Friday, October 3 – Sunday, October 6
Family Time!
Brett and Dave are wonderful hosts and had prepared a
fantastic array of dishes, including
kielbassi , a complete Turkey
feast for Friday dinner, a wonderful barbque Saturday, fresh guacamole, an
array of cheeses, and Lasagne dinner on Sunday.
Assorted libations too J.
Greg’s Mother and Sister Gwynne arrived from PA on Friday, and other brother
Garth and his wife Kathy and their daughter Carolyn, who live in Shrewsbury MA,
also joined us daily. Kathy made the excellent pecan and pumpkin
pies and dinner rolls and the lasagna dinner! Dave's Mom and Dad, Doris and Joe, drove up from Rhode Island for the Saturday cookout.
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| chef Brett |
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| Chef Dave |
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| Sable |
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| Garth & Mom |
Dave and his parents.
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| The Johnson Crew |
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| Game time |
The highlight of the weekend, of course, was the Brain Tumor Walk on Sunday. The weather didn’t cooperate, but there was a great turnout nonetheless and Brett’s team raised over twice their $10,000 goal!
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| Dave & Brett brave the rain |
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| We made it! |
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| Most of Team Oligo |
We did do a few things other than eat and walk. As usual
with Johnson get-togethers, there were games, including Attack Uno,
Rummikube, Ticket to Ride, and The Good,
The Bad and The Ugly - a fun game that Kathy has used with her Improv group.
Watched a little bit of football too. It
was great to catch up on everyone’s activities.
Monday, October 6
After a pleasant breakfast, Mom and Gwynne headed back to PA
and Greg I headed to Massachusetts’ North Shore and Cape Ann area. Still kind of cold and rainy, but the rain
did stop long enough for us to do a walking tour of Gloucester. A very old fishing town, home to Gorton's seafood and others.
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| Gloucester harbor area |
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| Fisherman's Memorial |
The most interesting person we met was Richard, the man running The Dive Locker, a
small museum dedicated to diving equipment and a wild array of other historical
pieces. The movie The Perfect Storm was
filmed here partly, so there were a few stories about that. I especially liked the chess set made from
pencils which the crew of the boat from The Perfect Storm made while becalmed and bored while trying to cross the
Atlantic after filming ended. The boat was later returned to Gloucester and
this chess board found the day before the boat was destroyed by fire. Richard was a retired teacher (and diver) who obviously relished sharing his stories and knowledge.
Next stop was Rockport, an appropriately rocky port but
rather grey today.
We went further north
to Halibut Point, a nice State Park
built around an old granite quarry.
The quarry was abandoned in the mid 1900’s and promptly filled with
water up to 60 feet deep. The granite
was shipped all over the US and even to Cuba and South America.
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| This really is a color picture! |
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| Halibut Point |
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| Quarry at Halibut Point |
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| fire tower overlooking quarry |
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| Fungus amongus |
The sun managed to break through occasionally as we decided
to head south to Cape Cod. A two-three hour drive took us to Chatham fishing pier where we saw a few seals.
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| Chatham Harbor |
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| uncooperative seal |
And then we tried to go to
Monohony Wildlife Preserve, but it was closed down due to the government
shut-down, as was the National Seashore visitor's center! Ended up going to a Park and
Ride lot where we spent a quiet night
with just a few other vehicles.
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