Beautiful Sunday for a limp around the grounds.

Yes the leg is getting better. I am on my second and final week of limited duty at work. It's back to full time next week and a full paycheck as well. Short term disability helps but it's only 60% of my pay so monetarily it's been a bit tight this month. Sunday was a beautiful day though warm. Not like the heat wave that has plagued most of the country though. It topped out at 89 with low humidity. I just had to get out. One day about a week ago I was surfing the web looking for some place to go for a day trip. I found this place called the Heritage Museum and Gardens in Sandwich Ma. on Cape Cod. I never knew the place existed. Apart from working a restricted work schedule (4 hours a day) for the last two weeks I have been pretty much house bound. I needed to get out. Sure I went to a ball game last week and being at Fenway Park is neat (Did I say neat again? It must be the insidious creeping threat of middle class bozo-ism.) getting there, getting a drink, and getting home again are not that neat. Being crammed in a subway car with some guys nether regions practically in face is not my idea of a good time. And though the park is only about six miles away driving there is an aggravation all it 's own. On top of it the walk from the station to the park and back did put a strain on my leg. Too much too soon.

Still it was time to get out. From the website this place, The Heritage Museum, looked beautiful. It was. Meticulously maintained grounds, an auto museum and a Norman Rockwell exhibit, which unfortunately didn't allow picture taking. The downside to all this, it was a Sunday. It was a beautiful day and lots of other people will go to the Cape. Driving down wasn't bad. It's about an hour away. The museum was only two exits after the bridge. Cape Cod is essentially an island because there is a canal that cuts through the entire upper Cape. There are two bridges spanning the canal. Cape Cod is a beautiful place but it's very crowded during the summer and the roads down there are not built to handle all those cars. Upon leaving we took 40 minutes to go a half mile to get to the bridge. The rest of the drive to go 5 miles north of Boston took 60 minutes. Then of course, on the beaches, because of the seal population, there are the sharks. This happened on Saturday. This is not my photo.

   The museum garden encompass 100 acres. Just gorgeous. The auto museum, a bonus for me because I do like cars, was surprisingly large and the Norman Rockwell exhibit was fascinating. I didn't know that a good deal if not all of his painting were taken from photographs. He would take pictures of models he hired in all kinds of poses and places the paint a picture using different models in different locations. Sort of piecing together scenes from all these pictures. He didn't do this all the time. They had many of his paintings that were used for the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. Great stuff! A fascinating thing I observed in the parking lot was a car from Alaska. And I am whining about my drive home to Boston.

The sun was quite bright so there is a bit of a washout effect on some of the pictures. The auto museum was a a bit dark. I don't particularly like using a flash as there is a moment of hesitation when the flash happens and the actual image is exposed making for some blurry pictures. I had to lighten most of those pictures up Someday I will upgrade my camera. If you care to see them you can find them here <iframe src="https://skydrive.live.com/embed?cid=657692B4E34B334B&resid=657692B4E34B334B%21322&authkey=AMgN4rV6v6KtgRY" 

I hope this link works. Anyway I've, as always, have gone on long enough. Thanks to the folks who visit here. There aren't many of you but I want you to know it is appreciated.

I'm outta here.