This week we took our adventures to Maine where I had previously promised to share a few old favorites. One of these was another visit to Fort Knox but I neglected to mention this also would include a bonus ticket to go up to the observatory at the top of the bridge overlooking Fort Knox. It’s only a few dollars more to the purchase of a Fort Knox ticket and it never disappoints. But first I had to drive by the entrance and find myself parked at a roadside overlook of the bridge. I hadn’t taken the time to check this part of it out and it was really quite interesting! It had plaques with the history of the bridge and its predecessor as well as a few photos and a segment of bridge complete with wires which if you could walk up to from the observatory’s parking lot below. Also accessible from this point is a little access road which you can walk on to get under the bridge for an even more unique view.
Apparently, the original bridge replaced a ferry in the 1920’s and was a toll bridge. It was replaced with the current bridge in 2006 which now houses the tallest bridge observatory in the world and the only one in the US. Even better is that most of the journey upwards to see this fantastic view is by elevator. There’s a handful of stairs to get to the last level but that’s it. No gasping for air or clinging to the walls from vertigo as some of my other adventures have been! I was however surprised there was quite a line that day. It was a mix of locals and tourists, adults and children. I was happy to re-do this adventure with an actual professional camera this time and not the tiny cheap-o pre-cell phone digital camera I had at the time. There was even a boat heading up the river leaving quite a wake behind. This proved to be “a happy bonus” for the both of us. Looking directly down at the Prius parked below though… that was probably not the brightest idea but I was able to maneuver my cell phone in a way to catch the moment. Now I have photos of the Prius from every side except its underbelly!
By now the sun had basically come directly into Providence and there was the smell of bacon as people cooked under it. Not really, but it was close. Luckily the gun totem was only supposed to be a short walk down the street from the Edna Nature Lab. And it was! In a park!
Now the gun totem is a concrete pillar filled with over 1,000 reclaimed guns. And I mean I guess that’s one way to use guns that people no longer want or need…
It’s a weird attraction. Not one to specifically go for but if you’re in the area doing other things by all means give it a little looksee.
From here we took a respite in the park under a tree until I could no longer ignore the sizzling noises coming off my arm and we headed directly back into the sun to find the car. This would require not just beyond oppressive heat and humidity but also a rousing jaunt up a steep hill. And as it turns out we walked right by what was supposed to be the last destination of the day – the John Brown House which has been on my bucket list for over a year now. Sadly, we were both probably 15 minutes away from dying of heat exhaustion and my companion did not understand I wanted to go in and kept walking. So this will remain on my list for now… until I return.
And why did I want to go to the John Brown House? Because it’s a super fucked slice of New England history. I remember distinctly being of elementary school age and being taught how to sing “John Brown’s body lied a-moulderin’ in the grave.” And now here I am, an adult, going, “What the fuck was that about?!”
John Brown was a slave trader who realized later in life that what he was doing was deeply ethically wrong and so he became an abolitionist but not in any sane or rational way. Instead he decided he’d arm a bunch of slaves and start a revolt. The only reason this did not happen was because the slaves he approached basically responded to his offer of free guns by saying, “I don’t know you, I never talked to you, this never happened. GOOD BYE.” AS ANY SANE PERSON WOULD.
In addition to this absolutely mental story there is also a root nailed to a coffin board in the John Brown House that was supposed to be the vaguely human shaped root that they pulled out of Roger William’s grave 200 years after his death. But that’s…. another totally bonkers story for another day!
If King Philip’s Cave was a bit of a disappointment surely we could find something else cool to see in these parts. Why not check something off my list that has been on there for a few years? Dighton Rock. Dighton Rock is a boulder that was discovered covered in all sorts of strange petroglyphs. We have no idea what it says, who made it, or why. It’s just a total mystery which of course beckons me like nothing else.
There’s a long-standing story that the indigenous people didn’t build anything out of rocks or have a written language when the colonists came over buuuuut the more I poke about New England finding curiosities like these the more I think that’s a load of hogwash. We don’t know shit about the people who lived here before us because we kinda sorta killed them off and drove any survivors away. Suffice to say whole civilizations were lost and clearly this rock was part of that.
