Discovering the weird and whimsical sites of New England
Author: Theophanes Avery
Theophanes Avery is a whimsical travel blogger that is hopelessly in love with New England and all it's weird places, people, and things. Besides running way too many blogs they are the author of three books, at least one of them good, and they also enjoy raising aquarium fish in Walsted tanks, sculpting, Sharpie doodling, knitting, tattooing leather, homesteading, and whatever other hobby tickles their raging ADD. Less fortunately they are a hopelessly impoverished spoonie yelling to the world, "WE NEED MORE COMMUNITY!" but alas no one's listening. Make sure to find them on the FaceBook. They love new oddball friends. Fly the freak flag high my darlings!
Holy Land USA, dubbed “Jesus’ Junkyard” by fellow enthusiasts is one of those places that I had heard about a lot in the past couple of years and had on my bucket list. I realize I have done painfully little in Connecticut but it’s a bit harder to get to than some of the other places in New England I have haunted on a more frequent basis. I may have continued to put this particular trip off except I mentioned it to my travel companion and how if I was going to go this year it’d have to be soon before it starts snowing. His eyes lit up and we started actual plans to go.
Holy Land USA was built in 1955 and enjoyed up to 40,000 visitors a year in its prime before being closed in 1984. The hope was to expand the site or move it elsewhere but it’s founder died in 1986 and it remained abandoned. Since then it’s been a bit of a morbid attraction to urban explorers like myself. It grew an even darker appeal in 2010 when a sixteen year old girl was raped and murdered under one of the crosses, bringing not just urban explorers to the site but paranormal investigators.
Obviously, we were going during the day just to see the ruins rather than exploit a tragedy. The last two abandoned amusement parks we went to were pretty much stand alone sites with not much around them. One had been turned into a park and one was nestled in the woods. I expected something similar with this but that just wasn’t the case. When I was maybe a mile off from my destination I found myself winding through a rough neighborhood in the middle of a proper city – Waterbury. This couldn’t be right. There couldn’t be an abandoned amusement park nestled in the hills amongst derelict homes smack dab in the middle of a city block – could it? I figured the internet and the GPS were once again conspiring to kill us. But then I drove up a hill to where it said the destination was and I’ll be damned… I was greeted with two big gates and a lot of signs all reading Holy Land. Huuuuuuuh. I guess Jesus really does love impoverished peoples.
There was no official parking lot, nor any clear place to park aside the street and no one else was here so I basically just scooted the car as far as I could off the road (which wasn’t much) and we got out. Initially visitors used to be discouraged from coming here but it’s been such a popular destination that locals gave up trying to police this and instead put up signs saying no visitors after dark. Fair enough.
We were the only ones here at this point so we headed in. The gates were purely aesthetic as the park itself was not fenced in and we were able to just waltz right in. We were greeted with a little entrance that gave three options, “Jerusalem, Holy Land, Bethlehem.” It must have been made for a shorter generation as I barely got under it without ducking. Beyond this was what looked to be a tiny ruined city reminiscent of the apocalypse. The Virgin Mary lived on here… behind bars in a cave. Morbid.
There were trails remaining around the park and through the weeds as well as a circle of pavement around the back. We made our way through reading some of the signs that had been repainted. I was particularly amused by one that said, “Jesus speaks to the women.” Ah yes, the women, I remember them well. What did he say to them? Go back to the kitchen and make me a sandwich? Maybe. There was no further explanation.
We eventually got to the top of this hill where the crosses were. I guess they’re still lit up at night. The one on it’s own read, “Our Lady of Peace” but was wrapped in barbed wire. It was a jarring juxtaposition that my travel companion noticed first while I was busy taking in the view. We were high above the neighborhood we’d driven through and I could see a large chunk of the city from this vantage point – houses, churches, a decrepit mill, the winding highway… It was very interesting! An unexpected bonus.
We walked around and found the saddest Tower of Babel ever, standing a mere few feet in height. A set of three crosses also overlooked the city. And then I found Satan! I think, anyway. He came in the form of an adorable serpent sunbathing on the pavement. I’d never seen a bright green snake like this just roaming free in New England and wondered if he wasn’t someone’s lost pet but a quick Google search revealed he was Smooth Green Snake, totally native to the area. Wasn’t expecting to see a new species today! We took a few photos and let the poor beast be…
“Everywhere we go seems to take two hours of driving and thirty minutes of messing around and then back in the car to drive two hours home.”
“Well, I mean…. we can find somewhere else to go…”
And so on the way home we did end up at a second and actually far more impressive location. The Gillette Castle.
September 30th was my birthday so I decided to celebrate by releasing my first fiction novel Achilles in Heels and going on a bit of an adventure to find whatever remains of Alice’s Restaurant. It’s that time of year after all.
It was a two hour drive into the Berkshires at the height of the fall foliage season and I must admit just the colors alone made me super happy to be on this journey. My intention was to find the restaurant and church mentioned in the song Alice’s Restaurant heard below:
However while I was down there I might as well go for a little hike. My travel companion had found photos of a trail that looked gorgeous and seemed to end in a observation tower that looked out over the mountains from Stockbrdge’s highest point. Perfect.
And so we headed to Laura’s Tower. It was a trail at the end of a sweet little residential street that had a sign reading, “residents only.” After two hours of driving I wasn’t about to listen to it (sorry) and parked the car in the little parking lot at the head of the trail where there were other non-resident vehicles. At the beginning there was a sign describing the trails which neither one of us read until afterwards, much to the chagrin of our bodies…
I’d read reviews of this trail before coming out and one woman claimed to have brought her three year old which had an easy time of it. I’m currently sporting a quarantine bod and am pathetically out of shape but I figured if a three year old could do it I’d be OK.
And so we crossed this adorable little stone bridge and found ourselves on the most whimsical trail I’d ever seen. It was bordered by these windy fences and walked alongside the Housatonic river. Beautiful. Quaint. But we walked the whole loop in a matter of minutes and there was nothing in the shape of an observation tower anywhere to be seen. Hmmmm. I enjoyed this little jaunt but I was feeling a bit unsatisfied. This was indeed a scenic little walk but maybe a bit anticlimactic without the tower. There was a second path branching off this one at the very beginning that went over the train tracks just over the bridge. We decided to poke at it and hope that’s where the tower was.
