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| At the Mayflower II |
We returned to the Plimoth Plantation today. We started by visiting the Wampanoag Homesite which had several wetus (huts made of tree bark) to explore and a few living stations of their daily activities. At one site a man was burning out a tree trunk to make a mishoon (canoe), at another site a woman was cooking venison soup, at another site a woman was sewing and another site had kids toys to play with. After that we went to the craft room where we saw a pilgrim man create a pottery vase from start to finish and a different pilgrim man create a bowl out of wood. Then we had our sit-down, reservations-only Thanksgiving meal where pilgrims and Indians made their way around the room greeting and visiting with the different tables. They sang Psalms and had prayers as a large group. The meal was delicious... it was as close to identical as the meal Abraham Lincoln had at Harvard University after declaring Thanksgiving a national holiday, which was as close to the original foods that would have been served at the First Thanksgiving. Our kids were well behaved... even Allison... but none of them ate the Turkey again! We would have had this meal yesterday, on Thanksgiving, but we originally were going to be traveling Thanksgiving Day... so everything we did at the Plantation yesterday was a bonus! It lasted much longer than I had imagined. We were there for a little over 2 hours! So when we got done we hurried over to the Mayflower II (a few miles away) to tour a replica of the original Mayflower. It was quite interesting, although very crowded, but glad we got to experience it. Then, of course, we viewed Plymouth Rock... our trip would not have been complete without seeing this! It turned out we needed both days to get through everything at a leisurely and baby-on-board pace, so I am very glad that Wes was able to leave early on Wednesday!
