Massachusetts had a great theme. That theme was food. In Massachusetts we went to the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory, Flax Pond Cranberry Farm, and Boston.
The Cape Cod Potato Chip factory lets you take a tour to see how potato chips are made. The tour itself was really lame because I was expecting to go in the work area, but instead you are just watching the process from behind glass. They did have some signs that explained the process, and watching the machines at work was really interesting too. The best part of the tour was the free samples. At the end they had a gift shop with all their chip flavors. You could pick out two small bags of chips as part of the tour. We also bought two extra flavors: Sweet & Spicy Jalapeno and Parmesan & Roasted Garlic. The Sweet & Spicy Jalapeno was hot. It had a little more spice than sweet. The Parmesan & Roasted Garlic was amazing though. Since then I have eaten them in several different states.
The Flax Pond Farms is one place where Ocean Spray gets some of its berries from. One of the cool parts is when the guys in the commercials are standing waist deep in cranberries, they don't have to fake it. People who work at Flax Pond Farms round up the cranberries by wading in waist deep to corral them onto a conveyor belt. Then they are shipped off to make juice or sell them. They also have a museum as well as the farm. The have old reapers that farmers from the 1800's used. They also had an old cranberry separating machine that still works. It was designed to separate the good cranberries from the bad. It was so cool because the good cranberries bounce and the bad ones don't. The machine would drop the cranberries down a two foot drop. The good ones would bounce back up onto a conveyer belt. The bad ones would just stay down there. That was pretty much it for the Flax Pond Farm.
Boston is one of America's older big cities and very large, as we found out. We took a Freedom Trail walk through the city. It went through some famous sights of Boston. We saw the USS Constitution. It's nickname is "Old Ironsides
." It was nicknamed that because in the War of 1812 the cannonballs bounced off it. We took a brief look at it, but it was really neat. Another thing we did in Boston was eat at Subway. I wanted to pick my new favorite place to eat, but it wasn't in Boston. That's right, Boston Market does not exist in Boston. I am still bitter about that. The third thing we did around Boston was ride the subway which was a nice break from the miles of walking. I have to say, though, no one has heard of personal space on the subway.
Massachusetts was really fun. We went to see chips being made and went to Boston. Now I just need to get an extra large size pants.
The Son
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