MA-VT-NH-ME Girl's Trip: Hanging out in Salem, Massachusetts for Halloween (Day 5)

We set our alarm for 7:30 a.m. and it felt so good to sleep.  I know we should be going to sleep at a decent time but hey, we're on vacation, we gotta make the most of it!  I woke up that morning feeling a little bit off, was I getting sick?  Ugh, I don't want to be sick on vacation.  I haven't been sick since October 2019.  Ughh, lame!  Again, people showered, got ready with our costumes and we went downstairs to eat.  I had sausage, toast, banana, chunky hashbrown potatoes and orange juice.  It hit the spot.  I tried not to drink a ton of fluids because I know trying to pee in Salem with everyone else during a busy weekend was not easy, especially how scary the porta potties were the night before. 

Amy decided she was going to stay behind and miss our Salem witch adventures because she was still feeling bad.  We felt terrible for her because this was the actual part she was looking forward to when she and Mom first planned this trip when we were in Peru back in September 2021.  This event is literally why we came over here plus it gave us an opportunity to go see Mindy.  We told Amy to relax, to get better and if she needed anything to call one of us.  We also added that we would check in throughout the day as well.

We grabbed the rest of our stuff and headed out to Salem; this time dressed as witches.  The only thing we worried about again, was the parking situation.  Maybe we would get lucky for a second time?  We heard there were over 100,000 people over the weekend, since Friday, that had been in Salem for Halloween festivities.  There was a little bit of traffic heading into town.  Since it was a Monday, we knew there would be people going to work in the morning and going home during normal quitting time hours.  We had to be mindful of that when we were done so we didn't get stuck in rush hour traffic.

We came into town a different way than we did the night before and we had to drive around town for about 20 minutes before finding a place to park off of Bridge Street.  It was a "free" lot but the people running it wanted a small donation for the organization that they were a part of.  We didn't mind so we gave them $20 to park there all day.  I made a post on Facebook telling my people Happy Halloween from Salem, Massachusetts!  

I was so excited to be here!

We made sure we had everything we needed before leaving the lot.  We crossed the street and made our way to town.  Our first stop was the Rope's Mansion and Allison's House from Hocus Pocus.  They wanted to go see it and I mostly wanted to see it for the virtual cache, Rope's Mansion/Allison's House (GC891D6).  We got a group picture in front of the house dressed as witches and then went onto the property to go check out the grounds.  I had to go to the back yard in the garden area to find a sundial and get the information off of it for the first piece.  The second piece was a selfie with any part of the house in the background of the photo.  I also started the five waypoint Adventure Lab, Salem Adventures as we walked around town. 

We stopped by the Witch's House and then continued further down Essex to the statue of Samantha from Bewitched, that too, was part of the Adventure Lab.  We got a few pictures of us with it and then we went into a couple of stores along the way and purchased a few things.  I mostly went in to get some stickers and postcards.  Mom and I bought Erika and Grandma Karen a Salem T-shirt. 

I broke free from the group for a little bit to grab another waypoint for the Adventure Lab that was a bit off of our normal plan for the day.  I didn't want to make them walk over there with me.  They continued shopping until I met back up with them in the middle of town.  Mindy wanted to go into a haunted house, so we paid some money for our entrance fee, and went through the 15-minute haunted house.  It's not Halloween unless you go through a haunted house, right?  There were a couple of turns that gave me anxiety because I didn't know what was going to happen or if something was going to touch me.  Afterwards, we went into a couple more shops, saw some "Smurf trees", admired the many costumes people wore and took pictures of the whole ambiance of being in downtown Salem on Halloween. 

We walked over to the wharf and Rhonda and Mindy were in the mood for some coffee.  We found a shop nearby; they got coffee and donuts and Mom ended up getting a donut too.  I didn't need anything, and we sat outside enjoying the sunshine.  Earlier that morning it was chilly, plus, it was nice to sit for a bit after walking around for a couple hours.

As we sat there, ate donuts and drank coffee, we watched some guy struggle and fail at parallel parking nearby.  Then Rhonda spilled Mindy's coffee and had to go buy her a new one.  It almost got me, but I moved out of the way just before my butt got wet.  We finished up and I talked them into walking down to the lighthouse so I could do the virtual cache, Salem Derby Wharf Light Station (GC9P62M) while experiencing this part of Salem. 

