Next Stop: Train Museum!

We visited the Illinois Rail Museum (largest railway museum in the country) in mid-August.  It's about an hour away and we had driven there the previous weekend only to be greeted by a freak thunderstorm (followed by tears).  So we hoped it was worth driving to again.  It was!  The train station was very Anne of Green Gables.  The museum restores all kinds of trains from the 1850's up to now.  Some are housed in large hangers which you can either walk through or view from wooden walkways from the outside.  Each weekend they put different vintage trains on the tracks and run them for a 45 minute round-trip through the countryside.  The grounds are large and so there is a trolley that circles the exhibits.

Late 1800's train station moved from the nearby town.

Train-wear 

Ready to go!

Waiting for the real ride on a early last century train.

Train Whistle!

Inside train station.  One of the many places she will
leave those sunglasses this trip...

Looking into the old dining cars

'40s sleeper

On the trolley

Let's be honest.  One of their favorite parts of the trip...

P-Town and B-Town

*apologies in advance for this post's tense and pronoun changes

Kate and Mama

Labor Day weekend Grammy and Pops met us in Philadelphia for a kid exchange.  Mama and Baba then headed to Boston on the train for our friend JB's wedding.  The wedding was an all day extravaganza including both an Indian and Catholic wedding.  The food (all Indian and vegetarian) was the best I've ever eaten at any event.  Seeing old Cornell friends was even better.

Two days before the Sunday wedding Mama and Baba (whose shipmate included a 40-something man crocheting) boarded a ferry to Provincetown.  It was a glorious day. The pictures really don't do the light justice.  No wonder Jackson Pollock, Eugene O'Neill, and Tennessee Williams loved it here.

Artists painting by the ferry dock

 What a charming little town. There were lots of families, straight couples, and gay couples.  How refreshing to see everyone free to hold hands with those they love.

Why aren't all P.O.s also cafe and cabarets?

 We read that the Dune Rides were the best way to see the National Seashore, so off we went.

Rose hips EVERYWHERE. 

Animal tracks.

 When the dunes became a national park in the late '50's the artists who had squatted in shacks on the beach were allowed to keep them until their death.  They have outhouses, no running water, no electricity, and limited access.

Shack in the distance.

The amount of vegetation was surprising.
We drove through several "low forests".

The tower in the distance is the Pilgrim Tower commemorating the arrival of the Pilgrims before they moved on to Plymouth.

View from the top looking southish.

Mama inexplicably collects little dolls in peanuts and they had one in the pilgrim museum!

 After climbing the monument we rented bikes and rode EVERYWHERE!  We rode to Herring Beach and relaxed on the sand before taking on the challenging dune trail.  This was Mama's favorite part of the trip.  We were pretty much alone riding on the paved path with dunes high on either side and the sea in the distance.  We also went through some of the breezy low forests that we had seen earlier from above.  At the Visitor's Center we could see whales off the coast.  It was about 5pm at this point and the light was spectacular (not that you can see it in the below picture, unfortunately).
 

Baba got so hot biking he had to change into his swimsuit.  The later it got the more club music we heard pumping out of all the buildings.  After a quick dinner we took the last ferry back to Boston.

Baba had nothing to worry about in this outfit.

 Provincetown--highly recommended!

Saturday was spent doing Bostony things and meeting up with Kate and Wil for drinks that evening.  On Monday we trained back to Philly to pick up our dear ones.  A lot of traveling but well-worth the effort!