Now I have to admit the day before we went to Sherri’s Castle again, somehow wound off the trail there, and I ended up in the indignant position of sliding on my butt down a deer path because wet leaves, a steep hill, and Converse sneakers are a terrible mix. I was hoping this wasn’t going to end the same way.
Still, we trekked into the woods, and began up this path which at first was a slow but steady incline. Even so it was becoming straining. About halfway up we stopped and took a rest on a rocky outcropping. We’d neglected to eat lunch before this and we were both hungry, tired, and unsure if we wanted to go on but according to my trail app we were already halfway up. I didn’t know if I could handle that much more hiking but we tried anyway.
This is when the path went from pleasant little incline to an absolutely punishing upward grapple that weaved in every direction like a mountain road with no ending in sight. Two thirds of the way up I thought I was going to die. My legs were not having anymore of this. I gasped and panted in a most unflattering way. I was taking breaks every 250 feet or so. My heart was trying to leap out of my chest. My resolve was dissolving. I seriously considered just accepting I was defeated and going back down but two thirds of the way up is almost there and after driving two hours to get here I was unlikely to come back. I’d always blame myself for being too much of a wuss to make it to the top. My travel companion was fairing a little better than me but not by much and felt the same.
So we took a lot of breaks. By now my legs had gone from sore to outright painful with every step. Sharp stabbing pains. I knew if I could keep going the endorphins would kick in and I’d eventually go numb. So I pushed forward, leaning on trees at every break, watching the people who took the trail at the same time as us make it to the top and then pass us on the way down. Embarrassing. They did claim it wasn’t far though and that it was worth it!
I braced myself on a tree to puke at one point and came very close to losing the precious little water I just swallowed. Puking is my body’s answer to every problem. Luckily it was really just around the corner that time and I made it to the observation tower. Our reward for taking this punishing hike came in the form of a steep terrifying stairway to the sky. Uuuuuuughhhh.
I took a breather as my travel companion braved the stairs. When he got to the top all I heard was, “Shit!”
I frowned and yelled upwards, “What?!” thinking he’d dropped something to the bottom or some other terrible thing was happening.
“It was worth it!” He yelled back.
Oh OK, I’ll take my sorry ass and see what’s up there. I grabbed ahold of the hand rails and slowly made my way up trying not to look anywhere because I’m not great with heights.
And when I got to the top – WOW. Brilliantly colored trees were in all directions. This was a bird’s eye view of Autumn and it was spectacular. I took a few snaps, made a few off handed comments on FaceBook and Twitter, and then we made our way back down which was actually even more terrifying than going up!
Of course the trail back was all going down hill so was way easier and we were back at the beginning just as the forest was going dark for the night. Perfect timing. Now to find that restaurant… only it apparently doesn’t exist anymore, even under a new name, and the church? It was somewhere beyond a closed bridge and my brain was too melted to want to figure that one out so someday I will have to come back…
It was still an awesome birthday. And it can be even better if anyone buys my book Achilles in Heels, wink wink, nod nod. (I’ll stop mentioning it after this, I promise. I am just so excited for it!)
In the meanwhile I’m sorry this entry is lacking in photos. My phone has been throwing temper tantrums about storage space and I accidentally deleted all the photos I took which were not backed up in trash in any way. So all I have are a handful I posted to FaceBook the day of and my travel companion’s snaps. All below.
After escaping the velociraptors in the Enchanted Forest we continued our adventuring to yet another abandoned amusement park in Rhode Island. This one was more familiar to my travel companion as he was here in the mid 1990’s before it was abandoned making happy childhood memories. Curranty it’s been transformed into a regular park. Most of the rides were taken apart and sold or thrown away but some structures still remain on the grounds, now accompanied by little plaques!
Actually the park is very pretty even without the added allure of a decaying amusement park. It sits next to the ocean and there’s a lot of open space to run around and enjoy. Upon entering we were greeted with the remains of an old gondola ride – cables and pulleys reaching for the sky, rusted in place. It was pretty dramatic.
As I walked along a fledgling screech owl flopped to the ground at my feet. I was a little stunned, didn’t know if the tiny beast was OK, and started to walk towards him when he gave me that familiar look that I am accustomed to seeing from a cat, the one that says, “I MEANT TO DO THAT! Don’t look at me!” And with that he made a very klutzy return to the air. It was an event that only took a few seconds but it delighted me.
People were fishing on the docks, several children were flying kites on the grass, and we were moseying about reading the plaques. Apparently this place was where the first presidential phone call was administered in a very public setting. The whole story was recounted on this plaque: (or not as the photo doesn’t want to upload…)
But as interesting as that history we were here to poke around the weird structures. By now we couldn’t even figure out what they were anymore. Weeds and vegetation had taken its toll and it just wasn’t obvious anymore without the help of the plaques. Still my travel companion wanted to see the caves which were reportedly a little teenage escape back in the day… hidden from the rest of the park they would take the Gondola ride up there and jump off to meet clandestinely.
So we made our way up there and there was indeed a little rocky alcove with a few caves. Clearly teenagers were still living it up in the area as there was the usual scattering of broken glass, used condoms, and F*ck Tr*mp graffiti. Ah, the passion and the angst. I goddamn love you little delinquents.
We scrambled about the rocks going deeper and deeper into the woods before deciding to head back. It was a fun little escape and this park endeared me to it. We got to see some creepy trees, the haunted house, and what remains of the swing before we left. It was a good time all around and the perfect fall day to attend such a place.
Last week’s adventures had a theme – abandoned theme parks! And we started with this one which was… an adventure. It always is.
It was another FaceBook suggestion which I have found to be a total coin toss when it comes to being worth it. I thought this was the place with the abandoned fairy village but no, that was a different Facebook suggestion which I will refind later.
In fact this place was kind of hard to find. It wasn’t really around too much civilization which you would expect of a theme park… The GPS played a few games with the street address before we finally arrived. There was a decrepit sign aside the road that led to a terrifyingly rough parking lot which had been nearly completely taken over by weeds and shrubs. The parking lot was paved but that isn’t’ saying much considering there was grass jutting out from the many cracks in it. This was like all the photos you see of current day Chernobyl, probably the sketchiest place we’ve been yet!
