Quarry Park Ruins – Rocky Hill Connecticut

From the fairy tale-like Spiderweed Ruins we decided to continue exploring all that is abandoned and went to the Quarry Park ruins in Rocky Hill Connecticut which was only about twenty minutes away. Again, I knew very little going into this – only that a hike was involved.

It turns out the parking was in a little neighborhood and suitable for quite a few vehicles considering. The trailhead was located across the road from the back of the parking lot and unlike a lot of our destinations it was well marked and there was a map on the bulletin board going in. There were several trails, most which intersected, and we chose the best route to see the ruins which were also marked on the map.

Again, we were met with an upward hike, perhaps not as severe as this morning’s but still enough to get me winded! And that’s when we found ourselves at the top of a ridge with an absolutely beautiful overlook of a little pond below. And then thankfully we started to climb down. The whole path was wide, easy to recognize, and at this point pretty flat but we’d find ourselves climbing up again when the path started to be more rugged.

We weren’t even sure what we were on was even a real path but we noticed some ruins while looking down over the ledge. This resulted in further exploration. Because I was wearing shoes that were not at all suited to extreme hiking I took this exceptionally steep path down on my butt like the gracious thing that I am. I am happy I did too because the structure below was pretty cool!

It was almost entirely taken over by trees except for one cavern which opened up to the world. Inside we found what one of my travel companions decided to label “a fuck dungeon.” I kept myself entertained with the graffiti as the boys played CSI: Vice Rocky Hill with a couple possibly glow in the dark condoms on the floor. “Were these two separate instances? With two different couples? Or perhaps the same guy at two different times? Or was it an orgy? Or was it a gay couple? The possibilities are endless!” Me, I’m just happy whatever teenagers who were using this “fuck dungeon” were at least using protection. I call this a win.

We climbed down farther and eventually came out to a much better path where the rest of the ruins were starting with a “stab cabin” FULL of metal junk. Beyond that was the ruins of a train trestle with a few other random structures all COVERED on every side with a dazzling assortment of graffiti. I felt like it was a post apocalyptic wonder, but the others felt this was more the remains of a camp for teen runaways. Either way there was a distinct lack of crude dick doodles and slurs. It appears someone went over the dicks and made them into other things and the slurs were instead weirdly positive LGBT friendly slogans which I thought was sweet. Either way these ruins were more extensive than we had previously expected and the graffiti had us a bit enamored. One had a tag reading 1969 and another was a near perfect profile of Lion-o. We had a great time coming here and I really suggest it for anyone who is OK with a somewhat sketchy descent after quite some hill climbing.

And now for two galleries! The first is the ruins and the second is photos of nature and the trail.

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Spiderweed Preserve Ruins – Middletown CT

It’s really nice to travel with other people who have no real expectations and are fine with my less than thourough planning methods. On this particular day I had decided to drive a couple hours into Connecticut to check out the ruins in the Spiderweed Preserve – something I had only known about for less than 24 hours and with painfully little information. All I really knew about it was there was some pretty ruins (of which I found two photos) and the trail was “A loop trail that starts with an upward hike.” Oh boy, before even getting there I knew my unfit self might be biting off more than I could chew but I was determined and so were my crew today.

It started out a bit sketchy as the GPS brought me to a construction company’s parking lot in the middle of nowhere and we were unsure if there was a path nearby. We decided, perhaps foolheartedly, to drag my poor Prius up that primitive gravel road and take a look further on. There was a bullitin board and gate not far up the road from the construction company and enough space for maybe three or four cars to park. The only problem was this parking area seems to have been washed out by the rains and there was no way at all i could park the prius there and be able to drag it’s weak ass back out of there. There was also no shoulders on the road and signs further up saying no loitering or parking. Not helpful. I drove to the end of the street which ended with a terrifying hill that was so steep going down it I could not see the road as I traversed it. There I was leaning over the steering wheel trying in vain to see something, anything, and hoping everything would be alright.

The end of the road looked like private property so we turned around and I did my best to park in front of the preserve’s gate as far off the road as I could get. It wasn’t great though and visibility was just as bad as it was on a corner. I just hoped no one ran into me or towed me while we were hiking and we all hopped out to see what was up.

The trail is indeed an upward hike from the start and we were all having a little difficulty. I was lagging behind the worse, huffing and puffing, and cursing myself out for being this out of shape. It continued on like this for a while until we hit the ruins which are maybe a third of the way up it, if that. And they were beautiful! Here was the remains of an old stone home slowly being reclaimed by the forest. We puttered around it in a bit of awe. It was very quiet and peaceful up here. I had fun taking photos and before we left we decided to go a little farther up the trail to see the first overlook and that was just as beautiful!

