Saturday, November 21, 2015

Massachussetts - Bumping Along the Colonial Timeline

We left Maine, and in 45 short minutes had also covered New Hampshire’s short coastline and pushed our way into Massachussetts right as the sun was setting.  It was pretty amazing how in such a short period on the clock, the landscape around us had changed so completely. From Maine’s jagged edges and crisp beauty to a much mellower, flatter, coast.  The Massachusetts coast was marshy and the sunset reflected oranges and yellows in the water inlets around us.  Many small water-way-tunnels reached like golden buttery fingers through the tall beachgrass of the Massachusetts coastline. It was incredibly beautiful.  We were on our way to the Beach Rose RV Campground in Salisbury for 2 nights.  At $45 a night it was a little pricey but after winging it in Bar Harbor, one night at a truck stop, and a few days parked in Larry & Jean’s driveway in Brunswick, ME, Rhonda needed a couple nights plugged in to power & water… We needed laundry & shower facilities… And J and Rhonda were still battling it out over the grey-water tank leak. Our little pod needed a some down time.  We arrived just after sunset, set up, and were ready for some glorious shower time…. at $0.25 per 2-minute increment. Much to my excitement, the showers were big and spotless. In I went, with my towel, shower kit, a roll of quarters, and big plans to wash, rinse, repeat.  The water for the shower was powered just like a 25c ride at the super-market, and there was no timer. It would be a big guessing game once you hopped in as to when your time would be up.  I momentarily paused, devising a plan of action. It was chilly in the bathroom, so I placed all my little travel-bottles in the shower, hung my towel, pre-set extra quarters near the machine. Feeling satisfied, I threw in a generous 6 quarters, tossed off my clothes, and hopped under the warm water…. Only to realize I had everything except my bar of soap!  Cursing, my mind quickly weighs my options: no soap & wash body with shampoo, or, grab my towel and make a dash through the dark campground for the soap. It’s my first shower in 3 days and my mind won’t compromise on the bar of soap so I grab my towel and streak through the campground, dripping and hopefully very stealth-like, grab a new bar of Ivory and race my goosebumps back to the warm water.  I throw in about  4 more quarters and get to work. 

The no-so-regular-showering ‘thing’ on the road has been one of my biggest hurdles.  I’ve set my goal to 1 shower every +/-3 days, with washing at the sink in Rhonda as needed in between.  But achieving my shower-goal can take serious planning, and can def be an inconvenience.  My tolerance for feeling ‘dirty’ is pretty low compared to J’s, and I get grouchy when I feel dirty, so plan we must!! Believe it or not, there’s an app for that (AllStays), and we use it often! 

Getting lost in the golden Massachusetts sunset... Om Shanti
We wake up to a beautiful morning in Salisbury and we get up and get right to it - J is to and from Home Depot, arming himself with epoxy and fiberglass for the ‘grey-water battle’.  I’m heading up about 4 loads of the laundry, and giving Rhonda her “Vintage Teal” make-over. At 3:30pm I hop on my bike - the shore is nearby and I want to take advantage of the warm weather for some outdoor, sunset, oceanside yoga. The sun goes down at 4:30pm  so the days feel short. With a few directions I find my way to a state park, with stunning sunset views. I start to breath & move, trying to find my way to the ‘here & now’. Trying to quiet my mind for an hour. Figuring out our life on the road, finding our new ‘normal’ has been a massive rollercoaster so far. My time on the mat is less soul-searching and more sanity-grasping that day.  Inhale, exhale, repeat. 


Exploring by water - our first paddle of the trip
The continuous planning, searching, and deciding is exhausting. All that uncertainty added to the pressure of planning, seeing, and picking the best spots has been the source of some major struggles. That, and since we want to see ‘everything’, we didn’t really plan ‘anything’. Planning, it seems, will take some of the pressure off, and allow us to relax as we follow the plan for a few days. This seems obvious, I suppose, but we’re learning as we go. So our last day in Salisbury we spend a few hours mapping out our next week - Salem, Boston, Plymouth, and Cape Cod, followed by New Jersey. Feeling good with our new plan, we dropped the SUPs at the State Park.  It was our first paddle of the trip and exploring by water for a few hours was a treat. Deep blue skies and a warm autumn sun made up for the chilly water, and only our feet and ankles got wet anyways.  We waved goodbye to the gals at the Beach Rose RV grounds - they were running a good operation there - and they even had recycling.  It has been near impossible to recycle on the road.  It’s hard to believe, in this day and age.  How do gas stations not have recycling bins? (I wonder this in Canada all the time too btw).  It’s 2015 people! 


Well we drove a few hours south, got close to Salem…  And then we had a trip first - our first night in a Walmart parking lot.  One of those moments where you can’t really believe you are actually going to spend the night “camping” in a Walmart parking lot, lol. And believe me, we absolutely prefer to stay in woodsier, beachy-er, more nature-like locations. But they don’t mind, we were arriving late and leaving early, and it’s free. We had fresh water in the tank (read “drinking, teeth brushing, dish-washing, toilet flushing”); solar power to run lights, water pump, charge phones, run the toaster; and propane for the fridge & stove. Feeling self-sufficient, and with a couple other RVs nearby, we had a pretty good night sleep. And we were even getting solar power from Walmart lampposts. Ha! 

