Fort Wetherill was another one of those finds that I kept having suggested by search engines and AI but nothing online made it look that impressive. Still, it was only a few miles away from where I was staying that day so it made sense to go check it out.
To get to this place you have to wind through a bunch of sweet little neighborhoods reminiscent of European villages. There’s more trees though. And by the time you get there it’s a big park with a ton of parking and no one there. There was literally one other car.
I was not expecting this place to be so massive! Or so taken over by trees. It’s not that old – at least not compared to some of the other forts I have visited for this blog. Fort Wetherill was commissioned during World War II to protect the bay and as a sister fort to Fort Adams – which I haven’t gone to yet but I am sure I will at some point. It’s in complete disrepair now. For the most part it looks like it’s being eaten by a jungle of weeds. Many areas are fenced off from going inside but there are parts you can still go inside or even on top of the fort for some spectacular views of the property and the ocean.
We spent a good chunk of time just wandering around the structure like lost rats. The graffiti was something else. Hilariously someone commented to me that they love the graffiti in New England because you can always read it. And it’s true! We lack the highly stylized fonts of the west coast. In addition to this it was oddly cerebral. Although there were the usual tags there was also some pretty decent art – including a chimp dressed in a gnome cap. And someone had taken the time to hang bizarre vaguely medical looking paper flyers like they may have done in the early 1900’s. It added a certain… ambiance.
I really enjoyed this place. It was a great place to spend the afternoon and probably had some hiking trails too – we just didn’t go that route on this particular day. I don’t know why this isn’t a more known destination although maybe it is and we were just there on an off day. Hard to say as I did also get some responses about other people having loved this place in the past. All and all it was well worth the trip and I think would make a fantastic outing for photographers.
*Scroll to the bottom for photos or enjoy a good read below.
A few weeks ago I heard a book calling out to me as I strolled haplessly through a Barnes and Noble. It was titled Over my Dead Body and it was all about the evolution of the garden cemeteries starting in Paris and working their way over here to the United States. It was a very informative (and often funny) read which mentioned a lot of cemeteries here in New England, one of which I’d never been to before. So that’s how I ended up at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord Massachusetts last week. It’s the home of Author’s Ridge which is where Lousia May Alcott author of Little Women, Henry David Thoreau author of Walden or Life in the Woods, Ralph Waldo Emmerson the poet, essayist, and philosopher, and Nathaniel Hawthorne the author of the Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables are all buried quite close to each other.
Honestly it was weird I didn’t know about this place before seeing as I am constantly enamored with authors, cemeteries, and history. Still. Sleepy Hollow is a large cemetery with clearly marked signs leading to Author’s Ridge and scant parking so keep that in mind if you visit.
So how did all these icons of their era end up buried in a row? Simple, they weren’t. Back in the day the cemetery more or less bought their remains so they could put them here to drive-up tourism. Capitalism at its finest. Nothing is off limits. Not even celebrity corpses. But it worked! And people are STILL flocking here. Although oddly enough there were remarkably few pennies. Alcott had the most. I wonder if they weren’t being cleaned up or if this bunch just wouldn’t be fond of having pennies left for them. They seem the type…
I’d been accidentally stalking the life of Lousia May Alcott for some time weaving in and out of the strange and wonderful landmarks they had something to do with and I have been coming to learn they were a fascinating individual, possibly even a trans or non-binary icon as in their own words they declared, “‘I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body.” And they liked to be referred to as gentleman, like a boss! They were buried in a family plot with their author mother Abigail May Alcott and author sisters Elizabeth Sewell Alcott and Abigail May Alcott Nieriker. Their last remaining sister wasn’t a writer but she was inspiration for Meg in Little Women and she also resides in the family plot. Her name was Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt. Pretty hard-hitting literary family there.
Admittedly I don’t know much about Emerson, he’s flown under my radar for some reason. Though I did previously visit the former resting spot of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin in the woods aside Walden Pond. I could appreciate his deep and intense need to be one with the wilderness. However, my knee jerk reaction since childhood was to not have any real fondness for Nathaniel Hawthorne. I decided at 12 he was whiny, and my opinion has only gotten bleaker with age. He wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables which is a real place and a delight to visit. He’s buried with his likely more talented writer and artist wife Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthrone who was relocated from her original burial in London in 2006! THAT POOR DEAR.