The rock is advertised through signs on the main highways nearby and I have passed by it a number of times. It’s actually located within a park, Dighton Park, in a building that calls itself a museum that was built around it.
When we got there we parked in a parking lot that claimed it was $3 but had nowhere or no one to pay. It seemed to be a very pretty little park with lots of grass for children to run and some picnic tables near the water, all surrounded by trees. Honestly it was one of the sweetest parks I remember. There was even a young woman here at one of the picnic tables playing her guitar. She waited until we were out of sight to start singing The House of the Rising Sun but she shouldn’t have. She had a nice voice! And her guitar playing was also lovely. It echoed eerily in the air on this fine summer day.
We managed to find the museum nearby but it was all locked up. There wasn’t any opening hours posted anywhere. It was just a whole lot of nothing. When we got back to the parking lot we found a sign saying to call for opening hours so we did and got an answering machine asking to wait for a call back for an appointment. We didn’t leave our info, it seemed unlikely anyone would call back within any reasonable amount of time to come down here and unlock the museum for two out of towners. Their website claims that opening hours are dependent on local health regulations… so I am guessing Covid has struck again.
So we wandered back to the car and started driving off when my travel companion yelled, “PARK PARK!” I stopped, and parked again. He’d seen a sign reading, “Dighton Cemetery” and wanted to check it out. However, upon further inspection it read, “Former site of historic Dighton Cemetery.” In other words no stones remained. We hiked down the trail a ways anyway. It had a lot of bowed trees going over the path from both directions and I found it to be quite whimsical, but my travel companion was disappointed there wasn’t an actual cemetery. He had wanted to stumble blindly onto another sweet forgotten collection of headstones in the woods like we’d seen at Historic Cemetery 26. No such luck. As for myself I was trying to keep positive but I was suffering from heat stroke and a migraine was kicking up so we went back to the car and continued our journey to find a real cemetery to round out the day.
I’m not going to lie. Mentally I haven’t been doing so great lately and honestly, I am suspicious of anyone who is on top of the world right now. It’s been a rough few weeks and there has been so many people just burned out and screaming into the void as the world burns. I’m right there with them. And I know life is sucking HARD right now for a lot of us which is why I have decided I needed more trees in my life. A LOT MORE TREES. Because trees are good people. They’re quiet, they gives homes to birds, they never say anything mean, and when we’re not watching they make oxygen!
So I struck out on my own. I know for the past couple of years almost all my adventures have been with travel companions and that’s cool, I still enjoy it, but that doesn’t change the fact I still need to submit myself to the solitude of the forest on my own every now and again. So I shall be doing more hiking – as much as my angry body allows.
Today I started driving to an actual hiking destination (which is more planning than I usually put into these things) but then I got completely and utterly distracted when I found the entrance to this trail on my way. Clearly it was calling me so I had to go in. In the rain. Because it was also raining (yes, I’m that desperate to go play in the woods.)
And I must say skulking through some swampy woods in the rain was exactly what I needed. I spent two hours wandering from the route 123 entrance to the other side of the park at the Condy Road entrance. Along the way I took sooo many photos of raindrops on leaves, found a whole swarm of orange newts and said hi to every one of them, and somehow didn’t get lost even though the trail was not marked and diverged at several points. That being said it was for the most part a very flat trail with only a couple mild inclines at the beginning. I could hear cars for most of the trek but also tons of birdsong and a couple bullfrogs to boot. Someone had even brought their horse down here at some point as I found their leavings and some hoof prints. And of course, I had to pick up two dog ticks along the way. BLECK. All and all it was a nice little find and fed my soul. So if you happen to be in the area and needing a little tete a tete with nature I would suggest this happy little trail.