'The Burying Point, Salem. I've fallen in like with the eerie colonial graveyards...
In the morning, we visited Salem, ‘The City Of Witches’. This town’s identity is wrapped around it’s role in the 1692 Salem witch trials that resulted in the hanging of 19, and the pressing-to-death of 1 (mostly, but not all, women).  Previous to the trials, 12 other women were executed on ‘witch’ charges and the last North American witch execution was as late at 1878 (in Salem actually). It’s crazy to think about what it must’ve been like in a very Puritan New England 350 years ago. A lot of the accused were convicted because they were a little bit different/outcasts, or less involved in the church, or voiced objections/doubts in regards to other witch accusations. 
We had Rhonda in tow, so parking was a bit of a mission. Even a police officer was no help with suggestions on where we might park. So we found a residential area with no visible “No parking” signs, and left a note… “Just visiting, and don’t fit in your Visitor Center parking garage. Please call us if there is a problem and we will come straight back.” When in doubt, leave a note! We hopped on our bikes and got some advice from the Salem Visitor Center, then made our way to the House of Seven Gables for a tour. It is a colonial mansion (built 1668), all wood, the largest of it’s type still standing.  The different rooms are made to portray how they would’ve looked at one era or another of the mansion’s history.  This house was made famous by the book of the same title by famous author Nathaniel Hathorne (also author of The Scarlet Letter) published in 1851. Funnily enough, Mr. Hathorne went to Bowdoin College which was down the street from our last boondocking spot in Brunswick, ME. The tour was interesting, but no talk of witches at all.  Back on our bikes, we stop at a Ye Olde Pepper Companie (the first candy store in North America!) where we pay almost $9 for two turtles. Oprah herself recommended them, and my mother probably wouldn’t forgive me if I didn't oblige to Ms.Winfrey's recommendations! They were pretty awesome. Then we visited the Salem Witch Trial Memorial - 20 granite benches inscribed with the names of the accused, and the means & date of execution. This is next to “The Burying Point”, the oldest graveyard of the town. Salem was a really cool town, and would’ve loved a proper tour had there been any going.  It was a great town to discover by bike, and the waterfront is beautiful too. We collected Rhonda, and drove out to Gloucester for a look. The sun was already setting, so we set out for the south side of Boston where we had another Boondockers Welcome spot lined up.  

Fancy night photography in our 'Autumn Wonderland'
We battled rush-hour traffic for over 2 hours to the south side of Boston.  This was plenty of time for us to determine that Massachussanites mustn’t pay any sort of road maintenance taxes as we bounced our way through massive potholes and giant cracks, cringing every time, silently pleading with Rhonda to just hold on…  We finally made it to Hingham. Even in the dark Hingham looked stately, and our next hosts had a 1850s farmhouse.  After a warm welcome, we parked out in the yard. Rhonda nestled in on a thick blanket of leaves, between the house and the stream. Surrounded by large oak and maple trees with spiraled strings of fairy lights wrapped around their trunks!  It was an autumn wonderland. We spent loads of time playing in the leaves and taking night photos… J adjusting the shutter speed, me trying to figure out backwards cursive writing with a flashlight, lol. The mood was a lot lighter than in Salisbury… and we were excited to take the ferry into Boston the next morning. 


