Town Theory Shattered!

As we passed by many towns yesterday on Interstate 95 south from Freeport, Maine, through a small part of New Hampshire and through Massachusetts and around Boston, I vowed to test my theory that half the towns were copies of towns' names directly from England and the other half were Native American names.  First, I figured that any name ending in -set was Native American.  I stand by that.

Next, I listed the towns' names as we passed them.  This morning I looked up those names in the list of town names in England.  Big disappointment!  There were only ten town names that were duplicates of towns in England: Andover, Attleborough, Bedford, Cambridge, Framingham, Needham, Newton, Tewkesbury, Waltham, and Worcester.  Others that were not listed as towns in England were: Foxborough, Wrentham, Roxbury, Wellesley, Avon,  Brookline, Arlington, Lexington, Middlesex, Lowell, Burlington, Peabody, Concord, Wilmington, and Merrimack.  I remember from English classes that the writer, Shakespeare, came from Stratford-on-Avon, so our town of Avon may have been named for the river.  Oh, well, now I know.

This bell tower is interesting because it holds an actual bell!  It is on top of an insurance company office building in the town of Andover, Massachusetts (8/15/14). Note that the times on the two sides of the clocks are different!

We saw this blimp in the air long before we knew what it was.  At first, we thought it was a helicopter, for traffic reports as traffic on I-95 was extremely heavy and, at times, at a standstill.  Then we realized it was a blimp.  Dave said, "Oh, it's the Hood Blimp."  "Hood" is a dairy advertising at the Patriots' football game in Foxborough.

What a lovely sight to see our American flags draped across bridges from one end to the other over I-95 in northern Massachusetts!

Other unique names of places along the way yesterday were Breakfast Hill Road, Kittery (last exit in Maine going south, leaving the Maine turnpike), Oldgumquit (town), Webhannet River, Merriland River, Mousam River (just past Kennebunkport exit), Nonesuch River, and Presumpscot River.  Travel is never boring!