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
Swan Point Cemetery is a gorgeous 200 acre garden cemetery that I had been meaning to return to so I could take photos and blog it. My first visit was to find the grave of H P Lovecraft, which we did, but it was a very short visit as the cemetery was closing within the hour. This time we made sure to leave quite early so we could have the time to walk the entire grounds and I must say there was a lot to see!
I think I was struck with the diversity in this particular graveyard. There seemed to be a lot of different ethnicities calling this their last resting place. Some of the stones even had different languages on them and a lot had symbols and designs even I was at a loss to interpret – which is always great fun! And mixed among them there were mausoleums, pillars, crosses, angels of all sorts, bronze statues, and a great deal of truly creative stones. One was even in the form of a dollhouse with the front door reading, “welcome home.” In fact there was a lot of endearing messages on these stones that would melt anyone’s heart – words of affirmation and love – poems, epitaphs, and Bible verses.
I was also enamored with how many kinds of monuments there were here – everything from traditional slate stones, to simple marble, to ornately carved marble, to metal, to natural granite boulders which were probably already there, to metal and mausoleums. It gave this place great character!
And so did all the infant stones. There were a lot buried within family plots that had not only their own stones but names in recognition of their exceptionally brief existence. It was pretty clear a lot of these were likely stillbirths and it sort of hit a soft spot with me. Having toured a lot of the less wealthy cemeteries I know historically infants and toddlers frequently weren’t given stones and of the handful of infants I have found almost none of them had names – instead being listed as “baby.” Sometimes they’d be buried with their mother if she also died during the birth or shortly after. I don’t think it’s because the poor loved their children any less – I think this was more a question of who has the luxury to spend time mourning. Infant deaths have historically been very common and in those days women were usually encouraged to just move on without any real grieving period – just pretending it never happened. It was another sobering lesson on the realities of the economic classes.
Another one of these reminders came in the form of the servicemen I found – coming from each of the wars of the past century – their memorials often had whole passages written on them on how exactly they died – overseas, during battle, as a prisoner in foreign lands, or in the hospital after being injured in battle. I was not used to this. I was used to the only identification that a serviceman was buried being the flag planted aside the grave that is paid for by the state. It was a lot to take in.
Meanwhile we did manage to find the grave of H P Lovecraft. I like finding author graves… the tokens left on them are frequently interesting. Today someone had left a bottle of whisky, a woolen hat, and a series of rubber duckies. Why, I have no idea but it was fun to speculate!
All and all I had a great time and think this would be a wonderful place for a little stroll or even a picnic. It was mid October when I visited and freakishly warm at more than 70 degrees. The sun melted me into a puddle! But other than that it was very pleasant for both me and my travel companion.
We decided to eat dinner at Wright’s Chicken Farm after our adventures in the Douglas State Forest. It was not terribly far from where I used to live so I was once again surprised to learn about something I have never heard of – although maybe I shouldn’t be. By the time I moved into the area my narcissistic ex had gotten what he needed out of me and had long forgone the love-bombing process, instead coyly making sure I was isolated and car-free at home while he ignored me to pursue other romantic prospects behind my back. This included date nights and going out to eat so yeah… how was I to know there was a great chicken shack down the road?
I had been to Wright’s Dairy Farm already (they have AMAZING buttercream frosted cakes there.) Wright’s Chicken Farm however is in a different location and it is a large venue hall and restaurant that only serves one dinner so it’s great for anyone who has trouble picking something off a menu. Dinner consisted of baked chicken (both white and dark meat), pasta with tomato sauce, french fries, salad, and buns. All served family style so you could pick and chose whatever you pleased.
The ambiance of this place was… weird. I thought it looked like a hole in the wall casino, the kind you’d find out in the sticks somewhere. My companions thought it looked like the visitors/community room in a nursing home. Eventually we all agreed it had big bingo hall energy. The vast majority of the other people here were old, 100% of them were white, and they all looked respectable. Even I was a little uneasy – and I’m whiter than Wonder Bread! But not terribly respectable. Adding to the weird vibe it had a big gift shop attached with the most random of things in it – including but not limited to tacky glitter covered Christmas ornaments. They know their target audience. That being said they also had fudge and truffles in all flavors and that made up for a little bit of the oddness. As did our bombastic waiter whose rough NYC/Jersey Shore accent was woefully out of place and whose energy was just as loud. Made my brain itch a bit.