Fresh off the ferry, ready to bike the Freedom Trail in Boston, MA

Boston - wow! Well, taking the ferry over was the way to do it! We just biked 20 minutes to the Hingham marina and hopped on the commuter ferry for $17 (each, round-trip fare). Feeling especially light & unencumbered  without Rhonda and Ruby for the day, we planned to tackle the Freedom Trail.  The Freedom Trail is a 2.5 mile (4km) path through downtown Boston comprising of 16 or 17  historic stops from the Boston Common to the U.S.S. Constitution (a ship) in Charlestown. Well, wouldn’t you guess, there’s an app for that! With the free Freedom Trail app downloaded, we could easily play our own tour-guide.  From the cemetery with John Hancock, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, and Mother Goose; to the Old North Church where Paul Revere displayed the famous signal “one if by land, two if by sea”, we stopped and read each entry on the app. Pausing at Faneuil Hall for the most delicious coffee I’ve had all year - a Blueberry roast, with half & half cream….. and culminating in a climb up the Bunker Hill Monument, 294 steps spiraling up the inside an enormous obelisk to peer out it’s tiny windows. It was a lot sweaty and a little anti-climactic, so we sprawled in the grass at the bottom of Bunker Hill as our “Trail Finale” to contemplate our lack of fitness. It was 3pm, and we thought we should spend the rest of the afternoon tackling recommendations from friends. First stop: Mike’s Pastries in the North End for cannoli & tiramisu to replace any calories we might've lost biking and climbing the insides of obelisks! We actually looked up an article online about which cannoli to order - they have 18 different kinds and they are massive, so it seemed important to choose wisely. The shop is packed with people pushing cash across the counter and yelling their orders.  We make off with our treats, to some picnic tables a few blocks away to get our sugar fix, plastic forks shoveling one sweet mouthful after another…. With guilty smiles, we start perusing Yelp for a dinner spot. There is an Italian spot right around the corner with rave food reviews, apparently always has a line, and opens in 45mins. We decide to walk past… and there is already a line - it must be good, right??!! Well… here we are 4pm with sugar-high giggles, waiting in line for dinner at Giacomo’s Ristorante. The servers at Giacomo’s don’t mess around. They came out early to get our party numbers, and as soon as the restaurant opened, they pointed each party to their perfectly set spot. ‘Newbies’ were given a run-down of how to order, we shared our table of 4 with another couple. Needing an extra minute with the menu was clearly frowned upon, so I didn’t dare ask for a substitution when our server came back. We ordered a bottle of wine. She filled our glasses within a centimeter (1/2 inch) of the top. She may have said “bottoms up” under her breath, I’m not really sure. Our seafood pastas were generous, and as delicious as the Yelp-ees led us to believe they would be…It was an impressive 5:45pm and we were completely done dinner (and the whole bottle of wine!) and ushered out the door where the line had since tripled in length! We stumbled upon a wine shop having cider tastings, then we rode past “The Bell In Hand” which had a band and claimed to be the first pub in North America. We had a couple drinks there, before stopping to checked out the bar that was the original inspiration for the famous TV series Cheers. Laughing at how we somehow managed to do it all backwards - dessert, dinner, drinks - we hopped on the ferry back to Hingham.  I had a very swervy bike ride back to our home base.... haha, I'm apparently a bit out of practice drunk bike riding.  The next morning we left our ‘Autumn Wonderland’ home.  I can’t tell you how grateful we have been to the ‘Boondockers Welcome’ network.  We have met the loveliest, kindest people - a true reminder of the goodness that is out there! We have gotten in the habit of leaving each host a thank you note and a polaroid pic with our contact info. 

Our next stop would be another Boondockers host in Wareham, Mass, from where we could explore Cape Cod. On the way, we stopped in Plymouth to see the pilgrim sights.  We saw Plymouth rock & the Mayflower ll, a to-scale recreation of the Mayflower. The Mayflower was the  110-foot dutch cargo fluyt that in 1620 sailed 102 men, women and children (plus 30 crew) 66 days to “the New World”.  Two women gave birth en-route; one youth died just 3 days before they spotted land. Some migrated to avoid religious persecution, some for business opportunities. Plymouth Rock was on the beach as the  passengers disembarked.  It may have been their first step on land in a strange new world.  I’m sure after 66 days at sea they would’ve been kissing this rock, grateful to be alive.  The poor rock has an interesting history. It’s top half was cut off and moved around a little, here and there, on display in town during one era or another. It has since been reunited with it’s base, back on the beach, and they have built a big protective shrine around it, that looks kind of like a prison. The rock also bears the time-stamp ‘1620’.  And our pilgrims? Well 1/2 of them didn’t survive their first winter.  But it was the start of what would become the USA, and with here and Boston I feel like I’ve learned so much about the start of ‘Merica. 

We arrived in Wareham, late afternoon and were greeted by Linda and her 3 small pups.  She helps us fill our water tank and get plugged in.  We do some groceries and call it a night.  The next day is gorgeous and sunny, and we are off to Provincetown - the very last town on the Cape Cod “hook”. There are still some bright oranges and reds in the trees, and it feels like we could spend 3-4 days looking around the towns of Cape Cod.  Seems like there would be tons of paddling spots too.  But, we only have one day, so we pick Provincetown where we park the car. We decide to go our separate ways for a couple hours. Me to walk the pier & beach and do yoga, J to take photos.  Another post-card-perfect sunset, and we drive 2 hours back to our home-base.  In the morning, Linda generously sends us off with freshly baked whole-wheat bread.  We have a big driving day ahead of us: leaving the bumpy roads of Mass to cross tiny Rhode Island, then Connecticut, and NY at rush hour (we really must work on our timing!), before finally reaching the Jersey Shore and big hugs from my acro yoga friend Sandy! I can’t tell you how great it is to see a familiar face, and spend some time in a lovely beach house…. But this edition has gone on long enough, so we will continue next time! 

Massachusetts has been chock-full of facts and history. J has loved visiting places he learned about over and over in school. I loved learning the stories of how America came to be, always trying to imagine what life would’ve been like in those times, for those people. If you made it to the end, THANK YOU for reading as I ramble on…. as I  sip a yummy ‘Raspberries of the Lost Tart” a dark session sour beer from Burley Oaks Brewery in a location yet to be disclosed to our blog…… 

Big love, 

S
A little S&J 'pub history' timeline - some of the MA history we covered this leg... Plus some of our own <3

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