I will note now there are other authors buried here who are not on author’s ridge. They include but may not be limited to:
Novelist, poet, and screenwriter Millen Brand known for his 1937 novel The Outward Room and his 1948 screenplay The Snake Pit.
Prominent transcendentalist, poet, and dear friend of Thoreau: William Ellery Channing whose books include “The Woodsman” (1849), “Near Home” (1858), and “The Wanderer” (1871)
Intrepid journalist Irene Agnes Dolores Corbally Kuhn who was the first woman to broadcast on the radio in China and whose career spanned a great many interesting topics from interviewing Charlie Chaplin and Margaret Sanger to covering the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
Robin Moore – the author of The Green Berets and The French Connection
Franklin Benjamin Sanborne – Writer and one of the “Secret Six” who funded John Brown’s Raid on Harper Ferry sparking the Civil War. Gotta love a trouble maker!
Margaret Sidney – Children’s book author of The Little Peppers and How They Grew series under a penname.
Not be outdone there are other people of historical note here. In fact many of them are written up on a board near the entrance of the cemetery that also has a little map and I think a QR code for an audio tour. We decided to wander around like cracked out squirrels looking for whatever took our interest in any particular second weaving in and out of some areas several times, talking to other lost cemetery goers, and getting distracted by beautiful monuments and really ornate slate stones. So much diversity here!
As we wandered we found slates with ornate carvings – sometimes whole family crests, as well as a number of modern stones that had the deceased’s signature on them. I’ve never seen either of these before or a slab of green granite being used instead of marble. There was also Edward Nealy’s memorial which was an old indigenous mortar being currently used as birdbath. A slate stone commemorating a woman who was a teenager when the British came into the tavern she lived atop of and announced their occupation of the colonies. There was even a few Asian stones with characters on them but my two favorites were a fairly recent burial who had A TON of rocks set on top of his stone. He must have been loved by SO MANY people to have acquired that many rocks! On the complete opposite side of the spectrum I found a husband and wife drama from the 1800’s. They were in a family plot and the husband had practically his whole obituary on his stone – totally mental amount of words and aside him his wife had a matching stone that literally only ready her name, date of birth, and date of death. WOW, what happened there?! Upon closer inspection she didn’t have the same surname so I am guessing she remarried after her husband died and then came back to be buried awkwardly in the family plot. Ooooo the scandal!
But I suppose I should get back to the other famous people buried here… My favorite I think was a very unassuming one. Her name was Anne Rainsford French Bush who was the first woman to get a driver’s license! I left her a penny (as there were none there and if I am thankful for anything in this life it’s that I, as the owner of a pair of tits and a twat, have the freedom to drive a car. VERY UNDERATED RIGHT.) Not to be outdone there was also Katherine K Davis who wrote the lyrics for The Little Drummer Boy. Her stone was the hardest to find as it was a flat ground level stone and there were soooooo many ground hornets in the area. Thousands. I tried taking a photo but they were too small to pick up. You’ll just have to believe me this was the biggest swarm of ground hornets I have ever seen in my life. This cemetery is known for bird watching as migrating birds seem to love it here – I suspect many will get eaten by them in a month or two.
Daniel Chester French, the sculptor responsible for the seated Lincoln in Washing DC also shares a residence here with the other authors and artists. And in a quieter but no less important role we also found Mary Lemnist Titcomb – the creator of the first bookwagon (or bookmobile,) Elizabeth Palmer Peabody who helped create the kindergarten system in the US, William Monroe Spencer – the first man in America to manufacture graphite pencils, and Ephraim Wales Bull – who bred the first Concord grapes, and Marc and Emily Daniels – a married couple working in television as a director and camera coordinator respectively. Marc’s resume is impressive including episodes of I Love Lucy, Hogans Heros, and Star Trek and Emily was one of the first women to work behind the scenes with the cameras on shows such as I Love Lucy. Their stones were the only ones we did not find. I don’t know where they were hiding but we looked a good long time for them – with a terrible map, a confused GPS, and a broken gut instinct.
We didn’t bother to try and find the oodles of politicians and famous gun makers. Suffice to say we’re both a little weary of such things at the moment.