Anyway. The place was simple and cheap and had good food so I am not complaining in any way. I particularly liked the dark meat and french fries which I ate far too many of. They offered ice cream after this but YIKES who has room for ice cream after an all-you-can-eat styled meal?! Afterwards I hung out in the parking lot a little bit talking while waiting for the others. We noted how quaint the motel across the street looked and the duck pond in between. Eventually a complete stranger, a woman, came up to me and complemented my laugh out of nowhere. Well that’s a new one! But I’ll take it.
All and all it’s a decent enough place to go to if you happen to be in the area and have a craving for baked chicken and a family style meal.
*Image taken from Wright’s Farm website (sorry, I didn’t bring my camera in with me.)
Since my brain hasn’t been working full capacity for A WHILE now I have been allowing other people to pick my travel destinations – which by the way keeps things interesting for sure! I end up places I wouldn’t have even thought of and that’s great! But this time around when the location was mentioned I was far less than enthusiastic about it. You see it was the tri-state marker in Douglas MA, a small town I used to live in, and the only town I can say I never wanted to step foot in again. It’s not the town, which is quaint and idealistic, but the fact I built my dream life there and then had to leave it quite suddenly and under extreme duress. You can’t really blame me for not wanting to re-traumatize myself.
But that got me to thinking that maybe avoiding psychological triggers wasn’t the healthiest way to move forward in life. And why should I? Just because someone else made my life miserable why should I let them continue to have any power over me now? I shouldn’t. Because I have every right in the world to take a peaceful hike through the woods. So I did and I am super happy with my decision because it was awesome!
Into the muck I go!
Hell, if I knew when I lived there that there was a gorgeous HUGE state forest just a mile or two from my house I would have been there every day! Of the off season anyway. I guess it’s $9 per head for Mass residents and $30 a head for out-of-staters to get a day pass there during the on season. Little too rich for my blood but that’s only because I’m poor. Luckily for all of us we went during the off season when it’s free to everyone.
This place was whimsy central. The fall foliage was almost at it’s peak and everything was yellow with bursts of red and I can’t tell you how many mushrooms we found. Hundreds. All different kinds and colors – purple, red, pink, yellow, white, brown, and even some that looked like full sized pancakes on stalks! There were even mushrooms in every stage of life – a great deal of them having melted into gooey black puddles. I was just happy to be out with a party that seemed just as impressed with them as I was. And there was wildlife too. Before we even reached the proper trail I found a little red bellied snake just off the parking lot and there were salamanders and birds galore. And interestingly enough we also found a bunch of old foundations to what I am guessing were houses at one point. They were a delightful surprise. I have tried to look up information about them but no one’s been forthcoming and all I could really figure out was the forest was created in the 1930’s so the foundations had to have predated that.
We were all having a lot of fun but that’s not to say the journey wasn’t without it’s troubles. For one we didn’t have good directions at all and the 5.4 mile loop to the tri-state marker that we were promised was… how shall we say… not as straight forward as it seemed. It took several turns onto different trails and somewhere along the way we must have messed up because when we did find a marker it wasn’t the one we were looking for… it only marked the Massachusetts Rhode Island boundary. But we thought we found it and headed back to the car after many miles of hiking. By this point I decided I didn’t feel like dancing around the flooded parts of the path so I took off my shoes and went straight through the water. This was fine until I went through one puddle that went for quite a stretch and the water came almost up to my knees at points. Of course being a puddle and not clear water I couldn’t see where my feet were going and it was a rocky bottom making navigation challenging. Still, even though I was painfully slow, I didn’t regret my decision at all. That ice cold water cooled me down and indulged my inner child who found the splashing hilariously fun. By this time our party of four had whittled down to a party of three and I was struggling to keep up as my energy was going down to 3%. I’d pay for this dearly in the days afterwards but I still think it was worth it. My hiking companions were also not unfazed as the mosquitos were so thick on this day they nearly sucked us all dry. Little bizarre for mid October but OK! I don’t think my camera appreciated the trek very much unbeknownst to me it was throwing a fit the whole time and all my photos came out blurry. I apologize they are not as crisp and professional as other entries.
All and all this place was beautiful and I would happily return – maybe even finding the right marker this time! I highly suggest it to anyone who loves hiking, swimming, boating, or even horseback riding (as there was much evidence other horses had been through here.)