Last week was just so completely random. I have no idea how I ended up at the bougiest corner of Rhode Island staring down the world’s most terrifying carousel while surrounded by ice cream lapping tourists but I’m not complaining…
Truth be told I desperately needed to be somewhere, anywhere, that was so completely and utterly different from my usual surroundings that I could just mentally check out for a while. You know what I mean. You feel it too. Well, I don’t live anywhere near the ocean so that fit the bill but really we went for the carousel and the lighthouse. The rest was just a cheerful bonus.
When I drove up it was definitely hoppin’. People were everywhere packing nearby beaches and perusing the shops and boutiques. It was like… going back in time… you know to the mid 1990’s, before the economy collapsed and people had vacations like this all the time! Parking was just an ever lovin’ joy to figure out as it was all parallel and pretty much full down the whole block. No worries after a 20-minute show with at least one horrified onlooker I was able to technically get the car within the lines. Technically. Then we walked!
This was the most touristy tourist trap I have ever seen in New England. Kids ran about with reckless abandon being ‘watched’ by their dads who were buying ice cream for the whole gaggle while their wives fucked off and enjoyed some sweet sweet alone time in the boutiques. There was even an antique store! Granted it was all nautical, just vaguely antique, and reminded me more of one of those Old Timey Country Stores with what it was selling. Just add some salt water to that country chic and you can picture it. I took some whimsical photos of random hanging trinkets.
And then we made our way to the carousel at the end. It was…. a thing of tremendous terror. Something that shall haunt my nightmares for years to come. Here they were selling tickets to ride the Merry Go Round $1 for the inner ring of horses, $4 for the outer ring and a chance to grab a gold ring to win a free ride. Now as fucking amazing as I find all that truly obsolete Americana I was a little trepidatious for the poor children on this machine who were whipping around that thing at great speeds, so much so the horses were at full tilt, their wee hooves kicking the air towards the onlookers at the sides. It made my heart skip a few beats. And the horses. Oh my God, the horses. I have no words to describe just how blood curdling creepy they were. They are supposed to be America’s longest continuously running Merry Go Round built in 1867 and “mysteriously abandoned” at Watch Hill in 1883 by a travelling carnival which… makes sense for a bunch of ponies that look like they could suck out your soul. I’m told each one of them still has it’s original eyes which is some sort of stone… but really it makes them all look like they have milky white cataracts and combined with their over all grizzled appearance I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the zombie horses of the apocalypse. They look the part. Every time I found one that just had to be the most unnerving another one would pop up behind it that made me gasp even more. Left me in a real pickle to find a favorite.
You may ask, “Did you ride the scary pony death machine?” No, no, I did not. The horses on this carousel are very small, clearly just for children unlike today’s carousels with life-size horses (or steam punk monsters if I remember the one I once saw in Brussels, Belgium right…) And I mean if I were a kid I probably would have loved hanging on for dear life as I spun wildly out of control trying to catch a gold ring as I went by. I mean that’s just good old fashioned family fun. Right? RIGHT?
Well anyway, there was a beach right next to the carousel with plenty of people sunning and swimming and having a grand old time. We decided to shun it in favor of walking up a nearby side street to see the lighthouse which I guess is only open for a short time every year – a short time that didn’t include that day. But it was still technically a park so we went to at least poke at it. This was my companion’s first lighthouse so he was impressed. I was amused by the mansions lining the drive it was on (especially the one with the witch weather vane) but the lighthouse itself was intensely meh for me. Maybe I’m just jaded having gone to so many. Either way it did seem to be a nice fishing spot and a few people were here doing exactly that and enjoying this gorgeous summer day.
All and all it was a nice way to spend an hour or two and the carousel made it 100% worth it because it was just soooo weird. Everything else was just a cherry on the terrifying carousel cake.
We were once again trying to figure out something to do when Plymouth Rock came up as “the most underwhelming school field trip ever.” Would it be less so in adulthood? Or would we find… a rock, an ordinary rock? It was time to find out!
I didn’t really know what I was heading into. My school wasn’t swank enough to cart our little asses to something like this so I’d never been. When we pulled up there was a truly pathetic little parking lot fit for two cars or so (OK, slight exaggeration but not by much!) that was entirely parallel parking. Nooope. Not going to do that. So I turned around and parked at the beach a few feet down the road which did have proper parking thank you very much. We put money in the parking meter and made our merry way into Pilgrim Land.