There was a lot more trail but the precarious position of the car and our own desire to go see other things in the area spurned us to turn around here. And by the sounds there wasn’t much up there but more hills and mediocre outlooks anyway. We were nearby another favorite haunt Gilette Castle, as well as Dinosaur State Park which I have wanted to revisit for some time now, but we ended up opting in favor of seeing a different set of even more impressive ruins twenty minutes away at Quarry State Park in Rocky Hill Connecticut.

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Time Zones Escape Rooms – Lincoln RI

I didn’t really expect to be going to the Time Zone on this particular day but while in Rome (or rather Lincoln RI…) It’s one of those places this country mouse finds bizarre and slightly intimidating. Why? Well, I’m just not used to indoor go-kart tracks, all the blinky lights and loud noises of an arcade, or really anything else in this sort of venue. Smidge overstimulating. That being said I managed. My only real regret is buying the fish and chips at the cafeteria. Don’t do that. I thought fish would be easier on my already pissed off stomach but alas… What they served me was some sort of batter fried fish jerky that went down with a crunch.

The escape rooms were fun though. They reminded me a lot of the Boda Borg that I went to several years ago. Instead of one theme that brought you through one experience it was a set of twenty-five rooms, each with totally different mini puzzles and quests that only took a few minutes each if that. I really enjoyed the physical ones that asked participants to throw balls, or pucks, or line up metal rods and pass each other a ball with them. I’m not athletic at all but these simple tasks I had a much better chance of actually figuring out than anything involving math or abstract thinking. I’m godawful at those…

ANYWAY – it was a fun way to spend an hour or two. I only managed to take photos of the arcade from above as I ate lunch and nothing of the actual escape rooms as I relinquished my belongings to the locker before going in.

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Rhode Island Antique Mall – Pawtucket RI

I know I have written about the Rhode Island Antique Mall before, several times in fact, but I continue to blog about it because there’s always something new to find here no matter how often we go or with whom. It’s always a fun little adventure!

This time around we were a group of four just poking at random things on both floors. As usual there was a delightful assortment of what I can only kindly call “folk art” of strange badly formed animals. And of course what antique store isn’t complete with at least a couple paintings that look like they could be totally haunted? It was light on the soul-sucking dolls on this particular day but what it lacked in that department it made up for in vintage Victorian porn which was everywhere. There was even a weirdly homoerotic postcard of presidents Lincoln and Washington in a seemingly forced embrace. Was this… the beginning of slash fanfiction?? We may never know. What I do know is that the speculum on display in our last visit seems to have been sold, luckily not with the Cat O’ Nine Tails that was next to it. That would have concerned me that there may be a serial killer in the area if they both sold to the same person.

At one point myself and one other in the party decided to play Racially Insensitive Bingo and we browsed to see the most offensive antiques we could find, marking off our imaginary cards with each ethnicity. It wasn’t long before we found something godawful for everyone… a wine corkscrew in the form of a faceless black figure (which got double points for also being sexually offensive,) some cigar-based paraphernalia with the familiar Indian chief, lots of literally yellow slant-eyed Chinamen, and for added flavor a few Gypsy fortune tellers. I don’t know why anyone in this day and age would want to touch any of these things with a ten-foot pole but OK…

All and all it was another great trip and I still highly recommend this place if you like wandering through isles of creepy old things. And the turn over is shockingly high making each trip a new experience!

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St Anne’s Cemetery Cranston Rhode Island

It’s spring and its finally time to start up Catching Marbles again! And what better way to do that than to take a sweet little amble through a garden cemetery? And let me tell you this one was a douzy!

I’d never heard of St Anne’s but it’s a Catholic (mostly Italian) cemetery hidden away in Lincoln Rhode Island. There are a lot of normal head stones here but there’s probably even more that are severely monied. I’m talking vault styled mausoleums complete with stained glass windows, family plots that look like their own mini gardens, stones that are enormous and ornately carved with religious imagery, and even one where the Virgin Mary was kept safe behind a milky aquarium-like shield. Clearly many of the people here were wealthy beyond measure. And Italian. And Catholic. And perhaps had a lot to repent for. Make of that what you will. I’m not making any potentially lethal enemies today!

