Milepost 5,763 (Tilton, NH)

They say that into every life, some rain must fall.  But enough is enough!  We've had four straight days of rain, often heavy and accompanied by heavy wind.  I read that as of early yesterday afternoon, it was the 8th heaviest August rainfall (3.54 inches) in Boston since 1955, and I'm sure we've had another inch or two since then.  (WEDNESDAY NIGHT UPDATE:  The latest four-day total is 7.3 inches of rain.)  But it sounds as though this "nor-easter" is running out of steam.  Tomorrow is supposed to be better and Friday much better.  That will be nice as we drive through New Hampshire and Vermont.

Despite the weather, we continued on with our journey, though it was curtailed a bit yesterday.  We drove first to Plymouth, home of -- you guessed it -- Plymouth Rock.  This is where the Pilgrims were said to have first stepped foot on land, though there is some doubt about that.

After Plymouth, we drove down to Hyannus on Cape Cod.  But we didn't spend a lot of time there.  The weather, including a lot of fog at that time, made it difficult to see much of anything.  I'm sure it's very beautiful, but on this day, the beauty was pretty much obliterated.

Today, we went to the sites of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, where the Revolution begin on April 19, 1775.  The first shot of the day was fired early in the morning at Lexington Common (above).  No one knows who fired that first shot, but it did spark a brief gun battle that resulted in the deaths of eight militiamen, the first to die in the war. 

Later that morning, the next confrontation occurred at North Bridge near Concord.  Ralph Waldo Emerson described the first shot of this battle as "the shot heard around the world," even though it was not the first shot of the war.  But it was the first time militiamen were ordered to fire at the British, killing two of them.

While Concord and Lexington are the best known battle sites of that day, the heaviest fighting took place along Battle Road, as the British troops were trying to escape back to Boston, which was still under British control.