All and all this cemetery has soooo many historically interesting people, especially women of note as well as authors. It was on some beautiful grounds and aside from the lack of parking and the thousands of hornets it was actually really pleasant! I would highly suggest it to any cemetery or literary lover.
I have been spending time in Newport for a few years now and although it’s known for its mansions, I had never been to any of them. So I pitched the idea that maybe we should at least look into that… and as luck would have it this happened to be just the right time of year to make a boring old mansion exciting. Why? Because it’s spooky season! And some of these mansions are supposed to be haunted. Why not go on a nighttime tour?? To one of them that the locals seemed to think was actually haunted.
That’s how we ended up at Belcourt taking a tour hosted by a documentarian who lives there on the weekend. We did learn a little bit about its history but if I am to be very frank my eyes were pretty glassed over. I just… can’t seem to muster any interest whatsoever in the dramatic lives of the long dead super wealthy. SORRY. All I got out of this is it was built at the end of the 1800’s, used to have an attached stable, and was basically used as a building for extravagant parties after a woman won it in her divorce.
And it was indeed… lavishly decorated which is what gave me the first heeby jeeby of the evening as we drove through the big iron gates and were surrounded on both sides by two huge iron horses. Being nighttime this creeped me the hell out. Small confession: I find the uber wealthy terrifying. Coming from poverty I know all too well that if you cross a super wealthy person the wrong way you can easily be disappeared. A lesson I learned while accidentally wandering into some swank rich person’s event at the Grand Canyon once. The look one of those rich assholes gave me was reminiscent of the look a wolf gives a limping lamb. Had I not been escorted by another man at the time I am not so sure I would have not been disappeared myself. Think about it – these people have so much money they can pay off anyone – witnesses, body collectors, whatever they need. This is why we’ve never had a billionaire serial killer arrested in the US. Don’t think it’s because they don’t exist. And iron gates? Holy crap does that bring this whole idea home – that no one really knows what goes on beyond them.
Luckily there were no murderous rich bastards around on this particular evening. In fact the crowd here seemed a nice mix of locals and tourists of various classes. I was excited to see what was here, although I didn’t’ really expect it to be mostly in the dark! Only the bare minimum of lights were on – but this was often because there just wasn’t any – having relied mostly on sunshine to light it up during the day. We were some of the first to show up – me without my camera, again. I don’t know where my brain has been this week, on vacation I suppose. Luckily, I still had my cellphone.
I noticed a copper chopper (say that five times fast!) sitting astutely under a chandelier in the darkened ball room. What… is that? I had to look it up later. It’s The Liberty Bike, built by the American Chopper guys with pieces from the Statue of Liberty taken during restoration. It must have been visiting? No one said anything about it but it did have its own trailer outside.
As we waited we noticed the receiving room was filled with giant mirrors. Confession number two: I don’t feel any warmer or fuzzier about mirrors than I do about rich people. AND WHY ARE THEY SO BIG?! Of course we were told one of them was haunted with orbs so we all lined up to take selfies in it as one does with a giant haunted mirror…
After this the actual tour started. Our host was energetic and clearly passionate about this place. He led us into a library that was supposed to have a poltergeist or an imp of some sort as books from it would randomly walk off and be found in other strange parts of the property – like the front lawn. Or perhaps if you were really unlucky something would occasionally pitch books at guests’ heads. I decided that if I should die and get stuck as a ghost it would be an amusing job to haunt a library and do much the same.
From here we were taken out to meet the strange throne-like chair that was supposed to be some sort of conduit to the spiritual world. We each sat in it to see if we could feel anything. I felt something – but it wasn’t ghosts – it was just a feeling of “I COULD BE KING!” You know, being as it looked like a throne… Another woman claimed it was colder in the chair and she could feel a breeze, but I was standing next to the chair and felt the same chilly draft sooo…. I’m not really convinced. This may have also been the same woman claiming to smell ghostly cigarette smoke which turned out to be my companion… who smokes.
