem conjectured that perhaps he would leave it to them! 

Very interesting, this shoe belonged to a man born in early 1800's who reached over 7 feet, considered now to probably have been a pituitary problem.  Thought to be a kind and gentle man, Thoreau mentions him in his diary

as the Gentle Giant of Littleton. 

Beautiful architecture in the building, which was once the town library.

One of two interesting signs...the other was the Tory Tea house, and had a bullet hole from the Revolution. 

Littleton Historical Society

After the museum, we headed back to the campground, as the clouds started gathering in earnest.
This time the forecast was right on, and at just about 5pm, it got so dark, we resorted to lights, lost the TV signal we had turned on for the news, then the thunder and lightening began, along with a downpour and flood warnings blaring on my cell, and I watched in amazement as the campsite filled with water!

 This guy pulled in with his motorcycle during the darkness, and set up just in time!  I do not envy the ones in tents in this weather!

I actually shot the motorcycle and these photos this morning on my way to they gym....late, after the rain had let up.  Didn't even want to go outside! 

water line!

Came home from the gym to find Clem working on plans for his new train layout.  A good day for planning, and now I will do the same, with our trip from here.

                I did today, add the links to past blogs, which are always fun to look at.  We sometimes marvel ourselves at how much we have gotten to see.

A change of plans, and a trip to Lowell

The day started once again with downpours!  I didn't even go out to the gym until it finally let up around 10 AM.  Gym was hot and steamy, like everywhere.......you would think we were back in Florida with all the humidity and daily rain!  Not as hot, and it feels different, but the natives are sure grumbling about it!

While I was at the gym, Clem made plans to replace a damaged car tire, and visit a store he had located......oh boy....does this spell trouble??

It was a ways away, so I decided to go along to see what it was like, and then keep him company with the tire, and stop for some groceries on the way back.  What a great store!!!!  I totally entertained myself while he talked trains and collected needed new track and equipment for the new layout.
I have never seen so many puzzles in my life, including some that were 9000, and even 18000 pieces!!  I messaged my sister Toni, an avid puzzler....is that  a word?.....and asked if she was still in to them.  She has built 3000 pieces, but was chomping for the 18000!  At a cost of $165, however, she passed!

Looking at a map of the area, I realized we were in the area of one of the places I wanted to visit, and when I mentioned it, Clem changed the tire appointment, and we headed for Lowell.  An old mill town, now the historic mill district is being rescued and renovated, and the National Park Service has taken over.  I can only hope the Park Service survives, and continues their great work, and can expand more in this area and others.   

View of the Pawtucket as we entered town, shot through the window of car. 

While parking, I spotted this plaque on one building, the start of that rescue and renovation, and a place where Edgar Allen Poe once spoke.  We were told Abraham Lincoln spoke at another nearby building, but they are apparently not mapped yet in any way, so one stumbles across them.

I collected my Park  Stamp at the Visitor center, then got directions to hurry to the Boott Cotton Mill to see what we could before closing time.  Wish we had more time,  but figured we would see what we could.

I explained the stamp in the Passport book to the grand kids while in Salem, but they were totally unimpressed, and uninterested!  Guess it would need to be digital for them!  haha!

National Park Service Headquarters

Boott Cotton Mill

Lowell is considered to be the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in America!  Who knew!  Mr. Lowell visited England, where theirs was already underway, and saw automated weaving machines, and brought the idea back to the states, where he and an engineer designed and built the first automated weaving machine.  Then factories were initiated, and the cotton making industry had begun, leading to so many others.

Hard work, but promised good wages, and freedom on their own time, led people to leave the farms and work in factories, and the change from agricultural to industrial began.

Immigrants soon played a huge role in the progress, with the Irish being the first to settle, and build the canals necessary to run the water to power the machines.   Later other nationalities joined.











I found these accounts from actual mill workers very interesting, as well as the fact that  this renovation began as recently ago as the 80's

This poor woman's hearing was destroyed in the noisy surroundings, but today, a sign warns even visitors, and we were given ear plugs to wear when we entered the working mill area. 

I clocked in, and we headed in to watch the machines as they turned the thread to cloth.

We saw just one floor in only one building, but this occupied all floors, as the model here shows, in  multiple buildings.
















The workers staircase, narrow and steep, that they climbed every day.  They worked sometimes 14 hours a day, until 1870, when they fought for and won a 10 hour work day.

Where the female workers lived. 

The working conditions were hard, and the bosses drove them, and sometimes beat them, and labor strikes ensued.  

The need for raw cotton drove slavery in the south, and the relationship was said by one Senator to be "an unholy union......between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom. "

The mills soon fell upon hard times, and towns like this fell into poverty and disrepair, and it is nice to see the buildings and history being preserved.  

We walked back to our car, passing more nice architecture, including the local High School. 

stone rectory adjacent to St. Anne's church, whose stained glass was cleaned and repaired

Since it was rush hour, I suggested we find a restaurant and have dinner and wait it out, and we settled on Cobblestone, where Clem enjoyed their new fried pretzel appetizer!!  yikes!  He didn't quite finish, but did a good job.  Too greasy for me, I was satisfied with a small bite.

 Cobblestone was originally a boarding house, became a Gentleman's club.....the sort of the time where true gentlemen gathered to read papers and smoke cigars..... and still contained much of the original architecture.

We had a very good meal, in pleasant surroundings, then headed back, where the pleasant night air lead me to read outdoors in our little screen house until it got dark.  

I would like to return to see the trolley museum, and maybe take a boat ride on the canal, but will have to see how the rest of our time goes, and how the weather cooperates!