Obviously, we went to check out the rock first. I’d seen it on TV before but what I hadn’t seen was the absolutely enormous structure built over this sad little rock. The thing was penned in on all sides with iron bars like it was some sort of ferocious beast.
“Is it a dangerous rock?” I asked. “Why is it in a cage?” This is the sort of humor you’re in for if you travel with me. Grade A dad humor. Even though I’m childless and I guess technically female.
An older lady, who must have been a local, actually answered me. Well, this was new.
“See that camera there?”
“Yeah…”
“They put that in a few years ago. Someone came in and spray painted a bunch of things. It was a mess.”
“Oh no…”
“And people keep throwing their kids in there to get the change.” I looked into the pit and at the change in the sand. Was this some sort of lucky dirt fountain? Having no idea what to reply she went on. “I can’t imagine that. I mean look at how they must come out! Through the bars. You know how many 911 calls we get because some kid has tried to cut their nose off trying to go through them? All for what? 20 cents? Hope it was worth it!”
OK, now I really didn’t know what to say. I was just smiling awkwardly and wondering where this was going. Not that I am unfriendly I just have trust issues when it comes to random strangers telling me things… was she a tourist guide? Or just a lonely old lady? You never can tell.
She went on. “So you from around here?”
“No, we’re just visiting…”
“Well, you see that stairway across the street?”
“Yeah…”
“If you want to climb it there’s a crypt up there with the bones of the pilgrims and a really nice place to sit. Plus it’s a great view!”
“Ooooh… thank you…. We will definitely check that out…”
This we did. But before I get to that part I’d like to take a moment and talk about the rock because it is, and was, for all intent and purposes – just a rock. Not only was it just a rock it was a rock that’d been bust in half and glued back together after they attempted to move it to a better spot. Even more despairingly it says all over the place, on every plaque, that we think this is the rock the pilgrims adopted as their mascot but in reality we have no idea where they actually landed. It could have been 5 miles down the beach for all we know and this rock might be – get this- just a rock. And here’s where it gets really funny. Nearby there is a gift store and I swear to God – it sells rocks. Tiny polished rock babies so you too can have a Plymouth Rock. This is capitalism at it’s best.
There is also a replica of the Mayflower floating out there in the bay. We didn’t go on it. I’m a bit sketched out by boats and have kind of decided the only time it’d be worth getting on one would be if someone was kind enough to bring me to a good shipwreck to poke at. New England has to be littered with them. Shame the visibility is probably slim to nil with sharks and whatever cruising through the darkness looking for a snack. Oh well. Maybe someday…
In the meanwhile, we did climb the stairs across the street and found all kinds of historic goodies up there. Just as promised we found a terrific view of the building the rock was in as well as the bay and a big rectangular monument with the bones of some of the original pilgrims. Apparently, they’d been discovered at various points through archeological digs and were carried back to be buried here. Some of the plaques stated these original graves were forgotten because they had wooden markers which decayed but this monument said most of the graves weren’t marked at all because the pilgrims didn’t want the locals to know how many of them died and just how easy it’d be to kill off the remaining. It’s hard to say if this was paranoia or just karma biting them in the ass for treating the indigenous peoples like converts for Christ. It is super telling that one of the first things they built was a fort.
Here too was a statue of a local Chieftan, probably the one they first met. I couldn’t help but feel uneasy in his presence. For one he was wearing a loin cloth. In cold-ass New England. An unhelpful completely historically inaccurate stereotype put up by “the improved Red Men” some years ago probably in an attempt at inclusion. Cringe. To top it all off he looked forlornly across the bay – at a bunch of boats and white tourists. OK, now I’m uncomfortable.