We started down the spit and saw the Friendship of Salem that was docked in the harbor.  This area of the wharf was part of the Salem Maritime National Historical Site and ran by the National Park Service.  It is a 171-foot replica of the Friendship.  It was built in 2000 in Albany, New York.  The ship usually operates as a stationary museum ship most of the year but is a fully functioning US Coast Guard-certified vessel capable of passengers and crew voyages.

We continued on down the spit, walking past many people going to and from the Derby Wharf Light with children, dogs and other groups of friends or family.  Some of them were dressed up for Halloween and looked like they were enjoying their afternoon.

We got to the end of the spit, and it was super windy.  I almost lost my witch hat in the harbor.  We did what we needed to do to fulfill the virtual cache requirements (hoping that I did them right), took a few pictures, enjoyed the views and then walked back to the shore to use the restroom.  There was only a porta potty available, but these ones weren't as bad as the ones from the previous night.  

We scooted over to the House of the Seven Gables, a house that is known for its gables, a triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches or in a nutshell, the unique architecture of the top of the house.  We saw that it required us to purchase tickets (probably in advance), so we decided not to go inside but I did find the cache, House of the Seven Gables (GC4QJMC) and finished up the Salem Adventure Lab.  I love killing two birds with one stone.  We took a couple pictures of the outside of the house, the garden area and enjoyed the view of the harbor from outside the property.

 

We went to a few more shops and then made our way over to the middle of town to see the witch's memorial and the cemetery in the daytime.  We walked around the horseshoe shape memorial for about fifteen minutes and admired the old cemetery from there as well.  We did find out that we had to buy tickets in advance to walk through the cemetery because it was considered National Park property and sadly, they were all sold out for the day.  We walked around the entire cemetery to see if there was another way in, but it was fenced off the whole way around.  Bummer.

We took a bunch of pictures and then Mindy wanted to go into the National Park headquarters in town to get her National Park passport stamped.  Rhonda used the restroom because she didn't want to use the porta potties.  At that point, we've seen just about everything we wanted to see, and we noticed that the traffic was starting to get semi heavy now that people were starting to get off of work.

 

We knew it was time to head back to the Jeep and got back to the hotel before it got worse.  We walked back to the lot, got situated and plugged in the address to our hotel.  We briefly got stuck in a little bit of traffic, but it wasn't super bad.  We actually got back to the hotel at a decent time and checked on Amy.  She said it was nice to relax and sleep all day, but she was sad she missed all of the festivities in Salem.  The topic of dinner came up and we had a discussion of what we wanted to eat.  Rhonda, Amy and Mindy wanted Pho and Mom and I were fine with pizza from across the street. 

We found out the Pho place was about 8 miles away from the hotel. They placed an order while Mom placed an order to the pizza place.  Mom and Rhonda left to go get the Pho and we weren't sure how long they would be gone because at this point the traffic was worse.  I was tired so I laid down for about a half an hour and waited until Mom called to let me know when to go get the pizza.  They were gone for a long time.

Mom finally did call and told me the pizza was done and I laid back down for a few more minutes.  I decided to text her to see when they were on their way back before I went to go get it.  She never texted me back, so I had no idea if they were on their way back or not.  They finally arrived and Mom asked about the pizza.  I told her that I was going to go get it when I knew they had started on their way back, but she never texted me back.  She was a little upset that I didn't go get it, so she left to go get it really quick.  Obviously, it was cold at that point, but it would have been anyway if I picked it up or not.  We asked what took them so long and they said the traffic was awful, they got gas and Rhonda wanted to stop at Dunkin Donuts for some donut holes.  

After eating pizza, I got in a shower and then watched Monday Night Football while we hung out the rest of the evening.  I got into my computer to make some notes for the blog, and I ate a couple of the donut holes Rhonda bought.  Later on, I made popcorn for everyone and finished watching the football game until bedtime.  I talked with Ben for a little bit and then went to bed after midnight again.  The Browns beat the Bengals. 

MA-VT-NH-ME Girl's Trip:  Leaving Peabody, NH, VT, Covered Bridges and Woodstock (Day 6)

MA-VT-NH-ME Girl's Trip: Leaving Boston, Marblehead, Lighthouse, Cemetery, Salem Night Tour (Day 4)

This was the only unplanned day we had on our itinerary except for our haunted tour in Salem that evening. We had talked the night before of what we were going to do on our way to Peabody and Salem and Mindy said she knew of some places we could go before checking into our second hotel of the trip.

