Saturday, May 31st 

 

We checked out of the Salem Inn and went to the Witch Dungeon Museum, which oddly enough I have no pictures of.  We went inside and it was a tad too cool for me so I went back out to the car to get my coat, only to remember that I left it at the Salem Inn hanging on the handrail.  The weird thing is that I hung it there so I could sign the receipt and I told myself as I was hanging it there that that wasn't a good spot for it because I would forget about it.  And sure enough that's what I did.  Sigh.

The Witch Dungeon Musuem was really great.  They had a little skit for us taken from the records of the actual witch trials and the actresses were really good.  Then we took a tour through the dungeons under the building.  None of them were original since the real dungeons were in the next town over, Danvers (which at the time was still known as Salem, and then later Danvers changed their name because they wanted to distance themselves from the history of Salem).  But the dungeons were dark and muggy.  It wasn't uncommon for them to flood and for the people to be stranded in there with 50 other people.  It didn't smell that great, so we've been told.  If you were wealthy you might have a bed, but most people couldn't afford one.  You always had to pay for your own dungeon costs though.  You were held in dungeons against your will until your trial and you had to pay the costs.  Most families could barely afford the regular costs, let alone beds.  Very sad.

A quick trip back to Salem Inn to gather my coat, and we went off to the Pirate Museum.  I got some cool pictures of pirate flags.  They were all different and so fun.

We went to the Witch History Museum next, which I also have no pictures of.  It wasn't that exciting.

After that we walked through Salem and stopped for lunch at a little restaurant we stopped at in November where I got a veggie wrap and Jamie got a (huge) personal pizza.  Such good food!

We walked down by the water after lunch and wanted to tour one of the ships we wanted to do last year.  We had quite a wait till the next tour, so we walked along the water where it was much warmer than November, but still cool.  We met two dogs on our walk.  One was eyeing Duck pretty heavily and was very interested in him.  His owner let us get his picture with Duck.  On our way back in we passed another dog who also liked Duck, so I let him smell Duck and then he bit Duck and tried to run off with him!  Thankfully his owners made him give Duck back!

Just as the thour was about to start the skies opened up and we got drenched.  But the tour of the ship was still cool and I volunteered to steer.  Usually only one person would steer and thankfully there were two of us as it was much more difficult to turn that wheel than I would have imagined!  (We didn't actually steer of course, we were docked.)

We toured the Customs House on the same tour, which was pretty uneventful.

We had thought about staying in Salem for the night, but pretty much everything else we wanted to see wasn't open for the season yet, so we left and headed down to Plymouth.  It's sad when you make that turn around to head back home.  :(

We stopped for dinner at Gino's Pizza that just happened to have a birthday party going on.  It was noisy and filled with kids who thought the whole restaurant was their play area.  They almost ran some guy down as he walked back to his table with his pizza.  They also had fake plastic swords and proceeded to beat each other with them.  All of this and I only heard one parent say something to her child.  We ate quickly and left.

We stopped at the Welcome Center in Plymouth where we met a very, very bright and informative lady who just about told us about every attraction in town.  Most things were closed for the night, so we just walked down by the water again, watching the ships and enjoying the quiet.  We went down to see Plymouth Rock, which is (or was, I don't know if it still is) covered by a wooden box to keep it safe while they did renovations on the structure around it.

On our way back to our car the ghost tours were lining up for the night so we decided to join one spur of the moment.  It had gotten pretty cold very quickly and I didn't have my sweatshirt with me.  The skies were also pretty menacing and we weren't sure if we were going to get pummeled with rain.  We didn't have time to go back to the car for either so we toughed it out.  The rain did stay away, but it was very cold.  We had a great tour though, with a very insightful tour guide and caught quite a few (good) orbs.  Not dust or bug orbs, but real orbs.  Very cool.

