Surprising Finds

I have been reminded of a couple of “finds” during my travels in the United States and in Europe that were big surprises to me.  You know how you have a particular idea in mind about some object or natural phenomenon you are about to see, and then when you actually see it, you find something very unexpected?  Well, that happened to me when I first got the opportunity to see Plymouth Rock.  

I was expecting Plymouth Rock to be a huge rock, something like the Rock of Gibraltar.  I imagined William Bradford could have seen this rock from the railing of the Mayflower for some distance; it would serve as a landmark.  Well, I didn’t do my research beforehand, so you can imagine that I was very surprised (dare I say, disappointed?) to see that it wasn’t much bigger than the area of a  dining table.  I looked at it in disbelief! “What??”  Besides having “1620” carved into it, it wasn’t impressive at all. 

 

Later I read that this was the top half of the rock that the Pilgrims stepped on when they finally reached solid land.  And, unfortunately, a large portion (maybe as much as 2/3) of the rock had been chipped away for souvenirs.  It had also been moved around several times in the Plymouth area before finding its final resting place on top of the original rock from which it had been broken.

I’ll share another surprising find tomorrow…