The alarm went off around 7:30 and we slowly started getting ready to go.  A few of us took showers (this is where I am glad, I take mine the night before) packed up our stuff in our suitcases and went downstairs to eat breakfast.  I had two sausage biscuits, peaches, a banana and chocolate milk.  It was busier today so there wasn't a lot of places to sit and eat so we took it upstairs and ate.

We finished getting our stuff ready while Rhonda and Amy went to go get the Jeep from the parking garage.  They came upstairs to let us know they were parked in front so we could load the suitcases.  We stuffed ourselves into the large elevator and headed down to the lobby.  I stood there near the front and a guy found a spot to insert himself into when we stopped on the next floor.  On the way down just before we got off the elevator, he said to me, "the Seahawks don't have a chance against the Giants today." He must have seen my Seahawks sweatshirt.  I didn't say anything and just ignored him.

We got out of the elevator; Mom checked us out at the counter, and we went outside and crammed three large suitcases into the back of Amy's Jeep along with Mindy and Amy's bags.  If we had one more large suitcase, we would have had a problem.  This is where my Tetris skills came in handy.  We got all the luggage and all of us into the Jeep...it's a good thing we liked each other because it was sure snuggy.

We set the GPS to Marblehead, Massachusetts and got on the highway.  We took the wrong exit off of Route 1 and went west instead of east, so we had to find a place to turnaround.  We corrected our mistake and headed in the right direction.  Boston's signage is horrible!  We reached a junction and got onto 107 through Lynn and Swampscott.  We drove by lots of neat, little New England towns all over the place.   With it being fall, it made it more "New Englandy," like you see in the movies.  Houses were very close together with hardly any yard space except a front stoop.  A lot of the houses had fall and or Halloween decorations and we had fun pointing out the best ones.

We followed the coastline up to the small town of Marblehead.  We had to turn around because we missed our turn to the lighthouse.  We corrected our mistake and made our way to the Marblehead Lighthouse inside of Chandler Hovey Park.  We pulled in, parked and I immediately checked the geocaching app on my phone to see if there was a cache here and there was!  I quickly found Chandler Hovey Cache (GC2RVH0) after searching a couple places only to realize that there was only one place it could be.  It was an old Altoids tin that had been rusted over a bit.  I got our names written on it, put it back and enjoyed the views and lighthouse.

The Marblehead lighthouse was a really weird looking and I've never seen one like it.  It was fun learning a little bit about it while we explored the area for about forty minutes or so.  We got a couple of group pictures and soaked it all in before we hopped back into the Jeep and headed into town.

 

 

We found a place to park in a shopping area and then spent the next hour walking around the quaint little town, taking pictures and going into shops.  We went into the Drink Station for some coffee and strawberry smoothies.  The smoothies were delicious.  We all used the restroom before we left to explore more of the town.  Mom and I went into a toy store, a couple clothing stores and one that looked like a community information center with brochures about the town...almost like a welcome center.  Mindy, Amy and Rhonda walked around to some of the similar stores.  Mindy went around taking pictures of the Halloween decorations since she is our Halloween freak, haha. 

Before the we left the area, we went into a grocery store called Crosby's.  I bought Mom some chips because she was craving something crunchy, and I bought a six pack of Pepsi Zero to tie me over for a few days.  Mindy, Rhonda and Amy also bought a few things as well.  Outside the store, were a group of people and a couple of dogs.  They were raising money for their pet charity.  The dog closest to me, Fenway, was really interested in our chips.

We piled into the Jeep again and drove to Old Burial Hill, established in 1638, and was featured in the movies Hocus Pocus and The Good Son.  We spent about a half hour/forty minutes looking around the cemetery at old gravestones and Wilmot Redd, wo was an innocent victim of the Salem Witchcraft Trails and was hung on September 22, 1692.  I walked down to the pond that was named for her and her family as well.  Many of these graves were people who died at sea or got sick. 

We walked across the street to Fountain Park.  It had a great view, and it was amazing how close they built the houses to the cemetery, it's kinda creepy if you're scared of ghosts or hauntings.  We also made a note of how lucky we were having such great weather so far on our vacation.  Mom and I sure know how to pick vacations with favorable weather.  Watch, the next one we go on the weather will suck now.