**This blog entry does not contain any spoilers or hints. Just a review!
We have been doing a lot of escape rooms lately but none of them captured my attention quite like the one we went to at Lock & Clue. First of all it was in an old mill which gave it that historic charm I can’t help but adore. In addition to that it was very well set up. We ended up doing The Cellar 2: Saul’s Revenge. We chose this particular room because it was serial killer/horror oriented and that seemed appropriate since it’s October. We weren’t disappointed! The room was decked with all the necessities – a blood smeared floor, bloody handprints on the wall, a meat grinder, a gut bucket, you name it. If you’re morbid this room will surely make your blackened little heart dance with glee.
When I say it was well put together I mean this room came with it’s own story (that actually seemed like a full story and not some sort of weird piece of a scenario.) Obviously the decoration was on point and the props… were pretty gruesome at times. There was even a real gold tooth smattered in there somewhere.
I found myself getting into this room a lot more than the others I had visited because it seemed more involved which peaked my curiosity. And it was also ALL OVER THE PLACE. We basically opened up multiple rooms (in the same scenario) at once and were working on them all simultaneously. The sheer chaos of that was appealing to me.
We had four in our party that day – two well practiced puzzle solvers, an escape room virgin, and me who I fully admit normally does poorly at these sort of things. Even so it took all our unique skills and perspectives to solve the thing – all of us had a contribution! Even me! We were told it was one of the two advanced rooms and that they rarely saw a party as small as ours solve it in time but we did! With a few minutes to spare we escaped the escape room.
It was really lovely – a more intense experience than I was accustomed to and it was cheaper than most of the other escape rooms in Rhode Island to boot!
Why not finish a very busy birthday of apple picking, cider drinking, and shopping with an escape room? It seemed perfect for such a random day.
This would be the second escape room I have been to – the first being Boda Borg in Malden MA. And as such I still didn’t really know what to expect. I hear these places can vary a lot. This one was clearly very homemade but I think that just made it adorable.
We had three people in our party and chose the hardest room they had on offer. It was all video game inspired and very 90’s kitsch, totally lovable. Most of the puzzles were ways to figure out the combinations of locks which would give you a clue to find another puzzle. This was way more intellectual than the other room I went to but I kind of liked that. I didn’t take any photos – didn’t want to spoil anything – but I will say it was all charming as hell. The only thing I didn’t like was the second room which was lit with green led lights and gave me an instant migraine I’d carry on my shoulders until the next day. I hate that but it’s just one of the realities of my life.
In any event I am happy to say we solved the puzzle in record time for a three person team – although it was just a smidge too long to be given the honor of a place on the winners board. They did take our photo… and as you can see by it none of us were particularly prepared for it. We didn’t even have a team name – had to come up with one on the fly.
Not far from the Plain Meetinghouse Cemetery we came across another cute little church in the middle of nowhere. Behind it was both a building to house up to three horse carriages during services (so you knew this place was old) and a delightful cemetery behind some iron gates with a sign reading, “Hopkins Hollows Cemetery.” Curiosity got the better of us.
The largest metal monument we found.
We decided to pull over and check it out. It was a somewhat large cemetery considering the town it was located in with 398 burials and 278 stones all of which were in great condition as far as I could tell. They appeared to be mostly from the 1800’s and right away we were struck by one in particular that looked like it had been put up yesterday. Upon closer inspection (and having gently knocked on it) we came to realize it wasn’t a stone at all – it was a blue-grey cast iron monument. Surrounding it were a series of footstones for the Wood family, all of which were cast iron. I’d never seen anything like it. I mean I had heard of zinc coffins being the in-thing for the super wealthy back in the day but a cast iron monument?! The only time I had ever seen anything remotely similar was in the Lollypop Cemetery in Harvard Massachusetts but those markers were tiny in comparison to this. Clearly these people were loaded.
The mystery deepened as a little farther into the cemetery I found several more smaller stones belonging to a range of families that were also made of metal. Whhhhy?? Either way they were PERFECTLY preserved. Over a hundred years had done nothing to slow them down. All and all this cemetery seemed immaculate and well taken care of. So it’s unusual that when I looked it up there was no one of note said to be buried here. Not even town founders or local personalities. If it had any stories to tell it was keeping mum. Still, I walked around and took a series of photos I have attached in a gallery below.
To add to the vaguely ominous ambiance two turkey vultures circled above us. We enjoyed the serenity of the place and the gorgeous hilltop view of a neighboring farm before latching the gate behind us and leaving historic Rhode Island Cemetery CY012 behind.