Things got even more creepy as we made our way towards the woods and found… a couch! Why? I have no goddamn idea but here it was, covered in spray paint, torn apart, but still in bizarrely good condition considering which suggests it hadn’t been there for long. Clearly this was where local teenagers came to drink. Been finding a lot of their secret hiding places as of late… maybe I am trying to find my own inner teen who didn’t really have much of a life back in the day, certainly less adventure than I do now.
Beyond the couch there were trails, of a sort, although there were no signs, no markers, no real suggestion that they were for people and not just overgrown deer paths. This place was supposed to have ruins scattered about but we didn’t come across much until we were fairly far down these paths. The first things looked like maybe the roof of a doghouse? And a wishing well nearby. From there we found what looked like an abandoned mini barn which some delightfully positive delinquent spray painted, “Someone loves you!” on the front of. You got to love life affirming graffiti. You, my dear tagger, have it right. Keep on shining!
The insides were of course covered and more typical of what you might expect. From here we crossed a little bridge, found some sort of open storage house decaying out here with perfectly good PVC still stacked up under them. From he we ended up wandering cluelessly onto a nearby golf course before going back into the woods from whence we came. This place was so overtaken with vegetation I felt like we were urban explorers trekking through Ingene Island trying to dodge nests of velociraptors…. and maybe a few pterodactyls.
When we came back to the parking lot I noticed trees blocked all of the Enchanted Forest’s sign except for what looked like “The END.” Fitting! And creepy! And of course when we got back to the car the one other person there had emerged from the thicket and was looking suspiciously at us. He was clearly a teenager, loitering about, maybe waiting for friends and we… were probably just a confusing sight to him with our unfamiliar baby faces.
In Part Two of last week’s Maine adventure I learned about my family history. I was told my great grandmother had spent a great deal of time (more than three years) in a sanitorium where she was being quarantined as a tuberculosis patient. It was called the Central Maine Sanitorium. It was a trying time for the family that clearly had a negative impact but beyond that I knew very little about this particular event… until by happenstance I was talking to a random person on FaceBook who mentioned an abandoned sanitorium in Fairfield Maine. Could it be the very same?
My great grandmother standing in the Central Maine Sanitorium
I did some digging. There was an epidemic of tuberculosis in Maine that resulted in a great deal of people being thrown out into the streets because their family did not want to catch this disease. This resulted in several tent cities being formed, one of which was in Fairfield Maine. At some point the problem became too big for a mere tent city and the state stepped in and built two large facilities for tuberculosis patients. The one built in Hebron was called the Western Maine Sanitorium and this was where patients who were expected to recover went. The other one built over the tent city in Fairfield was called the Central Maine Sanitorium and patients that were sent here were of only the most severe cases, basically expected to die. I guess that explains why she was there for over three years and could not receive visitors in all that time.
This photo was found in my family albums we *think* it’s of the sanitorium. If it’s not feel free to comment and tell me what it really is.
Basically what had started as a vague curiosity during a random conversation with a stranger turned into something a little more meaningful. I had to go but urban exploration isn’t really what I specialize in… though I do love it, it can be dangerous, and so I felt better dragging someone along. And so this became the one most important destination that week as I dragged an equally curious hostage behind me.
Initially I had a hard time finding this place as I once again got the wrong address and wasn’t even on the right road but once that was amended it was an easy drive down a sleepy street. It didn’t look like anyone cared about this place anymore although someone had put a For Sale sign up. I do not know if it was for this property or the neighboring acres though…
In any event a small parking lot was still there and even though two buildings that were still on the site were boarded up someone had unceremoniously de-boarded them. The structure was in perfectly fine condition for poking. There wasn’t any rotting floorboards or anything like that.
We initially started in the first floor but it was all boarded up and so dark we couldn’t see a thing. Our cell phone flashlights barely penetrated the darkness. It was… unusually dark. However light came in through all the windows upstairs and the place seemed alive. Graffiti decorated almost all the walls. A few pieces of furniture and equipment remained along with a sign requesting to keep the door closed. An elevator languished in in a pit but otherwise the structure seemed pretty intact.
There’d been whispers this place was haunted but the only odd feeling I got was when I entered what I think was the nurses’ area. Here I felt dutiful, fulfilled, like whoever was still here was still doing good work for the people. It was interesting. I wouldn’t expect to get that feeling in what essentially was a hospice. Still, it was pleasant. I suspect most of the spirits here had long enough to come to terms with their own deaths before finding their way elsewhere. I must admit though that I was a little heartsick to find a room painted in pastels… was it a nursery? A nursey in a ward devoted to consumption? Surely, babies can not generally recover from such a thing.
I took a bunch of photos with my cell phone having forgotten my camera. It’d already been a long day before we arrived. In any event this place is a photographer’s dream – so many weird angles, lighting, and decay. Just watching the paint fleck off the wall was amazing. I could see whole photo shoots done here – maybe even little horror movies.
Certainly the local teens knew about this place. I was entertained by their graffiti which distressed my travel companion. He lamented it was frustrated with too many tags dissing each other by name and using pretty profane language. C bombs and N bombs danced with lesser slurs of slut, bitch, and whore, you know, the usual sprinkling of misogyny. I couldn’t help but laugh. That’s small town life for ya… when you live somewhere that everyone knows you the only thing of value you tend to have at that age is your reputation. That’s what makes it such a delicious target for others with a chip on their shoulder. That explains the need for such fiercely negative language. It has to be the worst, although these little delinquents miss the fact that two white teenagers slinging the N bomb at each other isn’t edgy, it’s utterly meaningless. As it should be!
The graffiti wasn’t all bad though. Some had some artistic merit or humor to it. There was a very Beetlejuice-like “exit” painted on a brick wall in one of the closets. A cute plague doctor did his rounds nearby. Another room amped up the horror by scrawling “grandma’s house” on the peeling wallpaper while a little ways away another piece of art cheerfully stated, “I am a cat!”