After our tour, on our way back to our car, we stopped for dinner at Ziggy's, who only takes cash.  So we had to leave and couldn't find anyplace else we really wanted to try (it was late and we were tired) so we found a bank instead and returned to Ziggy's.  A cheesesteak and a veggie burger later we had Ziggy's desserts and headed back to our hotel room which was so cold for me I turned the heat up to 90.  Of course when I woke up at 2 am we were a sweaty mess but at least it finally warmed up!

 

June 1st I wake up and go in the bathroom to shower.  Duck and Ralph are left sitting on the chair and Jamie is sleeping.  I come out of the bathroom and Ralph is laying on the floor.  Duck is on the chair and Jamie is sleeping.  Very odd!  Jamie looks at the clock and asks me why I'm up at 7, I tell him it's 8.  He swears the clock was an hour off the night before, but it magically got fixed.  Perhaps a ghost in haunted Plymouth who likes to play jokes?  Who knows.

It was friggin' hot out!  We decided to have breakfast at a little neighborhood joint where we had terrible service and were about to leave when finally a waitress came up to ask if we had been helped yet, and we said no.  She went inside to get our waitress.  Still nothing.  A few minutes later she decided to be our waitress since apparently our real waitress was a flake.  Breakfast was great after that.  I had some sort of granola cereal with fruit and Jamie had some sort of meat (of course).  We enjoyed breakfast outside in the heat.

We went off to visit the Mayflower II after that.  It is apparently a reproduction of the original Mayflower.  Not overly exciting, but definitely an important part of history.  While browsing through some stores afterwards (where I was able to find and buy a floppy hat because I left mine at home and the sun was so hot), a terrible storm was on its way in.  People were running for cover, and we decided to take our chances, so we sat down by the beach and watched the menacing clouds.  Finally a few drops showed up and then left.  No storm, but if I remember correctly, the temperature did drop drastically after that.

While sitting by the water we had a couple ask if I'd take their picture in front of the Mayflower and then asked me about Duck.  We explained Duck to them, which they thought was so cool.  I really wish we had gotten their picture with Duck.  They were the first ever to question us about him.  It seemed like an important time in Duck's existence.

We then headed off to Plimoth Plantation, which was a very cool learning experience where native americans would answer your questions about the way they live and they had a small set up similar to what their towns would have looked like at the time the Pilgrims arrived.  On the other part of the plantation were the original settlers where they acted as though they were back in the original time period and you could see how their towns and houses looked.  I asked a lot of questions, like always.

After this it was time for dinner (I think we had dorito's for lunch) and we headed back to the touristry part of Plymouth and ate at a mexican restaurant where we again got to eat outside.  It was really lovely there.

We stopped to get a hotel for the night and stayed at the James Carver Inn, which was supposedly haunted, although we had nothing abnormal happen.

We settled into our room and then left to go back out to catch a history tour with the same company that had done our ghost tour the night before.  I don't remember the story behind King Henry VIII, but I do remember he was mentioned in connection with Plymouth and some of the same facts I had just mentioned in a paper I wrote about his five wives were mentioned.  Very cool when things you learn from college are brought up in the real world.

We were exhausted at the end of the tour from so much walking that day.  We spent some time talking to the tour guide who was originally from Maryland, and then we went off to an ice cream joint he recommended where we got milkshakes.

Back to our room where we collapsed into bed.

 

We went to the Lizzie Borden house in Rhode Island, which was so cool.  We stopped for lunch at the Crow's Nest, which is where we ate in November on our way home from Salem.  At the Crow's Nest, our waiter gave me pasta with clam sauce even though I just wanted pasta with marinara sauce.  I explained to him that I don't eat meat and he assured me it was fine since it was just seafood.    He ended up taking it back and made me the pasta I wanted.  We stopped by the location of TAPS from Ghost Hunters, which was uneventful.  None of the vehicles were there, and they were closed, so we kept driving.  I didn't get to see Steve. 

We continued driving for hours and finally exchanged anniversary gifts when we got home.