However, the next room was a thing of terror. It was a big oval room with a seance table in the middle and surrounded on all sides BY MORE FUCKING MIRRORS. Maybe it helped the ghosts appear. We were told that this was where all the table turning happened back in the day – with this very table. *Table-turning (also known as table-tapping, table-tipping or table-tilting) is a type of séance in which participants sit around a table, place their hands on it, and wait for rotations. It was just as we were being told this that one of the doors popped open and we all looked to see who was on the other side coming through – but there was no one there. Even the host seemed weirded out by this. Despite this being a haunted mansion tour he made it clear he wanted no part in actually meeting any of the deceased residents. This made it all the funnier.
Obviously, we all had to go through that door to go to the next room which was absolutely empty as far as people were concerned. This room didn’t need a ghost to be creepy because the walls and ceiling were adorned with faces. Whhhhhhhhy, just whhhhhy.
We’d eventually find our way to a bedroom with a big old ornately carved wooden bed that screamed “fuck off and get out of my room” in grumpy old white man. I was slightly confused no one else seemed to feel this but then again – that is my life, isn’t it? Just stumbling into random things and noticing things others don’t.
The bedroom was attached to a bathroom which we all had to wander through because it had a primitive shower that looked like a torture cage lit up by red lights to make a bathtub of doom. Very catchy.
After this we entered what I can only describe as a misplaced medieval European Cathedral complete with sweeping arches and stained glass from the 15th century. And a church organ. And some suits of armor… annnnd a weapon’s case which held an ax that would “sometimes dance around the room on its own.” It must have been filled with stage fright on this particular night.
Then we got to go upstairs and look down into this weird cathedral room from the big openings in the wall which…. did not have anything preventing people from just falling right out of them into the room below. No guards, no glass, just a big gaping tilted foot-level hole big enough for a body to trip through. But perhaps that’s what the little squatting monk statues were doing – making sure no one did. One of them looked like Bill Murray. I pondered about that for a moment. Comedy gargoyle? You never know.
And that was the tour. Filled with reportedly 14 or so ghosts with intensely vague backstories annnnnd some magic rocks on the outside of the building. Mmmmkay. It was a really fun little night adventure and I would recommend it to most people who love spooky season as much as me but be forewarned THERE ARE MIRRORS AND CHERUB FACES EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE.
After melting in the intense heat in The Dinosaur Place we dragged our sorry asses across the parking lot to check out the little shops. And let me tell you – that must be where a lot of the adults go because it was still dinosaur themed but it was air conditioned and FULL of cool stuff. Obviously, there was a rock and crystal shop that was full to the brim with fossils and all manner of shiny things. They even had these gorgeous bonsai trees whose leaves were actually artfully arranged geodes. And for those of us with insanely deep pockets and a good deal of eccentricity you could buy entire dinosaur skeletons here. The triceratops was a cool $99,900. Little out of my price range… but there was also smaller fossils too, the usual assortment of fish and shells and whatnot. This included the first specimens of Madagascan trilobites I have seen in person which made me geek out for just a bit.
Almost as fun was the bead shop which… seems like a dangerous place to be if you make jewelry…luckily this is one of probably three craft related hobbies I have yet to pick up. Otherwise, I could have walked out of there with $800 of beads EASY. Seriously. There was every kind of bead you could ever want. Single beads, bulk beads, glass beads, ceramic beads, beads of every color shape and size. It was a bit dazzling.
And of course, there was a shop full of fairy themes bric-a-bracs because that just seems to fit. But the best part of all of them? THE AIR CONDITIONING. Oh my God, the sweet bliss of walking into a fridge after being steam baked by the rising humidity in the parking lot!
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.
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 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.
I am just writing this quick entry to announce that this week I will be doing something a little different with this blog. Since I was invited to attend a wedding in Maryland I decided to take a few days off and poke around Baltimore and Fredric. I had a lot of fun with great people and destinations and took enough photos to make you cry. We ended up everywhere – at museums, battlefields, escape rooms, some fantastic diners, antique shops, record stores, parks, and of course cemeteries. So buckle and stay tuned as I post a flurry of Maryland-based entries!
This week I returned to the Eyrie House ruins.. and I know you’re saying, “Returned? When did you go the first time?” I went early in the summer months and it was such a bad trip I decided not to write a blog entry and deter anyone from going up there. Suffice to say my super unfit ass had a HARD time getting up there and overheated so badly that I ended up horking up my lunch in the woods. From there I met a sweet old hippie woman on a break coming down that I spent an hour talking to and then we got locked in the park… because we reached the gate five minutes past closing… And in all that time I took almost no photos because I was too concentrated on not dying.