St Anne’s was shocking not just in how much wealth was on display here but just how many people were buried on these hallowed grounds. What initially looked like an ordinary mid-size cemetery from the gates just sprawled and stretched out for acres and acres. We only explored a small fraction of it. Enough to get a lifetime’s worth of Virgin Marys, starved Jesuses, and sooo many creepy angels. I’d love to return here during a different time of day when the lighting is kinder and see if I can get any more dramatic cemetery photographs. All and all even though my camera fought with me the whole time this was an awesome trip I would highly suggest to any other taphophiles and I would be more than content to return here myself someday.

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Aardvark Antiques – Newport Rhode Island

I can’t tell you how many times I have driven by Aardvark Antiques, saw the big lions out front, and made a note to go there without ever making it. It’s one of those things – you know, a thing in town you just keep putting off because it’s so close.

Finally, the intrigue got the better of us and we decided we’d take a little poke at it. Nothing could have prepared us for what was beyond the big wrought iron gates. There in a small yard was a fascinating array of outdoor statuary. Some concrete, for those of us who aren’t dropping a trail of gold coins like a goblin, and others were bronze for those of us who really are. A life size bronze stallion galloped in place with a sort of intense realism. He demanded a $22,000 price tag. But if stallions weren’t your thing there were also an assortment of Grecco-Roman styled statues, a few dragons, a herd of African Safari animals, some creepy children, and two giant dancing frogs for anyone who was both rich and quirky.

Inside was even more interesting. This place was packed from floor to ceiling with just about anything to delight any eccentrics in the area. On the wall a giant moose head glowered down at us. The ceiling formed a canopy of random hanging things – everything from bicycles, to chandeliers, to a life-sized angel being lowered down from the heavens. It was almost like if the Catholic Church had a junkyard of antiquities. Moving on we came to a whole room full of stained-glass windows clearly from churches. Some were just ornate and colorful while others displayed whole religious scenes.

The furniture in this place all looked like it’d been freshly imported from some castle on Game of Thrones. Crazy heavy carved wooden chairs, tables, and writing desks played among smaller items that ranged in all categories. There was even a cabinet full of what looked like medieval Jesus paintings. And a lot of Asian pieces as well. It felt like getting lost in a bit of a time warp. Should I ever find myself a wealthy eccentric I’m coming back and just pointing at things to load into the truck! This was well worth the visit!

Haunted mirror selfie!
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Canal Street Antique Mall – Lawrence MA

“I know where I want to go this week!”
“OK, where?”

“Lawrence Mass!”

“….WHY?!”

OK, so it might not be fair but my numerous run ins with Lawrence Mass haven’t left a particularly good taste in my mouth. My first time there the car stalled out in the middle of the night in front of a gas station where the cashier was happily holed up behind a bullet proof window wall. This was long before Covid so it wasn’t there for germs. The only other people around was a roving band of teenagers who looked pretty fucking rough. During another exciting detour I somehow ended up in a psychiatric waiting room in Lawrence where the people watching were… we’ll just say interesting.

So yeah, I wasn’t exactly hopping at the idea of going to Lawrence on purpose. But you know, every city has its good sides and bad sides, maybe it was time to look at it in a gentler light. Apparently there was an antique mall there. I know, the idea of an antique mall in the same vicinity as the above scenario seems preposterous but there it was… in an old mill building, sprawling for thousands of feet on several floors.

And I must admit it is kinda fun to go into a place that could be either amazing or absolutely awful. Keeps you on your toes, you know. And this place was full of surprises. First of all we kinda had a hard time finding the entrance as old mill buildings are like rat’s nests anyway. When we finally figured it out we entered to find an astonishing amount of random junk, very reminiscent of the junk shops in Maine. And then we turned a corner and found the clowns. Hundreds of them, all locked away in a display case with a few paintings spilling out into the general area. It was unnerving. And I like creepy dolls!

After this though we wound our way deeper into the mess and it started to have a healthy mix of junk store, proper antiques, local country chic crafts, and oodles of totally random things. We could have spent a week there picking. I ended up with a Janis Joplin album for $12 which made me super happy. I’d hoped to get some Christmas shopping done here but as sad as it is my family just aren’t as weird as I am and I found nothing to their tastes.

We did however go outside and across the parking lot where we were promised another floor of antiques. They had a completely different flavor. Up there we found lots of swanky furniture and a bunch of salvage items including a giant room full of doors that set off my sense of whimsy. Which one goes to Narnia and which one has a rabbit hole behind it? NOBODY KNOWS. And to make it all the more magical I found a Superman trap! I mean a phone booth. A real phone booth, complete with a phone, for only $900! Man, did that bring back memories.

