Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Part One of a trilogy of outtake selections from this year’s family vacation photos, those that didn’t make final cut for the original 33-part narrative. Some were omitted for specific reasons; some were due to space, pacing, and attention span considerations; some, I have no idea why.

Part Two, then: Massachusetts randomness, photos held back from Day 3 to Day 6 for reasons.

Beginning with our last stop in Massachusetts on Day 6: the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden in Springfield. In the original entry I opted for a comprehensive head-to-toe shot of Seuss himself and the Cat in the Hat, but I also like how this pleasantly level portrait incorporates the greenery around the museums.

While Seuss’ desk was aptly covered in writing and drawing tools, look closely at the ground behind Seuss’ chair and you’ll find some familiar denizens too easily ignored.

Most frequently omitted part of our trip: food! We’re not fully accredited foodies who can afford the high-falutin’ five-star meals that such a blog niche would demand, but we often take pics for the sake of our own memories anyway. Few might care, for example, about our Day 4 lunch at the tiny Korean Grille in Quincy, but we thought it was a savory treat, as my wife’s meal testifies here.

Later in Chinatown, our dinner at the Gourmet Dumpling House included tofu nuggets because I felt like it. They were very light and refused to cool down.

A couple of our Boston dinners were fetched from a walk-in sandwich joint across the street from our hotel. I would post a photo here, but this wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where it was wise to show other pedestrians that you’re packing potentially pawnable gear, so the camera and phone both stayed securely pocketed on those food runs. Loved the sandwiches, though.

Sure, we could’ve eaten at the hotel if we’d wanted, say, vending-machine pizza. That was a new one on us, and we hope never to find out what it’s like.

When we arrived at Chinatown, after spending twenty minutes lapping the neighborhood until we found a nook with parking spaces left, the first sight to jump out at us as we walked wasn’t even authentically Chinatown. Somehow leading off our Chinatown entry with a giant teddy bear felt like the wrong opening chord.

Photos of me tend to be consigned to the shadows of the editing bay, but my wife collects them for her own reasons. Love, probably. This one was while we waited our turn to enter the John Adams family home in Quincy. Fun continuity note for hardcore MCC readers: the shirt was a souvenir from Dinosaur Ridge.

After we left Chinatown, I may have skipped over the part where I took a wrong turn on Boston’s blindly designed interstate death labyrinth and detoured us across the river into Charlestown, which any competent map will tell you isn’t near Chinatown. I’d considered visiting there anyway to see if I could recognize any scenery from Ben Affleck’s The Town, so that technically worked out, except we had no stops targeted, I’d researched none of the street layout in advance, rush-hour traffic complicated my turnaround attempts, and my phone battery was nearly dead. A few helpful road signs led me to the correct ramp we needed among several dozen choices. From there I simply exited the interstate as soon as we crossed back to Boston and stayed on one major street until it crossed another major street I recognized. And then the day was saved.

Meanwhile my saintly wife made good use of the surprise drive-time and caught sight of the Bunker Hill Monument, thus redeeming at least a few of those panicky seconds of misadventure.

The centerpiece of our road trip was the whale-watching cruise. Narrowing down the candid shots of water-and-only-water was not an easy task, particularly because they all began to look alike after staring at them for too long. In retrospect the hues in this shot were much prettier than some of the rainswept finalists and deserved reconsideration for inclusion.

Here be the rarest of all specimens: all three of us in a single pic. My son popped up in a couple of previous entries as an unmentioned Easter egg for the most sharp-eyed MCC readers, but this test-selfie that my wife took while we were preparing to board the whale-watching boat turned out to be one of our only two full-on family shots on the entire trip. If we were an obscure college-rock band, this would be on the back cover of our debut album.

To be concluded! Next time: the season finale.

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for previous and future chapters, and for our complete road trip history to date. Thanks for reading!]