After we arose from slumber, we packed up everything and headed to Wal-Mart for some supplies. I didn’t notice much difference with the Wal-Marts in the States, although they had some good deals on movies and music. We also managed to find the Leaving Las Vegas film that Vero supposedly appeared in (read the Quebec City entry for that reference.)
Hitting the road, we traveled down the barren (read: in the middle of the forest) 95 highway for a few hours. Of course, Vero slept a little more. She makes a good point when she notices that I like to listen to my music in the morning rather than talking with someone. That’s just the way I am. There was nothing special with the highway…much like the New Brunswick highways – not much else other than a strip of concrete through woods.
Around lunchtime we stumbled upon the town of Bangor which I swore was mentioned by Carole as a place to drop in for some outlet mall shopping. With that in mind, we hit the city centre and along the way, went into Indigo where I got my Canadian dollar’s worth in books. I had meant to order a bunch through Amazon a few months back but I figured I may as well stock up while I was there. As a matter of comparison, a paperback novel I bought was $7.99 USD instead of $11.99 CDN. The book market is atrocious for their exchange rates and I think I’ll start driving down to the States whenever I want to stock up. I ended up picking up a few Star Wars novels, the new Dune novel (!!!) and a few graphic novels of the comic book called Fables (which is amazing. It has characters from fantasy living in New York in secrecy. Like Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, the Three Little Pigs…)
We then headed to the downtown core which looked pretty bleak. We didn’t even bother getting out of the car as we realized that maybe we had the wrong town for the outlet malls. In the end, we stocked up on some much needed groceries (after the bologna incident) and we stumbled upon an amazing salad bar inside the store! We filled up our trays and had a great little lunch along the water at some picnic tables. Let us not forget the amazing barrel of pickles I stumbled upon! I picked a huge pickle up and am proud to say that it was so big that it took me three separate days to munch on it before I had to throw the rest out! That is what I like to call the big pickle. 😉
After checking in with work on my laptop (which was disappointing as I found out that work would not let me go away on an assignment to another Branch and I had to make a decision as to whether or not I would leave my Branch), we hit the road again towards Boston.
Because I’m writing this entry a month after the trip, I can’t recall some aspects. I’m pretty sure the trip to Boston was fraught full of TOLL BOOTHS! I’ve never witnessed a toll booth and the first one wasn’t a big deal.
What was a big deal was the fact that there were numerous toll booths along the way! I thought they would just charge you once to get onto the highway, but NO!!! They charge you on your way out of the highway also! I thought this was unfair. I figure we must have hit 10 toll booths in total along the way. I wasn’t too impressed and in the future will think about taking some extra time and taking a secondary highway. Can someone please explain me the reasoning behind an entry and an exit for a toll booth?
Once we were nearing Boston, I knew that we would want to find a campground which wouldn’t be found within the city itself, so we spied a campground on our map and headed off road towards it. After not seeing any signs, we stopped into a gas station to ask and they didn’t really know of one but there MAY be one down a certain highway. The directions they gave us were confusing and we ended up traveling through a slew of small towns along the way.
Along the way, fate intervened and we drove by Guitar Center. Now, along the way on this trip, I had decided to look at getting a new six-string acoustic/electric guitar with some money that my Grandmother had given me for my birthday. I knew that we had gone to this amazing store outside of Boston the last time we were there and I had planned to hunt for it on the laptop as soon as we got to the campground. Like I said, fate played a hand and had me driving right by the exact store! We pulled in and I spent a good hour testing out a bunch of Takamine gui
tars. I fell in love with one of them and talked with the gentleman in charge…Chazz. Awesome name for an awesome guy! Chazz understood my predicament of getting across the border with it and we tried to figure out if it was worth it to buy it in the States or not. He did try to help by bringing down the price significantly but it still wouldn’t have helped if I had to pay the duty on the instrument. I remember the next few hours as a pain in the ass as I sat out in the car with my laptop and looked at prices in Canada and laws on duty charges when crossing the border. Vero must have been annoyed from waiting all that time but she was very supportive in my decision in not buying the guitar at that time. Ah well. I thanked Chazz and we hit the road to find the camp site.
It was getting late at night (due to my impromptu visit to Guitar Center) and we were still having a hard time finding the campsite. We ended up in Salem, Massachusetts which was odd as I had been thinking of bringing Vero to it but thought it would be too far from Boston. Clearly my sense of distance isn’t that good as it’s not far at all! I started telling Vero how Salem is famous for burning/hanging witches back in the day and this got her pretty excited.
We ended up at some boardwalk which was pretty cool. It was along the beach and it was the main hangout for teenagers. It would have been cool to have one of those when we grew up. It was a boardwalk full of confection stands, arcade game rooms and billiards. It was like it was from a film from the 50s. We ended up asking someone where we could find a campsite and they though it may be around the bend so we hopped back in our vehicle with hopes to find a spot before the sun went down.
We ended up at a campsite along the water which was a bonus. The old gentleman handling the park was VERY nice to us and gave us tips as to where we should go in Salem and in Boston the next day. The campground was definitely overpriced though and I think it is because it may have been a municipal campground. I think the grounds cost us $30USD for the night. We were going to camp at one spot but decided against it as there were kids partying near there so we ended up in a dark corner of the woods where we must have been next to a pond because the frogs kept me up all night long! I didn’t have the best sleep that night, but I can’t complain too much as it was less expensive than a hotel room.
The gentleman gave us directions to a grocery store which headed for to get some food for supper (this is around 8PM). Our trip to Salem began very eerily with all the folklore of witches and whanot and our drive there was creepy. We pulled into the parking lot of this supposed ‘grocery store’ and were getting looks from the locals who were out having a good time in the neighbourhood. We walked into this ‘grocery store’ to find out it was a small convenience store which had nothing for us to eat. It was kind of freaky as the shelves were pretty well empty. We hightailed it out of there and decided that it would be best to just tour the town and grab a bite to eat.
I parked the car and we witnessed a ghost-walking tour around the town which we would have enjoyed to go on, but we arrived too late. Consulting the handy-dandy map the old gentleman at the campsite gave us, we started walking around downtown until we found a small diner.
This was probably the highlight of my trip as I sat down, ordered a Samuel Adams (best beer ever!), and a chicken Parmesan meal with spaghetti which was only $4!) Incroyable! How can you get a meal for under $5 nowadays? It was filling! I was having a great time at this little pub/diner and it put my spirits up for our trek through the haunted town of Salem.
After our meal, we walked around a bit and were mesmerized by the creepy feeling we got from the town. They really play up the Hallowe’en angle and everywhere you walk has witches, goblins, you name it. At one point there was a giant wall and Vero wanted to see what was on the other side and she was so excited to find the scariest locale one could find – the cemetery! We went around the corner to the entrance and skulked around the tombstones (which was actually not allowed after dark) and caught the tail end of the ghost tour and got a bit of history of the town before the end of the tour.
Satisfied with Salem, we headed back to the campsite so that we could get a good night’s sleep before spending the next day in Salem. We were on a trip with no destination so we figured if we had a great time in Salem, so be it and we could check out Boston some other time.