Outside I walked around the building a little bit and came to a second much smaller building that I thought at first was a garage for ambulances or something like that. However in walking in I came across a somewhat unnerving sight – a single chair sat overlooking the door, behind it was a large furnace and what appeared to be a cast iron crematorium with space for four cadavers. You’d think I would be a little creeped out by this, especially since by this time I found myself alone, but it was such a beautiful day and I didn’t feel anything lingering HOWEVER my camera seemed to disagree. This one photo I took came out with a mysterious fog over it for no reason whatsoever.
Onto the galleries! Because I took SO MANY PICTURES!
Up first are my Black and Whites…
Abandoned Sanitoriums always look better in black and white.
When I was driving around trying to find the abandoned sanitorium I happened to pass this enormous compound of… treasures. I know, it might look like a junk yard, but really it was an antiques mall with all kinds of… shrapnel-looking things all over their expansive yard. Can you believe my travel companion has never been antiquing? Worse he’d never been antiquing in Maine where such a hobby is…. somewhere between dumpster diving and showing up on Antiques Roadshow with an unknown Picasso. I joke but really, it’s an adventure.
And so after we came back from our urban exploration I couldn’t resist driving in. There was a big sign offering RV parking. Think about that. An antique store in the middle of nowhere has so many RV’s driving in it created it’s own parking lot for it. This is exactly what I mean about not knowing what we’re about to walk into.
It took me a moment to realize I’d been here before! In fact it was one of the very first stops for my Catching Marbles after basing it solely out of New England. Back then I was having a grand old time pointing out all the bizarre racist shit that was everywhere – Aunt Jemima jars, pick-a-ninny dolls, minstrel related what-the-fuckery — I mean it was EVERYWHERE. And in the spirit of being all inclusive it wasn’t just black people getting the short end of the stick. There was also a number of offensive items relating to indigenous peoples and Asians soooo… I guess there’s that.
This time around I am actually happy to report the vast majority of those items were missing from the shop. Sign of the changing times? Maybe. Or perhaps I was just here on a good day. Who knows.
This place is EXPANSIVE. It’s in a number of old barns that span many floors and go off in all sorts of directions in a delightful Byzantine maze of weird relics. I let my travel companion loose to find something that interested him – which he soon found in the form of a whole booth of Victrolas and wax cylinder recordings. As fascinating as that was I preoccupied locating all the haunted dolls – of which there is always a ton.
This place went on for what seemed to be miles and we were each having a lot of fun just poking at random things. I found some vinyl records – paid a mighty sum of 60 cents for one that was on sale. Age of Aquarius. I mean come on… everyone needs a copy of that song, no?
My travel companion lamented he’d like to find a straight razor. I asked why he hadn’t found one previously, as this sounded to me to be a perfectly common request, and I guess the answer was normally people don’t spend their Sundays going to flea markets and antique malls… Who knew! Sure enough, two cases down from this conversation he spied a straight razor complete with a box and several replacement blades reading “1906.” And the whole display case was 50% off so he walked out of there $10 poorer but happy as a Cheshire cat.
We actually lost track of time and were escorted out of the store at closing (whoops! Apologies!) It is a store that merits a lot of wandering. And wondering. Still don’t know what’s going through this chap’s mind. He looks confused.
Obviously I will give you all what you came here for – the gallery of haunted dolls!
Life these days can be overwhelming between trying to keep your head above the water financially and dealing with the plague going around… it’s becoming increasingly difficult to take a break and get back in touch with what’s really important. And so here I am once again inspiring someone else to solve an old mystery and mark off something on their bucket list – you know take an adventure and learn something, live.
It had started off as a mild curiosity a week ago. Basically we were talking about a big gap in my travel companion’s family tree that seems to just end with his great-great-great-great-great grandfather who fought in the Civil War. Somehow it was known that he was buried in Springfield Maine. I had to go up to Maine anyway so I figured why not take a little detour to satiate curiosity?
And so we gathered some charcoal and a large sketch pad for a rubbing, woke up early, and headed out to the tiny village of Springfield. It would be a two hour drive and as usual I did not have the exact address of the cemetery because it wasn’t around any houses and cemeteries don’t have their own address. Initially I even got the road wrong. I drove out there and was greeted not with the village I was expecting but instead a vast expanse of dirt road that led us absolutely nowhere.
So after this we continued down the road where over the hill we came across Bog Road which contained the South Springfield Cemetery. It was a small cemetery, with maybe 150 stones or so, if that. I parked aside the road the best I could.
There was indeed a Spaulding family plot just to the left-hand corner. There we found a series of crumbling stones under a big oak tree being eaten away by lichen and moss. Some had fallen over, some were possibly sunken into holes in the ground. Several were in pieces and legibility varied greatly. We’d been warned they were in poor condition so I didn’t know what to expect. After surveying what we could find we started to piece together an interesting story.
We learned that Samuel Spaulding was the son of Christopher Columbus Spaulding and Lydia A Mapes Spaulding. He was one of four brothers, served in the Civil War, and probably lost all three of his brothers to the same war. William T Spaulding was the first to go in 1862 at the tender age of 13 (yes, children served – usually as drummers, fife players, and gophers) followed by John W and Liberty B. John W’s age was lost but Liberty B was 20. None of them appeared to be married and the stones all matched implying they’d been bought at the same time. In the Civil War era this frequently means there was either no bodies under them or possibly the wrong bodies who’d been shipped back. Samuel outlived the war and went on to have a family which would move out of Maine. I was struck by the loss. I’m more into Revolutionary War era stones so it was easy for me to bypass the devastation of the Civil War, even this far North.
We took some time to absorb this new information and take a rubbing of Samuel’s stone which was by far in the best condition. I took a few photos and took note of all the Spencers and Websters out here – two more family names I am supposed to be related to somehow. I wondered if this meant that five generations back our two families could have been related somehow. This whole excursion had been as enlightening as it was curious.
