The days have been gloomy and overcast lately, so when I woke to somewhat clear skies, I decided to fill my travel coffee mug, hop in my car, then fill my gas tank to head out for one of my drives around New England.  This time I will be staying a bit local. I headed to an area of Massachusetts that is close to me, yet most of the area is unknown.  I have driven through the towns of Boylston, West Boylston, and Bolton to get to other destinations, or to visit Nashoba Valley Winery, but usually if I am in a hurry and unable to get "purposely lost" without my GPS.  Does anyone else do that?...  keep driving and taking turns with the hopes of getting lost to find new and exciting back-road-finds?  I was a bit excited to "get lost" and drive around these historic towns since they are on our town search radar (for those who don't know, my husband and I are searching for a new / old home and we are prepared to keep looking until we find just what we are looking for).  Below are a few photos of historic homes I took while out and about. 

Made of granite, complete with bell tower, the town of Boylston leases the "Historic Center Building" to the Historical Society to use as its headquarters and museum. They refer to the building as the "Old Town Hall." It was built in 1830 with a grant given by Ward Nicholas Boylston, who was a benefactor of the town.

In Bolton, MA - One of my favorite horse properties to drive by. I actually cut through a side road to see this home and the horses surrounding the property. . 

When you ask the horses to look at the camera and smile.  This is just what my children do to me.... they purposely look the other way.  

As I entered West Boylston, this antique home set the stage for other old homes I saw during my drive.  The historic home plaque read - Josiah Wilder 1729. 

Not a historic home, but this new old home fits seamlessly in its surroundings. 

Below are a few photos from past visits to the Nashoba Valley Winery in Bolton, MA

From the Bolton Historical Society web site. 

The town of Bolton, one of the many communities that has evolved over the past three and a half centuries from the large Lancaster purchase of 1643, is located at the eastern edge of Worcester county, twenty kilometers (12.4 miles) northeast of Worcester. 

For most of its historical existence Bolton has been a rural community--consisting meadows, woods, and grazing lands on Lancaster's outlying territory in the seventeenth century, subsistence farms in the eighteenth, dairy farms and orchards in the nineteenth, and a diverse culture of orcharding, dairying, poultry-raising, and market-gardening in the first half of the twentieth century. Today its remaining agricultural base has been greatly reduced, and the town has been transformed into a largely residential community of handsome single-family houses, most on large lots, providing homes for people who work outside the town's borders. This change in function, however, and its accompanying increase in population, has made the preservation of the town's rural character and the unique and fragile mixture of its historic resources ever more valuable to its citizens. The extensive documentation in the present Survey of Historic, Architectural, and Cultural Resources, which documents buildings, structures, areas, landscapes, objects, and sites over fifty years old throughout the town, and of which this developmental history is a part, should play a valuable role in the recognition, preservation, and appreciation of those resources.