Yet another day I ended up in Rhode Island under the threat of imminent rain. This time around there was a 30% chance and I was willing to take those odds. My travel companion chose a cemetery that has a bunch of completely made up folklore because that was a little different than anything else we have done…
We’d already been to the grave of Mercy Brown, Rhode Island’s last vampire, and it was Mercy Brown who was the inadvertent cause of confusion in the this completely different cemetery. The story suggests that a teacher in the 1960’s told his students about Mercy Brown but his details were vague and he didn’t have her name so the students went out in search of the vampire’s grave with only the scant details they did know – and they decided at some point that the grave of Nellie Louise Vaughn must be the vampire. Nellie died in 1889 from pneumonia at the tender age of nineteen. She was not a vampire or even a victim of tuberculosis (which is where most of our vampires are from.) In fact she was an innocent bystander to the chaos that ensued.
All small towns have their urban legends and this is usually how they start – with a dusting of truth, a lot of mistaken details, and the whole story getting increasingly twisted as it’s told generation to generation. In time local teenagers believed so strongly that Nellie was their hometown vampire that her gravesite became a bit of a tourist attraction and with that came the inevitable vandalism that occurred as pieces of her stone were chipped away as souvenirs. From there stories about satanic worship began being circulated until someone took the stone away completely. Was it stolen? Or were respectable townspeople the culprit, having taken the stone to preserve it? No one knows. But not long after her story got even more colorful as the appearance of a ghostly woman and white showed up not long after. Now, is this a true haunting or just a bunch of hilarious hogwash, I don’t know. What I do know is I ended up in this cemetery and it had a lot more charm than it would seem.
First off this place was a bit of a nightmare to find. My GPS for some reason did not register the address at all and my navigator, using his phone, kept falling asleep on me. This eventually resulted in the poor Prius driving down what looked like an unpaved camp road that ended in signs reading, “Dead End. Private Property. All trespassers will be shot.” Which is always fun. From there I got to practice my 300 point turn on a narrow wooded lane until I got my way out of there.
The cemetery itself is at a church that is easy to spot on the corner. It doesn’t look like a functional church but there is a plaque out front telling the history of the area. We weren’t the only ones there. We parked, wandered into the cemetery as the other people in the parking lot watched us freaks. I began to take photos of cool stones and the many adorable mushrooms that were blooming as my travel companion tried to find Nellie’s absent stone. He wasn’t having any luck but I was finding all kinds of interesting things.
One of many Tillinghasts
The cemetery looked ordinary from the outside but it had a few unusual quirks. For one it was still in working order – here smattered randomly throughout were modern burials, probably laid to rest next to their ancestors. This graveyard was chock full of Tillanghasts. This is a name I have never met anyone by even having lived in New England for my entire life. It made me wonder if they had gone extinct in the area. It made my travel companion wonder if HP Lovecraft was wandering cemeteries and taking the names off the stones for his characters – which included not just Tillinghast but a number of others here – and as I would later learn he once “haunted the town in his infancy.” It’s an odd thought but it makes sense. Stephen King has openly admitted to both wandering cemeteries and using the names as inspiration so why wouldn’t his horror writer predecessors?
In addition to this there were stones with poems and histories on them – even one of a civil war soldier who was shot and summarily drowned trying to make an escape by swimming. Many of the monuments here were historically speaking enormous – and in these older cemeteries this is a signifier of wealth. But that wasn’t the only clue these people were loaded, there were also Masonic symbols everywhere, and the most alarming thing were their ages at death. Many here died in their 80’s as far back as the early 1800’s and one was even 101! I have found through my travels that life expectancy is a super flimsy thing – it only seems to apply to the lower classes. These upper classes always had the resources to live very long lives.
And then I found a modern stone with a very sweet sentiment on it. It read, “Life is like a painting. It started with my brush and I have filled my canvas with love.” I usually don’t bother to stop for modern stones but that one touched me. This was a small cemetery but we’d made three trips around it finding one cool thing after another before we finally found dear Nellie who was positioned in the dead center just in front of the crypt which had pentagrams and god knows what else scratched into it – likely by clueless teenagers needing a thrill. We knew it was her because other more respectful individuals had left coins and trinkets – as did we. Leaving pennies is usually reserved for historical figures and a 19 year old farm girl from the 1800’s is not exactly the kind of person who’d fit this category but through the power of urban legend she is now. And I hope she’s enjoying it.