I promised we could return when I was in better shape and to be honest I was a little iffy when it came up again. Not that it wasn’t nice… just… you know, when things go that badly the first time it doesn’t really give you much motive to want to try again. However, this time we were bringing two friends with us – one with a fucked up leg and another who by their own admission had let the quarantine weight we’ve all gained go a little too far. Now that there was the possibility of not being the weakest on the team (for the first time ever!) I was feeling hopeful.
So we got there earlier this time, lunches already in hand, and met the hill.
“This is the hill? This is nothing. It’s maybe a 30 degree incline.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said… but IT KEEPS GOING.” [and going and going.] The sign at the beginning claims it’s a little more than a mile. The Internet on the other hand says it’s a 2.4 mile trail.
Sure enough that little hill didn’t stop. And despite being the middle of goddamn fall the temperature was SEVENTY-FOUR degrees out. But at least it wasn’t muggy like the first time! Still, our guests needed a break. A few breaks really. Until we hit a little turn off trail called the Goat’s Peak trail. It led to a nearby viewing tower.
Of course my usual travel companion wanted to take this detour and see what was there. Claiming the usual, “It has to be just right there… how far could it be?!”
Not surprisingly to me it wasn’t just right there and it was a mini hike all on it’s own. The Internet agrees it was a mile and a half added to our trek. In any event only three of us made it to the tower and of those three I was the only one to make it all the way up. Fatigue and vertigo had taken out the others.
I’m not going to say it wasn’t scary climbing up there – because it really was. The steps and platforms were all see-through grates which gave the uneasy feeling you were climbing into the air. And it was four sets of stairs before the top. I took my time and got there. And I must say the view was GORGEOUS. I could see for miles and miles. There were houses and churches, a water tower, a ski slope, some farm land and just as I was fucking around trying to make a panoramic photo with my cell phone a turkey vulture flew right by me at eye level only a few feet away. It was HUUUUGE. Like watching a pterodactyl in it’s natural habitat. But of course by the time I got my real camera untangled it was far away again. Shame, would have been an awesome photo! Instead I took a photo of a helicopter in the distance and one snap straight down to show how high up I was.
When I was ready to come down I was a little unsure how I was going to manage. I think the reality of being so high up was just starting to hit me and I was unsure how to go about this – do I go down backwards like a ladder? Or forwards clinging onto both rails for dear life and hitting each step with both feet like a toddler learning to walk? I chose the latter. And I was OK… until I hit the ground and got full on jelly legs and was barely able to stand.
“Uhhh…. I need to sit for a minute!!” My hands were shaking a bit from the adrenaline. Oh, how I missed these little random adrenaline bursts I get while travelling. When I could reliably put my legs under me again we continued on, gathering the whole crew back again and taking a few more breaks… the most amusing of which was when an 84 year old man and his dog jogged by us without so much as a drop of sweat on his brow.
Finally we made it to the old parking lot where cars used to be allowed. It was now a scenic overlook. And from there… the test really began because it wasn’t far to the ruins but it was at a much steeper incline. Even I had to bulldog this portion of the hike and I was doing really well until now!
But there at the top there is indeed the ruins of a swank hotel that burned down in 1908 after a botched horse cremation. And it’s beautiful! And it has quite a view looking out as well. We all gathered, ate our lunches, and I ran around taking photos – most of which came out super washed out because I had not intended it to be quite so glaringly sunny on that day and my camera didn’t take well to this. It’s a shame too because some of the nature shots were so pretty I was going to put them on my RedBubble shop but alas, they’re all blurry!! Foiled again!
On our way down I also found the world’s tiniest Eastern Garter Snake hatchling and picked it up. I was told this little buggar “HAD” to be in this entry so here he is in all his tiny glory. Sadly we didn’t get a photo of him with his tiny gummy mouth open yelling, “I So ScArY!!” but he totally did that too. And it was ADORABLE. I let him loose in some leaf litter of the trail.
If you’re looking for a hike to some nice ruins this is a winner – just make sure you’re in shape first!!