There were plaques everywhere talking about all sorts of things – even the first women who don’t really get mentioned a lot. And then a few weird mentions of things like a bridal tree planted in the 1800’s which… didn’t result in a wedding… and honestly I’m confused why we were still talking about it. Maybe it was to add flair to the rock. Look, now it’s a rock and a tree. We ambled through a nearby park/garden and read even more interesting tidbits before walking up the street to Burial Hill which was by far my favorite part of the day.
It’s time to really get back into hiking – amidst a slew of technical difficulties because that’s actually the best time to go. This week we decided it to was time to poke around Chepachet again, not to the antique stores that are our usual haunts but to a simple hiking trail nearby.
First of all it is still the Spring so we went during the off season and there was only one other car there. When we drove in it brought us by several little turn offs that I am not sure were for parking or not before leading us to a gate asking to pay for camping fees. We weren’t camping so we stopped in anyway and asked if we could still hike for free and yes, you can, as long as the car is parked somewhere before the camp check in. So I parked next to the only other car I could find and we headed in. The camp register had a map of the trails and they were somewhat nearby. We had to walk to the lake first which looks like it might be a swimming hole in the summer (and a very pretty one!)
This looks like the kind of place that’ll be absolutely busting at the seams with excitable children in the summer. Between the camp sites and swimming hole there are also a few cabins smattered about and three trails at this particular trail head that were respectably 2, 6, and 8 mile loops. They were well marked and looked heavily travelled. There was however no indicator if these were flat trails or uphill. Their level of difficulty would be a complete surprise.
Since this was one of our first outings and we’d already had a fairly busy morning we decided to go for the two-mile loop. It’s best not to die when you’re first getting back out there. And it was just the right length and difficulty for us on this particular day. It was a pretty mild trail. There was a little bit of an incline through most of it but it wasn’t too bad. There was no need for scrabbling but being spring there were a few soggy patches, one which almost took a shoe as a sacrifice.
I have been trying to do the Harriskat Trail since Easter… but it was pouring rain on Easter (with just a touch of hail for good measure) and when I tried to climb it a couple weeks ago I didn’t get very far… As I am very out of shape and apparently the entire trail is uphill because, get this, it’s a mountain. I didn’t know that until I was back in the parking lot today. Leave it to me to accidentally climb a mountain.
ANYWAY, today was attempt number two. I found the place really easy this time having been there only a few weeks before but the trails are… oddly located… across the street from the Harris Conservation Center. Earlier on in the day I was feeling pretty damn good seeing all the Black Lives Matters signs out here in the middle of nowhere… but that’s not to say my guard was entirely down. I was still quite cautious when I was crossing the road to get to the trail when a truck pulled up and was debating whether to talk to me. I figured it was safe enough as I was on the opposite side of the truck as the driver.
“Is this the trail up Skatutakee Mountain?”
Errrr…. Luckily, I had taken a map from the bulletin board at the head of the trail. I looked at it and said, “Yep, there is a Skatutakee Mountain on here!” And I handed him the map. He was clearly an old hippie out here on his own, looking at me like I was a little nuts for also being out here on my own. I get that a lot. The last time I attempted this trail a whole chorus line of elderly folk came by and the last woman in the queue, who had to be in her 80’s, stopped for a second to look at lonely little me and tell me to be careful. Sadly, it’s still very unusual for a woman to go hiking alone in this day and age. Especially after news of a couple being slaughtered on a similar trail about an hour away not so long ago. This is another tidbit of information I did not have at the time. Not that it would have stopped me. That couple was in their 60’s and I suspect got on the wrong side of same racist asshole (as they were a biracial couple.) Hopefully they’ll track down whoever was responsible and make sure they never get to mingle in society ever again.
That’s not to say I don’t ever get scared. In fact not far up the trail I spied what looked like a very large and very not native snake sunning on a fallen tree and I have to admit it made me jump! Turns out it wasn’t really a snake, it was a carved sculpture of a snake just making use of the local resources. Across from it lie a giant newt. Together I guess they are doing pretty good job guarding the woods. I have no idea who left them there or why but I was endeared to the whimsy which continued when not far up the trail there was a dragon! Or at least a dragon’s head coming out of yet another fallen tree.
