New England #3 – Massachusetts

July 12 - 15, 2016: 

We didn’t have to drive very far again to get to our new site in Massachusetts from Rhode Island, just 95 miles.  Actually our next big move won’t be until we leave Quebec City in Canada.  All of our moves for the month of July will be less than 100 miles!

We are staying at the Minuteman RV Resort that is very close to Boston.  Minuteman is another campground that is very much in the woods with really tall pine trees.  So again, our satellite TV is out of the question here!  

The office and entrance to Minuteman campground.

Except for the satellite issue the campground is very nice; we would most definitely stay here again.  As for TV, we had something like 60 channels on our regular batwing antenna so not having satellite was not any issue for us. 

Our site at Minuteman.  Nice large site!

We had three goals while here and we met 2 of them.  First was easy, stay in MA so we could put our state decal on our map; done.  Second was to visit Salem MA as neither of us had been there and we wanted to see the witch stuff.  Third was to do a commercial tour of Boston.  We have both been to Boston a few times but have not really seen a lot of the sights in the city.

We had a family of turkeys wander through our site.  We counted 11 babies and 2 mothers.

So the Boston tour didn’t happen.  It didn't happen mostly because we just didn’t plan very well for it.  We were going to be doing it on a weekday so we would need to contend with rush hour traffic so we decided to take a train. 

Our first attempt failed due to not finding a place to park near the train station.  An internet blog site has said that we should avoid the closest station to us, Littleton MA, due to no parking and to use the Concord station.  We found out, too late, that there was more and easier parking at the closer station, Littleton.

Anyway, we tried again the next day but just couldn’t get it together in time to leave early enough and have time for the tour.  The train trip was about an hour and we needed half an hour just to get to the station.  The  2 hour Boston tour closed at 5 pm and we figured we would need 3-4 hours for the tour as we would probably stay longer at some of the sights. 

We also needed to contend with the train schedule itself. The trains were spaced out to the point that it was difficult to do a plan B. We were either in Boston way early, 9am, or too late, 3pm. By the time we were ready to leave we didn’t have enough time to make the train we wanted and the next one was too late for us to make the tour.  So we just didn’t do a Boston tour this time.

We did manage do the Salem tour though and it was great! We drove an hour to Salem MA to have dinner and to do the Hocus Pocus Haunted Salem walking tour. We also went to the witch dungeon museum.  The museum did a mock witch trial from the 1600s transcripts, very cool.

During the witch trial.

An actual piece of the building from the original 1600s witch jail. 

The walking tour started at 7 pm so we had dinner beforehand at the restaurant FINZ on the bay in Salem.  We both got pretty full so having a walking tour after was just what we needed.

Had to have lobster in New England!

The haunted Salem tour was pretty long as walking tours go, just over 2 hours!  

We can say that this walking tour was one of the best we have had in the USA.  The main reason it was so great was due to our tour guide, Susan Metzger.  She really brought the city of Salem alive for us.  She gave us interesting facts, intrigue, and history. And then she topped it off with a visit to the Salem Witch Trials memorial at dusk. The memorial bears witness to the 16 women and 4 men who lost their lives in that dark period of Salem’s history.  She gave us the good, the bad and the great of the city of Salem. Just can’t say enough about the tour she gave us.

Our tour guide, Susan.

Just something along the way in Salem that I thought was cool!

Statue of William Conant, the founder of Salem MA.

Where most of the witches were buried.

This spooky house is next to the witch grave yard.  It's for sale!

Interesting tidbit.  These gravestones are not on the actual graves.  In the old days of Salem people paid to be buried near the church and to remain for many, many years.  However, after some time, the church wanted to expand so they removed the tomb stones and put them in storage while they built on top of the bodies.  Later, the tomb stones were put in front of the church.

This is very dark picture of the memorial to the people who were accused of being witches and killed.  Very nice that this was done!

After the tour we had to drive an hour back to our site in the dark, not fun!  Before we left though, we got some ice cream and sat outside to enjoy it.  It was a great end to a great day before we made the long drive on unknown roads in the dark. We made it back and were safely in bed by a little before midnight.

That was that for Massachusetts!  Now, on to number 4 of the New England states, Vermont.

Stay tuned!