I know I haven’t been giving my beloved blog much attention lately but it’s only because my chronic fatigue has been working me over like a steam roller this summer so I haven’t been able to make it out of the house very often. So too has my usual travel companion who is currently being pushed to the brink by his capitalist overlords. As such we both desperately needed a more unusual outing, an extra little escape from the bleakness of reality. I pitched the Wydah Pirate Museum because you can’t beat pirates!
The Wydah Pirate Museum is an entire museum based on one very lucky discovery of a sunken pirate ship off the coast of Cape Cod. I’ve always wanted to see an old wooden shipwreck but am also phobic of the ocean so barring that this seemed a nice compromise.
We ended up during peak traffic hours on a gorgeous summer day so by the time we got there I was in no mood to be fighting with the GPS who didn’t feel it was nessassary to tell me which side of the road I was supposed to find this establishment. It is set back from the road with an underwhelming forefront so I drove right past it and ended up turning into a big seemingly abandoned parking lot which turned out to be almost directly across the road. And then I had to dodge two lanes of unrelenting traffic to get across said road which nearly ended in catastrophe when I saw a break in the traffic and slammed the gas to the floor only to have my wussy little Prius bottom out and only kick in a full second or two later. No one died, not even the Prius. Thank God.
As I drove in I was one of several cars there. Outside there was a big banner above the door to what looked like a big metal warehouse. This was almost as sketchy looking as all those salt water fish stores.
Fortunately the inside was completely different. Two teenagers joyfully tended the entrance desk and told us this was a no photo establishment and self guided tours started in an adjoining room where a short video played on a loop. Under the screen was a big gold bell in a tank which was apparently the first thing they found on this wreck.
Travellings into the museum itself we found LOTS of plaques and information, the usual scattering of creepy wax dummies, and a few cases of random things found. We learned this particular ship had a 40% black crew as well as numerous indigenous members and a random twelve year old runaway whose boot and shinbone were found and were currently on display. This was all news to me. I knew black pirates were a thing but I had no idea there were so many and why would an indigenous person want to be a pirate?? I had no answers on that one although the picture was much clearer for the black crew members who through escape and mutiny had chosen the pirate life over slavery. There was also a small display honoring the women pirates who dressed as men to take on this life which to me sounds like some transmen found belonging in a diverse democracy at sea. I’m telling you pirates sound better at governing than our own land based government.
I also got to see some twisted and broken pirate pistols and learned why pirate guns always seemed so cartoonishly large – its because they’re not hand guns, they’re literally sawed off shotguns. Remind me not to get on the bad side of a pirate.
There was even a little station where you could touch some of the coins dredged up during this escavation. They were well polished and worn by being pawed at by thousands of fingers and yet it was still pretty cool to touch someone’s spare change from hundreds of years ago. Also on display were real gold deblooms and pieces of six. They looked so much more primitive than I’d imagined.
But the most unique display was a whole room of various fish tanks filled with large chunks of the wreck that had been encased in mineral deposits and needed to be slowly melted away with the magic of water erosion. There were X-rays revealing what was in these strange rocks. I had always thought corals may take over these sunken vessels, it never occurred to me they’d be slowly enveloped by rock over time, like fossils! Of pirate guns.
Finally there was a slew of displays on what ultimately happened to the pirates who were caught. Spoliers: nothing good. Sort of brought my mood down a bit to be honest. I was rooting for these probably ADHD-addled sea rogues.
We took a moment to play at the knot tying station before scanning the gift shop for morbid loot. There were indeed books a plenty but I left them on this day feeling the $18 entrance fee was already quite enough to spend.
Off we went. I took a selfie outside with one of the wooden pirates so I’d have something to post here, having obeyed the rules of the inside museum.
After being laid up for two days with a migraine I was just about crawling out of my skin this morning, desperate to go somewhere, anywhere. I’m still in central Maine with my mother and she’s still none too keen on going for a hike in 85 degree weather soooo I offered to bring her to a museum, which I figured had to be climate controlled. Usually I drive but since we were so close anyway, and she does need practice driving, I climbed into the passenger seat and off we went.
It was an uneventful drive until we were almost there. Then the GPS insisted we had to go down Rangeley Road to get there. Only problem was the road was closed due to construction. So I took the GPS down, zoomed out, and found an alternate route through the college campus. It was, after all, a museum on the college campus. And wow. I don’t want to sound critical but all I ever knew of Central Maine was poverty and a lack of education, so to stumble upon such a crazy expansive campus here, nestled in such a well kept little town…. well I was shocked. This was not the Maine I grew up with. I must have fallen through the Twilight Zone again.
The museum has a range of art and utilitarian items from the native peoples of both North and South America, everyone from the Inuits of Canada all the way down to the Mayan and Aztec Empires. It was actually quite impressive! Funerary dolls, textiles, baskets, and a series of interactive displays for children that my mother kept herself entertained with (as she forgot her reading glasses at home and couldn’t read any of the plaques anyway.) They even had a bunch of South American dress up clothing and a wee wigwam. OK, even I went inside that one… Because when else do you get to play a wigwam? All and all it was a lovely little trip and was happily surprised. If you’re in the area and into museums its well worth a look!
Portland is a sweet little port city, not nearly as much of a tourist town as Old Orchard Beach. I had enjoyed walking its streets before but now it was nice to return to a different portion of the city. My GPS led me to where the International Cryptozoology Museum used to be, but not knowing this I placed the Prius in a nearby parking garage and we started to walk. Portland is a city of very mixed architecture – some which appeared very Dutch, some which looked like Lego bricks, and others which seemed more relevant to Maine. I took a few snaps here and there. Katherine kept herself entertained finding ninja’d stickers posted throughout the city reading fiercely
critical liberal sentiments. The graffiti seemed almost sweet and added another layer of entertainment but where was this bigfoot museum?? Nowhere to be seen. We stopped in a used bookstore instead and oddly it had a map to the new location of the cryptozoology museum which was a seven minute car ride. So off we went to reclaim the car… only to find the parking garage would not let us out. I tried paying for my ticket but the machine kept spitting out my card, not telling me why, and asking me to re-insert the ticket. I was at a loss but with no one behind me I backed out of the toll lane, parked again, and found a machine inside to pay. With this new pre-paid ticket the toll gate actually worked. FWEW!
We spent way longer than we should have continuing to walk around all these unmarked buildings to find nothing. It was getting annoying so we circled back to the food truck and finally found Bigfoot standing around the side of that building, guarding a chicken shack and a brewery. It was a scene that was just so Maine.
We both went in and it’s a two level (but still two room) museum filled with just the most goddamn bizarre things… The bottom floor was for sea monsters and various beasts which was capped off with a five foot tall plastic ninja turtle for no reason I could see. In the display cases there were Fiji mermaids, labelled as hoaxes, but smattered aside things like a GI Joe standing next to a stuffed beaver with a plate reading, “Do giant beavers still exist?” It was completely mental. We were both getting quite a kick out of this place and I was so happy to experience it with a friend instead of going alone as I had planned a few months back.
