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)