On the way home I got the additional adventure of having one of my tires melt off the Prius and explode as we were going down the highway. Luckily I noticed something was off and was already slowing down and turning into the break down lane when we heard a loud pop followed by a lot of wobbling. Trying to tell AAA where we were was a challenge and took at least 20 minutes as we had no idea and the GPS coordinates my phone gave me didn’t come up the same on the phone operator’s side. Another hour of waiting for a driver – the fear of not being able to be let in the cab due to covid – and finally being dropped off at Lincoln’s only tire store which did not carry appropriately sized tires – and we were starting to get punchy. We left with a tire that was too wide but still worked. The next day we’d tour three more tire stores before finding anything that could work for us. This ate up a great deal of time and tried everyone’s patience. Still, it was better than having more exploding tires!
The East Coast got a little bit of a shake-up the other day as a tropical storm hit. Some of us even had tornado warnings. I was in Rhode Island and the damage here wasn’t quite so fierce. There was a lot of wind and then maybe 10 minutes of downpouring rain and then…. massive power outages. Which was the perfect motivation to go back outside on another little side quest. To the Glen Farm Trail!
I’ve never heard of the Glen Farm Trail but seeing as I was being offered to check it out I couldn’t really say no. I have been to a bunch of little trails in populous areas and although the city parks are adorable and well maintained they rarely have much interesting in them. This trail however had a lot of character.
For one going directly after a rain storm made for some interesting lighting that added just the right amount of whimsy. Secondly it cut through a slate forest – this region (and Boston) are where the slate was quarried that would later be made into those beautiful grave stones I am always admiring. So it was interesting to see the rock in it’s natural habitat as it were but it was better than that.
Here I found a bunch of No Trespassing signs and a fence which had been unceremoniously toppled.
“Some guy bought the surrounding property and is being a dick about it. The locals said ‘Fuck this fence’ and now we just walk over it.”
I appreciated the community spirit of mass rebellion. And I can see why they’d be so insistent. There was something really charming about this little forest and the weird slate walls that popped up here and there as well as the small slate bridges. But that wasn’t what we were here for. That would be an old abandoned ice house just sitting here in the woods looking adorable and sad all at the same time.
Now if you don’t know what an ice house is I’ll give you a brief run down. Back before electricity and refrigerators the only way you could get ice would to harvest it in the winter from lakes and rivers and ship it in insulated containers wherever it needed to go. The old “ice boxes” that predated our modern fridges ran off a block of ice replaced every day or so. It was a rich person’s luxury and a whole industry here in the North. A whole industry that died a rather sudden death with the invention of electricity and refrigeration.
I was delighted to find we could skip across the little river and enter this archaic structure. Apparently others had come before and just like the last place I went it was covered in graffiti which is always a source of entertainment for me. Good graffiti artists can do some really impressive work but bad graffiti artists… well they’re just hilarious. And frequently very confusing! But it’s all good fun to try and puzzle out.
After this we found a tiny ocean beach at the end of another of the trails. It’s been a long time since I have been oceanside. The smell of the salt and the lapping of the waves enlivened my spirit. We sat and watched someone flying a kite in the far distance and enjoyed the moment. It was a nice way to keep cool and calm.
I’d suggest this trail to anyone in the area as it seems to have just a little magic in it.
“The Bells” were on my list of things to check out for quite a while, long before I knew a local who wanted me to go see them. That being said it was perfect going with someone who actually knew about them.
I had learned about them from Atlas Obscura and I couldn’t help but feel like the ruined and possibly haunted stables of a once grand estate sounded like a terribly fun place to check out. It’s surrounded by public land and little trails so after parking we made our way through a field to the trail which led directly to the stables with very little walking. The whimsy was overwhelming from this angle. To every side there were trees clawing their way into the structure and lush greenery creating an oddly tropical looking trail by it. It was magnificent but we were just starting.
Down one of the paths nearby, and not very much of a walk at all, there was a tower also on the grounds which you could climb to see an even more stunning view of the stables from above. From here the stables had the feel of a Gothic horror – just a castle slowly crumbling back into nature.
Afterwards we came back down and looped back past the structure. The view from the ground was a lot less dramatic but still whimsical in it’s decay. It was surrounded on all sides by a fence. Even though I am not usually one for trespassing curiosity killed the cat with this one and I too waited until no one was looking to follow aforementioned local into this enticing mystery.
Here I found a great deal of graffiti from ceiling to floor covering every inch of space. There were indeed stalls inside for once spoiled horses, including two box stalls at the end which makes me think there may have even been the occasional foal born here – though don’t quote me on that.
What I do know is that the stables are the only thing left from what was once a grand and majestic 1876 estate that fell into disrepair before burning down in 1960. While I enjoyed reading the graffiti I was regaled with tales of ghost horses galloping in the mist that surrounds the property at night. It was a delightful story in a gorgeous setting. Even the parking lot was sort of amazing – a nice view of the coast with a lighthouse standing stoically in the distance and waves anxiously lapping the shore.
Being such a gorgeous day a lot of people were out with their dogs and children but almost everyone was masked and courteous and this was not as populated with people as some of the other trails I have ventured this year. All and all it was a wonderful little adventure and well worth poking around a little bit.
I took A TON of photos which I will display below in sections. First up is The Stables:
Next up is the tower/view of the stables from above:
When I decided to go to Maine I had a few ideas in mind of what I’d be doing but one of the things that has been on my bucket list for the past few years was going to Aroostook county to finding a set of abandoned locomotives that were there at the end of a mile long hiking trail. The reason I hadn’t already made the trek was because I needed someone to go with me in case things got hairy. You see the trains were so far north that they were only accessible by a series of logging roads.
When I plugged in the coordinates online it said the journey should take me four hours to get to my chosen destination from where I was staying. The original plan was to take a week off and go camping up in those parts but life got away from both of us and that just didn’t happen. So instead it’d be a long haul… in one day.
Imagine how happy I was that morning when after getting up early the GPS claimed the nearest town to the ruins was only two and a half hours away. I was confused but happy. The trains were however beyond civilization. As it turns out far beyond civilization. I knew they were up a bunch of logging roads and “an adventure” but I figured I could handle it.
For those of you who do not know logging roads are not what you’d expect a road to be. They’re exceptionally primitive, only created for the use of giant nearly indestructible logging trucks which carry full size logs out of the wilderness to be processed. As such they are not paved and aren’t even particularly flat. In fact large sharp rocks jut up at random everywhere and if you’re lucky it’s covered in shale for the tires to grip. Shale is gravel. Sharp and unrelenting little rocks your car is not bound to appreciate.
