2017 Life Logs, Day 181: Free Fun Friday at The New Bedford Whaling Museum

2017 Life Logs, Day 181: Free Fun Friday at The New Bedford Whaling Museum
Date: Friday, June 30, 2017
Weather: Mostly Cloudy with Sun Here and There; Very Windy, High 70’s, Low 60’s F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA

When I arrived at Heather’s this morning, everyone was in the garden harvesting peas. And Sam decided to harvest a good crop of edible weeds, a lemony clover, that has been growing amongst the asparagus. Once the harvesting was completed, we headed out for the The New Bedford Whaling Museum that is about 45 minutes north and west of here. Every summer, the Highland Street Foundation offers free admission to various museums and cultural venues around the state of Massachusetts on Fridays. They call it Free Fun Fridays and Camp Oma often takes advantage of this wonderful gift. Today the whaling museum was one of the choices, so off we went. We first visited there in 2013 when Ollie was just a toddler,

and I know we visited once more, but I can’t quickly find the photos from that visit. But no matter how many times you visit a place like this, there is always more to see and learn. Today there was a very knowledgeable guide on the Lagoda, a half-scale model of a whaling ship from the 1800’s. This is the largest ship model in existence and the boys loved climbing aboard and exploring. The guide explained to them how it took a whaling ship about four years to leave New Bedford and head around the world in search of whales. He explained how the huge creatures were hoisted out of the sea and how ‘blankets’ of skin and blubber were cut off the whale and brought aboard the ship and rendered into oil. We spent about two hours in the museum and then drove to a nearby fort to play while eating lunch. It was definitely a fun Friday.