Lots of Things to Do Around Here:

The hostel is closed to individuals during the day for cleaning and maintenance, but there are loads things to do around here. Within 10 minutes of the hostel is the tiny New England town of Harvard with summer outdoor concerts, spectacular fall foliage, sledding on the common in the winter, and orchards full of apple blossoms in the spring. Learn about Shaker communal life and Native Americans at Fruitlands in Harvard. There are miles of country roads suitable for bicycling as well as hiking and mountain biking) trails, some bike rail trails and wildlife conservation areas in Harvard and adjacent towns as well as canoeing or kayaking on the Nashua River with Nashoba Paddler. Indian Hill Music provides jazz and classical concerts just 3 miles away.

Thirteen miles from Friendly Crossways in the town of Concord, you can take a Literary Tour of Louisa May Alcott’s home and the Old Manse, home to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Thoreau’s Walden Pond and Lyceum as well as visit historic Lexington and the site of the “shot heard ’round the world’ at the Minute Man Park in Concord, which pretty much started the American Revolution. Browse through the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln; check out suits of armor at Higgins Armory Museum and American art in Worcester. For more things to do in Worcester, link to the Worcester County Business List. Also, visit Lowell and Andover, home to a national park featuring the American Industrial Revolution, and the New England Quilt Museum as well as minor league baseball team of the Lowell Spinners with Red Sox recruits.

An hour’s drive leads you to north of Boston to Gloucester, Rockport and Newburyport for whale watching, windswept beaches, or turn back the clock at Salem and its historic Peabody Essex Museum, Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge MA or Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth NH. Of course there’s loads of things to see and do in Boston.

Much of New England, including the seacoast from artistic Portland, Maine to “America’s Home Town” Plymouth and Cape Cod’s white sand beaches in Massachusetts and the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, Green Mountains of Vermont and White Mountains of New Hampshire can be reached in less than two hours.

For children (and the young at heart), there is a neat “Leathers” park and climbing structure about 5 miles away in Littleton; and the Discovery Museums, seven miles away in Acton. The National Plastics Center and Museum in nearby Leominster has lots of cool hands-on activities and neat information appropriate for both children and adults. Kimball Farm has awesome portions of delicious HOMEMADE ICECREAM as well as a golf driving range and two 18-hole miniature golf courses. The Davis Farm in Sterling has a petting zoo and crop maze and a whole lot more. Great Brook Farm Park in nearby Carlisle has a working dairy, ice cream stand, and walking paths which are used for cross country skiing in the winter. The lovely Children’s Museum of Portsmouth NH, the New England Aquarium and Boston Science Museum are each one hour away.

NEFFA (New England Folk Festival Association) is in Mansfied toward the end of April, with acres of live music and dancing. The FREE Lowell Folk Festival is 20 minutes away and held the last weekend in July. There’s also the Three Apples Storytelling Festival in nearby Bedford during the last weekend in September. Wachusett Mountain holds several fall festivals featuring kids, beers, classic cars and R&B, and downhill skiing (not all at the same time). Berlin Orchards has pick-your-own fruit and fruity festivals. Nashoba Valley Winery has festivals and features their wines in their own restaurant.

Pick Your Own: blueberries and tomatoes right here at the hostel. Apples, peaches and pumpkins at Westward Orchards (978/456-8363), Carlson’s Orchards (978/456-3916) and Doe Orchards (978/772-4139) in the town of Harvard. For more on PYO in Massachusetts and elsewhere, go to PickYourOwn.org