The other thing about logging roads is that because they are generally not inhabited by people they have no need to have names or street signs. In fact they are usually not marked at all so before going on one you really need to know where you’re going and not get lost. This is made all the more difficult since GPS units are useless on these roads unless your aim is to die out there. You see with no street names there’s also no addresses and since logging roads are subject to change (going out of disuse when said area is logged) coordinates aren’t even particularly helpful.
I decided to use these directions to get there. If you click it you’ll notice they’re preceded by a cheerful list of precautionary to-do’s. Things like bring extra water and food, make sure you have a spare tire on hand, and bring spare clothes and blankets in case, god forbid, you get stuck out there.
On this particular day I had the Prius. Priuses are just about the worse thing you can drag down a logging road. In previous occasions I have gotten the Prius stuck in mud, stuck in fields (which is the country’s version of a parking lot) and have been unable to brake going down a hill in winter. It also only stands about three inches off the ground so I have literally driven into hills before. Basically they’re city cars, fond of paved flat roads and smooth driving, and every time I take the wheel the poor thing starts to shake in pure terror. This was not the first time I have taken it down a logging road and likely won’t be the last – this is however not AT ALL suggested. Please, should you be inclined to follow in my footsteps bring a proper truck with four wheel drive. I will not be responsible for your death.
“Are you SURE this is what you want to do on this visit?”
“More than anything.”
“Because we might die.”
“I’m sure we won’t die.”
“I’m not. See this cute little village of Kokadjo? With it’s touristy little main street?”
“Yup.”
“This is the last we’ll see of civilization before we get back.”
“OK.”
I didn’t feel he got the gravity of the situation. So I played a little joke. As I turned onto the first logging road I said, “You’re my navigator now. Got the directions?”
“Shit, no. I’ve got no reception.”
“Yeah, you also won’t be seeing that again until we get back. So if we get a flat we won’t be able to call for help.” And even if we could what would we say? Not like we could give them a place name or address to find us at…
I then pulled up the directions on my phone which I had copy and pasted into my notes the night before. I really did need a navigator because my sense of direction is shit, and my memory for where I have been is even worse, but I had noticed while hiking in previous day trips that my travel companion was actually pretty damn good at this… I just prayed getting up so early would save us from being on the logging roads after dark when things look different and can get confusing.
This trip was supposed to be a sweet little get away. We both desperately needed a break from our lives and we though stranding ourselves in bigfoot country might be kind of fun. I am not entirely certain that he was completely aware or consenting of the fact that what was essentially a date might end in imminent death. Then again what is the point of a date that doesn’t? I mean there’s a lot to be said of a good trauma bonding.
“See that pile of poop in the road?”
“Yeah…”
“That’s moose poop. Moose are like three times bigger than the Prius and if I hit one we’re fucked.”
“Oh shit…”
Aside from the threat of moose the first bit of logging road was pretty decent. It had a name, was pretty flat, and even had speed limit signs which gave a ludicrous suggestion of 45 miles an hour. On its best bits, which there weren’t many, I could only go at most twenty five miles and hour in the Prius but more often I was just happy to be able to reach fifteen! This isn’t to say the locals felt the same. They had huge trucks. You know the sort of trucks you see on the highway with double tires and wide asses and you just think, “My God what is that douche over compensating for?” Well out here in the wilderness they actually have a legitimate use and the people driving them haul ass down these roads. We passed a number of them going the opposite direction and they all gave the Prius a look of absolute confusion perhaps mixed with tinges of horror and concern. Tourists.
Everything was going OK until I found myself tottling down a large hill. I was only going seven miles an hour but I still managed to hit a giant rock which looked like road from where I was perched. By the time I hit it I slowed down to a near stop but it was still under the car and the only thing I could do was push forward. The sound it made scratching the Prius’ metal belly made my stomach churn.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” As usual I was able to sound confident and self assured in such a situation.
It got worse. I couldn’t pull over to check for damage because ahead of me there was about 250 feet or more of jagged rocks which I had to dodge. The only thing is I couldn’t dodge them all, there were just too many! So instead I crawled down this hill going four miles an hour and yelling profanities the whole way. The experience took years off my life.
“Are you SURE you want to continue?” I asked as I got to the bottom. Part of me wanted to turn around and go back knowing the road ahead might be just as treacherous but also knowing turning around meant dodging the same ungodly car killing obstacle course that I just came off of. From here on out the side of the road would be littered with the comforting sight of broken strips of rubber tires and random metal car parts.
He was as scared as I was. Yes. But determined. “Well, I think are OK and we already got this far…”
Not too far away we were both brought to silence by a memorial by the side of the road. A giant cross with flowers. It wouldn’t be the only one and likely memorialized the death of someone in a car crash. Such sights are not uncommon in the country but their frequency on these roads was alarming.
By now traffic went from a car every 15 or 20 minutes to none at all. Until a logging truck came by. This proved a bit much for my unwitting passenger.
Logging roads are for logging trucks who barrel down them taking no heed of who may be driving along in the other direction. Also being so primitive there’s little room to pull over, sometimes no room at all. So when I saw the truck coming I immediately looked around for a spot to do just this and sped up to hit it before the huge monster came down on all of us. I darted to the side in time for it to come through but although I knew I was enough off the road for it to pass my passenger probably didn’t. He was white knuckled and screaming, “Oh my God!”
And I admit seeing that huge truck approaching at great speed while I sat motionless and vulnerable in a tiny tin can was in fact terrifying. The trucker however was super nice. He waved on the way by and left a staggering cloud of dust which caused a complete whiteout condition to me. I couldn’t see my own hood and had to wait for it to settle before getting back on the road. There’d be more logging trucks, each delivering a near death experience which kept my adrenaline pumping.
