Salem Mass: Day Three

Wow. Two posts in a day. I MUST be bored or just really diligent.



Where we last left off our two plucky travelers had tucked in for another night THINKING they were going to spend their Saturday morning in Salem visiting a few museums only to drive up to Maine for dinner to eat at Fox's. THIS was NOT to be. When we got our act together and got back into Salem we found that the sleepy town was no longer so sleep but was inundated with visitors and there was no parking. Jessica was not happy.



So we did what we could do - we kept going ready for a different adventure!



We found ourselves in Glouchester. This made Jessica VERY happy as Marky Mark was once in the town filming the Perfect Storm at one point.











We explored the little historic area of the town where there was a nice view of the water, the fishing boats...



A nice statue...



The names of all the fishermen lost at sea...



A hot dog cart (but the bastard guy stayed in his car so I didn't get a hot dog OR a hot pretzel!)



AND A BROWN PIGEON!



But a tour group of old people made me a little annoyed and made us spirit onward!



We bid farewell to Gloucester and all the fishermen...



We headed north and saw Nemo 2...



And wound up in New Hampshire!



We even took a picture of the signs with the old man in the mountain on them...



We drove through some of the beach towns in search of Portsmouth.



When we got to Portsmouth we had to feed the meter... and then we could do some tax free shopping!!



We stopped to take some pictures of the pumpkin men



And were offered (by some foreigners) to have our picture taken, this is the only one we have together from the whole trip.



We had a light snack of popovers in town and saw some red hat ladies...

Then we big goodbye to Portsmouth and continued on to Maine!






We even stopped at the sign for a photo op.





Then we stopped at a park in Kitty Maine and just kind of goofed around...



















Because goofing around is really what we do best. And hey, if you're good at it you have to go with the flow.









And from this park in Kittery we got some great shots of three more lighthouses.



When we left the park we took a moment to take a picture of this slide going into the river - got to love Mainers



Hello! (I only put this picture in here because I look thin, and I like to look thin)



So we drove even further north to York, Maine where we were going to eat dinner at Fox's and see the Nuble lighthouse, that is until we saw that Fox's was CLOSED! They ended up closing earlier for the season. But Jess was still going to get pictures of her lighthouse.



I had all intentions of staying in the warm car until Jessica made me get out.



She may be smiling... but it was COLD outside. and very very windy.



And the lighthouse was even lit since it was getting dark. But we had other problems on our hands...

Where should we eat?

We drove around and around until I had to pee like a racehorse. We ended up stopping at a place called Bosn's' in York. Jessica said she didn't want to eat there, but my bladder said otherwise.



We were seated by some real Mainers (aka hicks) and I thought she would kill me, but when she was given two one pound lobsters for 18.99 - well she was very happy after that.



It was a great end to a busy day.

Salem Mass: Day Two

Sorry it's taken awhile to get this post up, but I doubt many people are reading this anyway...



After a good nights sleep Jessica and I awoke feeling refreshed!



And I even was able to get my Christmas card picture that VERY morning. Thanks Jess :-)



Now the first day we did a decent amount of walking but nothing like the amount we were going to do on the second day. We walked that down up and down and all around. We were actually up and on our feet for about 12 hours. We started the trip revisiting a few sights from the night before which we saw on the ghost tour...



We even parked next to a Masshole!



First we went back to a church to take a picture of the gay flag since many people thought we were a little gay for each other on the trip...





Then we went to take pictures of the old Salem jail which we saw that night. It was actually used till 1994. We got some good orb pictures that night but nothing really during the day.



We then squeezed through some fencing to get into a really cool old graveyard. This was the graveyard that Giles Corey was pressed to death in, it's also where he yelled from under the stones placed apon him "More weight!"





We took the time to take some pictures with some new friends...



And we took the time to read some of the old graves as well. Some of the old graves tell the stories of the persons death, this just happens to be very morbidly interesting.



When we left there we walked into the middle of Salem town, where I got to get my picture with a big fucking pumpkin!



As we treked onward we saw the Hampton Jitney - aka the Benny Mobile, in Salem. Obviously we just can't get away from Bennys...



And we saw a great statue of Nathanial Hawthorne, who called Salem home many many years ago.




We made a quick stop back at the friendship of Salem to take pictures of it...





and the small lighthouse that was walking distance to it. It was one of many lighthouses we were going to see on this trip...





We still wandered around, took a tour through the House of Seven Gables which included the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This was one of the most beautiful properties I have been through in my entire life. The homes on the property are wonderfully restored, decorated aptly for the time, even the gardens, despite it being the end of October were blooming, and full of mums and other autumn flowers.





Oh and we took some great pictures in a boat...



And you may be wondering where are the pictures from inside these buildings? Well we only got one because it turns out that you can take any pictures in order to preserve the building (whatever) and the one we snapped we got yelled at for...











We walked and walked through the rest of the day, taking pictures here and there...





We made a stop at the new Salem memorial to the witch trials in 1692, it's a nice memorial, and not over done. It has the names of each of the people who died and how and when they died on these large stones that come out of this wall like benches that you can sit on. It also gives these people a final resting place even though they were all placed in mass graves outside the town.



Near that is another old cemetery with some famous dead people.



And a really creepy tree.

We ended our 12 hours in Salem that day with two plays, but I have no pictures of them since we weren't allowed to use any form of photography or video. The first one was at the Witch House. It was called Eerie Evenings. They sat you in different rooms while they told you this story of a woman who was accused of being a witch for using witchcraft to get her betrothed to her quicker, only for him to return quickly, but in a coffin, she married her brother and soon after was accused of witch craft. Then you meet the bailiff who doesn’t like his job but does it so he doesn’t get accused and then you meet an evil priest who has a hand in everything, ends up being the devil.

The second play was back over at the House of Seven Gables, it was called the Legend of the Hanging Judge, all about Judge Hawthorne; you first meet a young Nathanial Hawthorne and then learn more about the trials from the hanging judge himself. I was even accused of being a witch! It was so cool. They even had girls who were doing the acting of the accusing girls back in 1692. They were screaming and going on about the pinching, it was really something else.

By the end of the night we were so tired and in so much pain due to all the walking and standing we did during the day. During the day we finally figured out what museums we wanted to go to, since many of them looked to touristy and weren’t getting great reviews from the locals. We figured we’d go Saturday for the morning so we would have time to shoot up to Maine to have a lobster dinner at Fox’s in York Beach.



Oh and we even had some evening entertainment from a guy on a bike, playing the kazoo while wearing a pink wig.

Ah Salem.