All and all though this was worth the trip (even thought the GPS was being a total dick and wound me through Boston for no conceivable reason.) And hey, if you have someone who likes either junk or proper antiques this place was appropriate for gift shopping. I took lots of photos but then I lost the memory card. I guess I must have eaten it because it is goooone. Luckily I took a few cell phone snaps that I was sharing with Twitter as I was walking through so this entry won’t be completely naked.

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Slater Mills – Pawtucket RI

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!

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Monocacy National Battlefield – Frederick Maryland

We still had some time to kill before we had to go to the airport so for our last little adventure we decided to go to the Monocacy National Battlefield to see where some of the events we’d been reading about actually took place. I’ve never been to a battlefield so I was just expecting a big field somewhere with nothing going on… that’s not what it ended up being.

When we drove in there was indeed a big field with a few cannons set up which is exactly what I pictured but there was also a large visitor’s center. I have to admit at this point my body was DONE with me, especially my feet which were on fire. So I was hoping for a very little display to see and then beat it back to the car. However the visitor center was like a well maintained museum in it’s own right. I sat in the gift shop and talked to the cashier a while waiting for my travel companions to make use of the facilities. I just needed to sit. He seemed a friendly older gentlemen who asked the usual questions – from where had we come from? Everywhere.

When my companions returned he gave us all a huge spiel about the park. It wasn’t just this field or even the museum attached to it. The park actually owned all sorts of properties across town and if we wanted to see all the sights we had to get a little map and do a driving tour! And if we wanted there was a few hiking trails as well – one which was supposed to have a nice view of the city. I had wanted to go on a hike but right now, in the condition I was in, the thought made me want to cry.

He also told us about the National Park passports which were like mock passports you could stamp at every national park you visit. We were all intrigued so we bought one. I was too tired to comprehend anything so I merely stamped mine with one stamp and called it good while my companions stamped theirs with all four at the station and added a sticker. I still have no idea where the sticker came from but I took a pic so y’all can see what it’s supposed to look like. In any event this will give us something else to do when we get home – visit all the national parks of New England! (Of which there aren’t many but you never know where I’m going to end up so I’m OK with that.)

When we drove off we made it to an old farmhouse which was basically taken over when Confederates marched through. The place seemed eerily quiet now. Peaceful. It was hard to imagine that it’d ever been a place of great violence and conflict. But it did get me to thinking about what it must have been like to be a farmer minding your own damn business and suddenly find your property filled with an invading army. What chaos! And how scary that would be! It was humbling.

The other stops on the car tour were basically other properties that were involved in this march as we followed the procession. It was very spaced out and hard for me to follow in any capacity. By the time we got to the hiking trail we wanted to attempt I was on the fence if I should push myself any further. My feet gave a defiant NO but the rest of me was like, “This is our LAST stop on this trip, you can’t falter now!” So I went on the little hike, hobbling the whole way. It was much farther than I had been led to believe and we never did get to see that view of the city but despite that it was a gorgeous area to be hiking. All the trees looked like they were about to spring to life and start lobbing apples at us – or maybe the weird “brain fruit” we kept finding on the ground. Everything about these things made me want to play with them and learn more. They were the size of a softball, hard as a rock, with the lumpy texture of a brain. I cracked one open and it seemed to contain a fibrous mush that smelled faintly of pineapple. Others that had been squashed in the road appeared to be decaying into an alien goo. What were these things?! Turns out they were hedge apples, grown in the area mostly to keep pest bugs at bay. They’re mildly toxic and horses that eat them foam at the mouth. Good to know!

We didn’t make it to that many stops on the self tour because by now the clock was ticking and we really did need to get back to the airport (and it’d be another 6.5 hour drive home from there.) That was no small feat and I paid for it dearly but it was worth it. This little trip out of New England was exactly what I needed to lift my spirits and get me back into the swing of things. It’s funny how travel can do that.

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Pretzel and Pizza Creations – Frederick Maryland

Ever just wander in some place with heavy college vibes and look around nodding, “This makes no sense but I love it.” That was what Pretzel and Pizza Creations was. It was a tiny booth eatery that served not just pretzels and pizza but also ice cream and one “adult shake” because why not?? This place was the chaotic fever dream of tired tourists, stoned college kids, and the otherwise hungry.

I was talked into trying the ice cream… And it was great. Tasted like Nutella. Shame I was already full to the gills… Still, we sat for a while and enjoyed the place all the same. It’d been a long and happy trip. No one really wanted to leave.

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