What proved almost too much for my navigator to bear was when we approached a one-lane stretch of road that seemed to be piled up debris with steep embankments to each side, not allowing for anyone to pull over. Think about what a road must look like going into the mountains of a third world country – the sort of thing far more appropriate for mules than cars. Luckily what remained of the road was decent enough to drive over it as a good clip – twenty five miles an hour – which I did to decrease the chances of getting myself into a sticky situation. Halfway through there was a turnoff which made me feel a little better but still… I’m not sure he breathed at all in the minute or two it took to get to the other side. This was much worse than the multiple primitive one-lane bridges we had to cross. At least you could see who was on the other side of those, not so in this winding part of the road!
By now we were well into the directions but we’d already been on these logging roads for an hour and there seemed to be a long ways to go. The markers this author chose to tell us about were randomly set apart. Some were really close to each other, others were miles in between. We passed a bunch of other logging roads and every T, Y, or intersection brought the uncomfortable possibility of getting it wrong.
There were just miles and miles and miles of trees. Every twenty miles or so we’d see an off the grid hunting camp, a logging camp, or a sign directing people to some sort of extreme tourist camping village. Those were the most amusing because there were signs that would read things like, “moose tours!” and “bear hunts” as if there were a ton of people passing by to read them and think, “Yeah, you know what? I haven’t been on a good bear hunt in a while…”
At one point I came across a clearing with a bunch of RVs and I was confounded. How did those clunkers get all the way out here?! AND WHY?! The best their owners could do was get out of them and walk into the woods… I mean… I guess if you’re looking for some sort of epic send off for yourself I can’t think of a better way to disappear but WOW.
By now the road was getting better and I was going at a steady clip and feeling confident. That’s when a rock appeared in the middle of the road that I didn’t see until I ran over it with another gut wrenching bang. I was able to steer almost clear of it in that split second but almost wasn’t good enough.
“Navigator! Why didn’t you say something?!”
“I didn’t see it either!!”
“Dude! You have one job! Warn me of the fucking icebergs!!”
“I know! But!” now forlornly muttering, “I didn’t see it…”
We pulled over and checked for damage. I checked to see if the car was leaking any fluids. It wasn’t. It was running just fine. I can’t explain why. We were both thoroughly shook. We got back in and continued on, this time with an even more full attention given to the road.
It seemed like days out there. Sometimes we’d come across sharp turn or speed limit sign but they were always riddled with bullet holes. There was little other signs that people were around in these parts. There were no longer any traffic what-so-ever except one confused old couple coming the opposite direction who pulled over to speak to us. They were lost. Their GPS had brought them to Caribou and all they wanted was to go to Greenville. We were of little help to them although I did mention we came from Greenville (which is south of Kokodjo) so at least there was that…
Not too far up the road we came to a breath taking sight. It was a beach filled with more driftwood than I have ever seen in my life, all bleached an eerie white by the sun. There was a tiny parking lot that read, “No PM parkin” complete with accent. We stopped and took a moment to soak it all in. I took photos. This place was amazing. I was at peace here which was a nice relief. But we had to keep making time. We’d already been on the logging roads for more than an hour. We had to make it to the hike and back out of here before dark and I didn’t know how far we had left.
After this we drove up to a T in the road where there were a ton of signs, as if they were all congregating here and multiplying like bunnies. It was an insane sight. We took photos and a local drove by asking if we were OK. Yup, just enjoying the scenery.
Things got a little more morbid from here as I finally drove up to the check in station. I kid you not, civilization is so sparse in these parts that in an attempt to make it a little safer there’s a little station that takes your details and money to keep track of you in case you don’t come out. I was more than happy to fork over my $16 (per out of stater) and tell her my legal name, license plate number, where I was going, and how long I’d be. The woman there was super friendly. She gave me a sheet of paper with the directions on how to get to the trains and gave a dire warning not to deviate from them in any way or hit any moose.
“Did you see the ambulance?” She asked cheerfully. “We just sent one out.”
“Yes! I did!” I was in disbelief when I had to pull over for an ambulance to rush past out here. I mean… where did it come from!? And where was it going?! Turns out it was going to one of the tourist camps and coming back here to this little station which was also a helipad. That made sense as we had to have been at least 2 hours from a hospital of any kind. I hope they had good insurance!
I left that place feeling good that I got this far knowing I would have never done so alone. And already it’d been such an adventure! I almost was OK not even seeing the trains because damn did I already have a story to tell! But we continued on.
We drove six miles up the road to a Y where we found a rugged parking lot of sorts which was set up for boaters complete with an outhouse. There was no electric poles or plumbing this far north. An outhouse was just going to have to do. We took a little break here before continuing on, having no idea we were still more than an hour from our destination.
The woman at the check in told me she’d recently sent four other people to the trains so I should be meeting others out there. I was intrigued. But I was so slow in driving the Prius that by the time we got to what the new instructions called a “perfectly drivable road” (nothing suspicious about that) there was no one in the parking lot. I am pretty sure we passed two of them only minutes before. What happened to the other party is anyone’s guess.
It was desolate and I was ready to leap out of the car. The last road we drove was so ill travelled there was grass growing in the middle of it and it tickled the bottom of the Prius making distressing pinging noises that made it sound like its undercarriage was nothing but shrapnel to be used in this impromptu percussion band. It was making me edgy. So was my plummeting blood sugar. I had not intended this journey to take this long. Thankfully I’d packed a lunch. I ate it like a starved bear and then checked out their outhouse which was not furnished with toilet paper. Good thing I had my own roll – stored in the car for moments exactly like these.
After this little break I was feeling a little better although my teeth were still rattling from the bumps on the road. It was hot but it wasn’t too humid so I was very happy about that and more than ready to take the mile trek down this easy trail which was the most well marked I have ever seen. There was literally a corridor of trees all marked with blue strips. The only way you could get lost on this trail was if you purposely wandered off.
The trail itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy. It was much the same as many of the other trails I have been on – with lots of ferns and mixed trees. Although I must say there was more moose poop than I am used to and I was hoping some of the dog tracks in the mud were indeed dog tracks and not wolves or Eastern Coyotes which are a dangerous combination of wolf, coyote, and domestic dog. Neither of us were packing.
And then we came across something weird. I think it was a boiler? The woman in the check in told me that when I got to the boiler I was to stay to the right. So even though the path diverged here we took the right after poking at said boiler which was rusted, intriguing, and totally worth poking.