I want to say that on this second attempt I made it to the end buuuut… I did not. I made it maybe halfway up the trail and after numerous long breaks I was still winded and embarrassing myself as I watched others hike past me including children and the elderly. Those fuckers… just can’t keep up with them! And I mean usually when I go out in groups I try to take someone who’s fat, or a chain smoker, or something so I can at least feel good in keeping up. This always backfires when I can’t but I haven’t learned yet. Unless you count going alone. I haven’t done many solo trips in the past couple of years and I have come to realize I need them. I need to trek deep into the woods on a regular basis, all by my lonesome, so that I can feel nature to it’s fullest and quench this desire within my soul to be totally balanced and at peace. That’s what this trail represented even as I was huffing, puffing, and heaving.
Mark my words I WILL BE BACK AND I WILL CONQUER THIS TRAIL! Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely sometime before it snows this year. Meanwhile I learned there’s a ton of other trails on the opposite side of the center that do not appear to be mountain trails. If I were one for researching, or just generally being better prepared, I would have started there….
All and all this is a great trail if you are in shape and especially if you like scrabbling over glacial rocks. It’s a beautiful and serene trail and well worth it.
Slater Mills was one of those places that I keep hearing whispers about and had on my list but we didn’t end up there until we realized it was a national park and one we could stamp on our National Park passport…
Turns out the park is very new. Hasn’t even been open for a full year yet and we were around the 4,000th visitors there. It’s a sweet little outdoor park with historical markers and in the information center you can sign up for a tour that happens twice a day. We were lucky because we had no idea about this but ended up there 15 minutes before the tour started! So we gathered with what appeared to be one large family full of well behaved children and one older couple who was eying my orange hair in the suspicious way older white men tend to.
The staff were super friendly and the tour was short but information packed. We got to actually go inside the factory which was the first industrial cotton factory in New England! In fact it was the only industrial mill in the United States and the backstory to it was more than a little bonkers.
Basically the man who founded the mill was already a wealthy merchant who had made a fortune in the slave trade. However he seemed to have had an existential crisis and decided slavery was wrong and he shouldn’t be involved with it so he looked for new endeavors. England was going full steam ahead with the Industrial Revolution but the men who made, operated, and maintained their machines were forbidden to leave the British isles with their knowledge. This didn’t stop one fo them from disguising himself as a farmer and sailing across the pond anyway. And when this engineer met the wealthy merchant it was all over.
The mill opened in the late 1700’s and had twelve workers – who were not slaves. They were however children aged 6-14 who worked 12 hour shifts 6 days a week. I guess enlightenment is a gradual process with some. In any event the mill was very successful and operated well into the 1800’s. it was powered by the local river but now their one machine is powered by a motor. I took a short video.
*credit for the featured image goes to Wikipedia – I took 20 or so photos but for some reason they’re not showing up on the card so I had to improvise! Good thing I took the below video with my cell phone!
Went to New England's first cotton mill today. It was founded by a wealthy slave merchant who had an existential crisis and decided slavery was wrong…. right before hiring a dozen 6-12 year olds to operate his machinery for 12 hours 6 days a week. 🙄 pic.twitter.com/8Wj7NtPYAc
As we were walking along trying to find the things we needed we all had a fit of ADHD and wandered off our route when we got distracted by Pierce Park. The first thing that caught our attention was a brick walkway with hundreds of homophones written in pairs, trios, and I think a couple quads. Obviously we had to follow the words and discuss how English must be the most frustrating language in the world to learn. But the pathway led us to a strange metal sculpture that beckoned for visitors to climb inside it to hear the park in a totally different way. There were too many people around to indulge our childlike instincts to explore this but we did partake in playing the weird giant metal xylophones not too far away. Children played nearby on a swing set as annoyed mothers gave us dirty looks. I however found it all very sweet. I’d never been in a park that was quite so interactive as this… and what looked from the outside to be just a small patch of grass in a big city was actually quite endearing and perhaps a little educational.
