The rest of the trip

Well I'm sorry for slacking off on the rest of the trip. It was a ton of fun but I just was finding it harder to be motivated to write all the entries.

On Saturday we went whale watching and had a ton of fun. We set off at 10am and were out for about three hours. I was a bit annoyed by one thing though; as we were getting on I asked some of the crew members where they thought the best place to be was and it was so hard for them to give me an answer. I find that often people are so nervous to give their opinions on things such as meals at a restaurant. It's like people are scared that I'll get upset if I don't agree with their opinion, which I guess could happen with people at times. But I enjoy getting to know what other people think when I'm making decisions. On the boat we had the option to be high or low and they were so hesitant to say anything other than "it depends". All well, we had a great time and found that indeed the front down low was much more enjoyable than the top.

We saw five humpback whales in total, two cow and calf combos and one bull. We actually got a lot closer than I thought we would but not as closed as I wished. We were probably twenty feet away at the closest. I learned that whales do not drink any ocean water, if they did they would die just like us. But instead their bodies create all the water they need from their blubber. Also they use half of their brain at a time. One half is used for normal stuff like swimming, eating, etc. and the other half turns on when they are "sleeping". Its only function is to breath and swim. So each half gets rest while the other is functioning.

We then went to a famous seafood restaurant called Boston Legal Seafood. Apparently it has won a bunch of national restaurant awards. The food was really good, I actually had swordfish for the first time and I really liked it.

Then we went to the Boston temple. It was very peaceful and relaxing going to a session and walking the grounds. I'm happy we were able to go there, of course it's always nice to go to the temple but now I have one more temple crossed off my list and I'm well on my way to visiting all the temples in the world (well, maybe that's a bit ambitious).
On Sunday after Church we decided to drive up to Maine to take a walk on a beach. We heard about a place in Ogunkuit, Maine called Marginal Way. It was a very beautiful walk we were able to go on. On a part of it I saw a dogfish that had been beached and subsequently thrown back in the ocean by some people. The dogfish was way weak and you could see it trying to swim. I have my doubts that it survived, it seemed too weak to swim out to deeper water and even if it could I'm not sure it would be able to catch any food. Still, it was fun seeing it and getting really close.

The next day we headed up to Vermont to check out Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Factory and also to go to Sharon VT and check out Joseph Smith's birthplace. Ben and Jerry's was pretty fun. We saw how ice cream is made there and also learned about their company (nothing I didn't already know from all the projects and lectures we had on that company for my business classes, Marketing, Strategic Mgt., Organizational Behavior, etc. We must have mentioned Ben and Jerry's in over half my classes in the business school.)

We also stopped at a maple syrup farm that was close by. I learned that it takes 40-50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. No wonder it's so expensive. Also sap looks like water when it comes out of the tree.
The Joseph Smith Birthplace memorial was great. Did you know that the actual obelisk is one of the largest single pieces of granite in the world? The entire monument stands 38 1/2 feet tall, one foot for each year of the prophet's life. It was very relaxing there, we arrived towards the end of the day and had a personal tour by the senior missionary there, Elder Mckinnon. He was great and very entertaining. Afterward he invited us to attend FHE with all the other missionary couples there. It was so much fun. There were about 20 people there including us and we had an American History trivia game. Some of the questions were: when was the Pledge of Allegiance instituted? What city was the original national capital? Who wrote the Star Spangled Banner? When was the Declaration of Independence signed? What is the first line of the Declaration? How tall is the Statue of Liberty? What was the population of the 13 colonies when they declared independence? So everyone reading this think of the answers and then see if you're right, the answers will be in a comment.

We stayed that night at Camp Joseph, a Church run camp right next to the memorial. It was so incredibly peaceful there, the weather was perfect, we had a nice fire and roasted marshmellows, the night was clear and we could see a ton of stars (when we stepped away from the fire of course), and there were fireflies that we tried to catch (well I caught two of them, I was very happy), living in the west we don't get the joy of fireflies like east coasters do, they were a lot of fun. The camp was really really great, the missionary couple running it, the Wallaces, were great. They provided us with everything we needed, matches, flashlights, and firewood. It was a great change from Boston.

The next day we drove through New Hampshire and stopped at the stonehenge of america. Have you guys never heard of it? Yeah, me neither and we found out why. Well not for sure but for starters they were charging $10 admission. None of us wanted to pay that (maybe $3 dollars) so we took a picture of the sign and took off, we couldn't see the actual place because of the woods. I did see a sign informing me that if I wanted to go on a ghost siting trip I should come back for Halloween. But I would need to bring my own recording equipment to be sure to capture my siting on film (seriously, I saw a notice for this). Apparently this place has an underground paranormal activity following. We wanted nothing to do with that so we went to the beach.

The waves were big enough so I was able to do a little body surfing, I'm not very good at it but I did catch a couple good waves and from what I saw I was the best that I could see (OK I admit it, there were only like three other people trying).

That night we went to the perfect conclusion to a Boston trip, a game at Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox play. It was such an awesome game. Fenway was so much fun, before the game Jed and I went down to the front row right off of third base and took some pictures. The national anthem was incredible, the girl singing it was amazing and the setting was great, I got a ton of chills. The game itself was really good. We scored in the 1st (and when I saw we I mean the Red Sox) and then the Twins scored three in the third. Long story short this game had everything except for an in park homerun and someone stealing home and a fight and someone getting tossed (Ok so it didn't have everything but it had a lot). There were stolen bases, triples, broken bats, and a home run by Manny Ramirez (Boston) to tie the game in the bottom of the eighth inning. That stadium was so loud, you'd think they just won the World Series. Boston won 6-5, what a great way to end our trip there.

The next day we flew home in lowly old coach (no upgrades this time, but I did fiddle for someone in first class).