It wasn’t far from there when the forest opened up and there in a clearing on the tracks were two full locomotives just waiting for us like a goddamn fairy tale. We both literally stopped in our tracks to stare at them slack-jawed and take a photo from this whimsical angle. This was so worth it.
The trains emerge from an enchanted forest.
As we approached the enormity of these antiquated machines became apparent. They were magnificent rusted beasts just quietly decaying in the woods. A small plaque told their story. And beyond them there was a whole graveyard of rusted train parts covered in moss and being slowly taken over by nature. It was… magical.
We both felt it and took a moment to play. He had brought a steam punky costume and I goaded him onto the actual train and into the cab for a slightly dramatic photo shoot. I was of little help as people photography is not my strong suit but I was happy to oblige and he seemed happy with the results. In return he videoed me reading a chapter from my new book Milking the Cat to promote it but between the heat and exhaustion of getting there I was barely able to speak and it came out poorly. Another time maybe.
In the woods around the two locomotives lay a variable train part graveyard where all sorts of bits and pieces lay quietly rusting under blankets of moss. Beyond that was a beautiful little beach of sorts with a beaver lodge, a family of ducks angrily quacking at me, and a gorgeous view. I took a few photos just to remember it.
We loitered for as long as we could before coming back to the car. I ate some grapes and a cereal bar and we were off. It’d be another four or five hours driving before we’d be home. And it was just as much of a challenge because now we had to go perfectly backwards tracing our steps. The GPS wanted to kill us, you see. I told it to bring me home and it said, “Why not turn onto every logging road we come across?” Every time I denied her this satisfaction she tacked on another twenty minutes to the arrival time until we were hours from home. When we were parked outside of the train trail the GPS showed us floating in air, not even on a proper road. It was utterly confused. Now it recognized the road it thought it recognized many more – some of which were nothing but trees and clearly not real. Hilariously one of these roads it named “useless road” as in, “Take a left onto useless road.” That just about sums up the legitimacy of this little machine at this point in time. Cryptically it told us we were currently travelling Road. Road Road. Think about that for a minute.
Still, we needed to get back to the check out station so no one would be out searching for us! I had my little receipt to pass back in to show I was still alive and whatnot.
On the way we saw all sorts of wildlife – a whole family of grouse crossing the road, a flock of ravens, an ominous circling of vultures, a pileated woodpecker who we saw both going in and going out, a baby fox, and a ton of snow hares. I’d never seen wild ravens or snow hares before so this delighted me. It’s not often I get to check something off my wildlife list! And I am sure my city mouse hadn’t seen these things before either. Curiously we did not see any deer, moose, caribou, UFO’s or bigfoot.
By now I had grown quite comfortable on the road and was going at quite a clip down the good parts of it having remembered where all the damn rocks were. This was important as the road had a tendency to go fine, fine, fine, REALLY NOT FINE, without warning. But even I couldn’t have guessed what would come next.
Just as I was assured all was well the Prius hit some gravel it didn’t agree with and it was just like being on black ice. It flung out of control towards the side of the road and I let my own instinct take over. I did not touch the brake, which would have made the situation worse, but rather let the car swing as it pleased, turning the wheel abruptly when it came to the edge of the road forcing it into a fishtailing maneuver. The first turn I had little if any control, I let the car do the same thing as I forced it into a second fish tail. By now I was regaining control but there was so little time to express this that my white-knuckled passenger had no idea and by now was screaming, “WOAH! WOAH! WOAH!!”
The Prius fishtailed twice more, although with far less vigor and by then I was mostly in control. I was proud how I pulled this off but my navigator was unappreciative having probably just watched his whole life flash before his eyes.
“Maybe we can drive slower?!”
“Oh fine. I just want to be home.” I said sulkily after it was all over.
By the time I pulled up to the check in station it was getting late and I knew I had to keep my time. I got the same woman there and cheerfully told her it was beautiful and totally worth the drive as I passed in my proof of continued existence. We’d be on our own from here on out.
My navigator now was a bit stressed out – partially from having defied death so many times today and partially because I was wholly relying on him to stay on the same exact route as the one we came. I nearly messed up once but he caught me, thank god.
And then we ended up back at the scary beginning of this adventure. Back up the one lane road with nowhere to pass and then back to the original horrific obstacle course which I could now see from this side for all it was. There, stretching up a huge hill was tons of jagged rocks and the weaving trail marks of other vehicles trying to avoid them all. They were like the rut marks you find in old pioneer trails where the wagon trains used to groan by.
“What the fuck. We’re taking a picture of this before I attempt it again.” And so we did. Here it is in all it’s glory.
I drove up to it with massive trepidation. At my fastest I was able to go over it at four miles an hour. Otherwise I was just inching because there were so many rocks I literally could not navigate a safe path around all of them. Some I just had to go over and let me tell you there’s nothing as deadly to a Prius as a combination rock and pothole. This felt like an Olympic feat. Sweat was pouring down my face just trying to get it done but I managed finally seeing the original rock I hit on the way through the first time – no wonder I had missed the frelling thing, although it was huge it was flat and looking down at it from atop the hill it did not look like what it did now looking up at it!! When I finally got to the top I felt insanely accomplished. From here on out I was sure we’d make it to civilization just fine. Up until then I just wasn’t sure of that.
When the logging roads ended and we found ourselves back in Greenville I nearly kissed the ground. We got out to stretch our legs and buy a celebratory ice cream. Two and a half hours later we were back “home” for the night. Looking in the mirror I noticed I had the biggest blackest bags under my eyes that I had ever seen and likely a few gray hairs. This adventure probably took a few years off my life buuuuut I was happy and would totally do it again if I had to and better still this sentiment was reflected in my hostage, er, I mean travel buddy. In fact I was so intrigued by the little camping villages that next year I want to take a tent up there and spend a week giving the whole area a proper look! Maybe not in the Prius though…
***NOTE TO READERS: usually this is where I make separate themed galleries for you to click on. However I have been fighting with writing and getting this blog up for three days now and I am tired. So here are photos from two cell phones and a proper camera, in no particular order, for the whole trip. ENJOY!
