Today is Jacob's 8th birthday! Happy Birthday, Jake! We started off the day with breakfast at our campsite and made plans for the day.
In the Phipps family tradition, at least part of summer vacation has to include some educational adventure. Growing up, no matter where we were in the country, we always found some educational or historic landmark to visit. So, today we decided to go to Boston and walk the Freedom Trail. We started the day reading The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. We then used Uber from the campground to get to Boston. We met at Boston Commons and started out on our adventure. I walked the Freedom Trail about a year ago, in the Fall, on a weekday, with grown people. Attempting this on an excruciatingly hot Summer weekend day with 4 children 10 and under may not have been our most brilliant idea ever. Nonetheless, somehow, we made it work. At one of our first stops (also in the Phipps Family tradition of always running into someone we know no matter where we are), we ran into childhood/college friends who also live in Indy and is the Music Pastor at our church. It was great to see them and such a crazy surprise. We continued on and stopped at many of the main sites including Paul Revere's house, the Old North Church, and the U.S.S. Constitution. With the help of Lobster mac and cheese, a lot of cold water, and an ice cream stop, we survived.
We split up and used Uber again to get back to the camp site. This was a bit of and adventure as our Uber driver's GPS stopped working part of the way back, he didn't speak much English, and he had to rely on Jason's phone to get us back to our campsite. We'll never know if he made it back to Boston. The kids rode their bikes, played Wiffle ball, and swam at the beach. It was a great end to a wonderful day.
Having never taken an RV vacation, the reality is that with 8 people, after only a few days, there is a lot of clutter and a lot of laundry already. I'm learning to just roll with it. Thankfully, tomorrow we head to Maine and an RV park with a few more luxuries, like a washer and dryer!