We walked back to the Jeep and thought we should make our way to our hotel in Peabody.  We missed it on our first attempt (it was in the middle of two highways) because it was confusing and had to be redirected to try again.  We did figure it out eventually.  We went to the wrong hotel at first when Mom came back to tell us we didn't have a reservation there but ours was down the street.  Man, we were 0-2 at this point.  We drove the short distance to the correct hotel and Mom and Amy got out to check us in.  We parked, grabbed our stuff and went up to our hotel room, 312, to get settled in and decide on what we were going to do for dinner.

We decided on a restaurant called Red's Kitchen and Tavern just up the highway from the hotel.  It was less than a five-minute drive.  We parked, got out and were seated right away by a young lady with a Hispanic Boston accent.  It was very unique to hear it.  I was feeling a burger with fries and chose a local beer from the area.  I picked a beer from the Harpoon Brewery in Boston called Harpoon IPA.  It wasn't bad for an IPA, but I am still not a super huge fan of IPA's.  

The burger was pretty good as well.  We ate our dinner while we watched the Seahawks beat the Giants 27-13.  I wish I would have gotten that guy's number in the elevator when we checked out of our hotel in Boston this morning who said, "the Seahawks don't have a chance against the Giant's today."  I would have texted him back, "I guess the Giants had no chance against the Seahawks today."     

The food hit the spot since we hadn't really eaten a meal since this morning at the hotel.  We paid, jumped in the Jeep and set our GPS to Salem for our night tour at 8 p.m.  We were worried about parking (because several different people had warned us throughout the day), but we found a spot on the northern end of town near the wharf.  I dropped a pin on my map, so we knew where we parked the Jeep just in case we got turned around later and forgot where we parked.

We walked around until we found Essex Street.  There were SO many people walking around...I misjudged how crazy Halloween weekend was for a historic down like Salem.  There were tons of people wearing costumes and a lot of those people were dressed as witches and warlocks.  There were some really elaborate costumes...some you would see at Comicon.  We didn't wear our costumes because we are saving our costumes for the next day on Halloween.

We found the spot where we were supposed to assemble and the crowd control guy who works for the tours told us to stand in a certain group on the sidewalk.  As it got closer to our tour time, they gave us green stickers and then split us into two groups.  We were with tour guide Bob and there were about 20 of us.  Bob briefly told us how much ground we were going to cover and what we were going to see on our night tour. 

We started walking to the various locations of the night.  He told us the history of the town, the witch trials, dad jokes and asked the group if we had any questions along the way.  I got two of the questions right, "Massholes" and died by lightening.  I was pretty proud of myself.   

Learning about the Salem witch trials was interesting.  I didn't really know a lot about it.  I learned that hundreds of people were accused of witchcraft but thirty were found guilty.  Nineteen of those were executed by hanging (14 women and 5 men).  One other man, Bob told us about, was pressed to death by a board and large rocks, after refusing to enter a plea and the others died in jail.  We went to the witch memorial and the cemetery where the tree was where they hung the nineteen people from February 1692 to May 1693.

We went to several locations including the Town Hall, where more scenes from Hocus Pocus was filmed, several statues, the old jail and other various houses and homes of historical people.  

Our last stop was at the haunted house in town that has a connection with Parker Brothers and Clue.  I thought it was pretty cool.  We thanked Bob, gave him a tip and he gave us a card so we could write him a review.  I would have to do that later after we got home from our trip.  Afterwards, we walked around a little bit, went into a couple of shops and needed to pee really bad.  We found a couple of porta potties and that was a mistake.  They were probably the worse porta potties I have ever been in, but I needed to go.  We walked back to the Jeep shortly after and headed back to our hotel in Peabody.

We got back to our hotel, I got cleaned up, we all ate some popcorn and tried watching Sunday Night Football, but our TV didn't want to work for some reason.  We called the front desk and had a maintenance man come, he basically unplugged it and told us that we needed a new TV and would be back with a new one shortly.  He never came back.

We called the front desk a while later and they said that he just left for the day and didn't say anything.  Cool.  I plugged the TV back in, and it worked for a little bit, so we watched football until about bedtime.  I shared a bed with Mom, it was a tinier bed than the hotel in Boston, Mindy got a bed to herself, Rhonda slept on the couch and Amy slept on her air mattress.  I definitely went to bed way later than I wanted to.  I really hate that sports are on way too late on the east coast!  

Next Adventure:  MA-VT-NH-ME Girl's Trip:  Hanging out in Salem, Massachusetts for Halloween (Day 5)