As for it being haunted – I don’t know. I didn’t feel anything weird but several of my photos do have an odd haze over them. I thought it was the sun but one of these photos was taken in the opposite direction as the sun and I… just don’t have an answer for that. Just as the people in the parking lot didn’t have an answer about us – having watched us poke around for an hour they left when they saw us leaving. Protective locals? I don’t know. In any event it was an interesting little jaunt. As always I learned a little something and I hope you have too in reading this.
After perusing the Wickford Village Antiques we made our way to the Rhode Island Antique Mall. This destination I suggested because it had the word mall in it’s very utilitarian title which indicated it had multiple vendors which is always good when you’re trying to find something weird. And I was. Sometimes it’s fun to actually try to find a specific item and this place looked promising. This time around I had chosen to seek a long silver pipette. Not because I have any particular interest in tobacco paraphernalia as a nonsmoker but because I was toying with the idea of being a flapper for Halloween and how cool would it be to have a pipette to complete that ensemble?! Especially knowing flappers were the first women allowed to go to bars and smoke in public (and vote!) which was HUGE at the time. Flaunt that independence! It’s amazing! Sadly, I did not find what I was looking for but the antique mall was still a great place to end up. We lost several hours wandering here.
This place was pretty big with two fully packed floors that had everything from rows and rows of sparkly jewelry to a fully functional pinball machine. But things didn’t get real interesting until we stepped into a little side room that I hope was tended to by a mortician with a sense of humor. If it wasn’t then…. I have some questions. You see the room contained a child sized coffin cooler (because adult coffin coolers aren’t morbid enough?) A couple fetish dolls (not sure what the correct term for them is?) an old wooden wheel chair and even creepier still a whole shelf full of expired embalming fluid. Because who doesn’t have a few bottles of that kicking around, ammirite? And if death related items weren’t your thing there was a cow yolk here with a tag reading, “This looks like a chastity belt but it’s just a cow harness.” Inappropriate humor! This one tiny room alone was totally worth the trip but there was so much more.
I ended up wandering downstairs not long after this and whew! What a wonderful assortment of random things! Haunted dolls, LOTS of probably haunted dolls made my heart jump with glee. There were even two possessed Micky Mouses and a Donald Duck I am pretty certain was employed reaping souls in the thirties. That’s not to mention the medical dummy with removable organs, the slew of terrible taxidermy and alligator purses, the really old Halloween decorations, or a brand new unicycle! I ended up going home with a $4 Phil Ochs record (a wicked steal!) and The Best of Procol Harem because… I don’t know, it struck my fancy that day. I mean what other band is named after someone’s pet cat AND a random phrase in Latin? That totally embodied the spirit of our meanderings that day.
This was an awesome place that I do believe I will visit again and highly recommend to anyone interested in antiques. Their prices were very reasonable and their assortment was vast!
Once again our weekly adventure was rained out so we did what any adventurous gaggle of millennials would do -we made sure to get a solid two or so hours of sleep and then went antiquing! OK, so I might be exaggerating a little but after 30 everything feels like two hours of sleep. Your knees gets creaky, you gain a fetching pair of black bags to place permanently under your eyes, and you look at children voluntarily sitting on the floor with immense envy. Youth really is wasted on the young. But I digress. We were talking about antiquing. I think. Yes. Antiquing.
ANYWAY. Earlier on my travel companion spent a good few minutes Googling cool places to check out. There was one in town and another whimsically titled store called The Book Garden that garnered his attention but alas the one in town was so devoid of personality I’m not even going to bother making an entry for it and the Book Garden was weirdly lacking in both books and gardens. It was a cute little place in the corner of one of those wedge shaped buildings that may have been nice to visit if you were already shopping on the street but it wasn’t worth just going to in it’s own. By now we were both wondering if today was going to be a total waste.
That’s when we finally stumbled half-hazardly onto a nearby winner – the Wickford Village Antiques! It was a cute little place absolutely loaded to the brim with loose buttons. Ten cents a piece. A button lovers utopia. But it wasn’t just the buttons that endeared me to this place it was also the strange doll in the window that looked like she was maybe an old Halloween decoration but I honestly couldn’t tell. And a creepy Humpty Dumpty plushie. And a windchime in the shape of a fish skeleton. Little weird. Loving that. And for the math nerds and historians there was even a tax book for the town of Coventry circa 1941. Suffice to say taxes were a lot less then. I admit it. I looked.
It was a sweet little shop in the end. Definitely worth a look if you happen to be in town.
