10th Aniversary-Salem Trip

As of one week ago, Brian and I have been married for 10 years.  Holy cow, I feel old.  We have 3 kids the human kind, and have a assortment of animals including 1 dog, 1 feralish cat (less feral that 3 years ago), a bunch of chickens, 3 adult goats, 4 kids the goat kind, and 1 horse.  We have lived in six different apartments/house, and have lived in 4 states (Tennessee, Utah, South Carolina, and New York). 

So in celebration Brian somehow convinced two close friends to watch the kids for one day and night each so we could go away.  It took some thinking to figure out where to go because our anniversary is in an awkward time for the area, and it isn't very pretty yet, and there aren't tons of things to do either. Then Brian had the brilliant idea to go to Salem Massachusetts.  So we did.

We left Saturday afternoon and headed East.  Fortunately when the GPS started taking us a wacky way we figured out that it was avoiding toll roads, and fixed that before the trip took an extra hour.  We stopped by the Boston Temple on the way out.  Which was a good way to start.  We were starving when we left and were pleasantly surprised to find out that Salem was only about 20-30 minutes away.  So we got to our hotel in the same amount of time it would have taken us to go to downtown Boston and find parking.

We stayed at the Salem Inn.  It is made up of a bunch of old mansions.  It was quaint and cute.  I didn't really take pictures of that, but this link shows the mansion we stayed in.   They said they had a hearty breakfast served in the original kitchen.  We interpreted that to mean that they would cook in the original kitchen.  No such luck, I am pretty sure everything was prepared offsite, but the dining room was in the original kitchen, so we took some pictures.

It was pretty late when we got to Salem, so we ate dinner at a really loud bar, but it did have the best crab cakes we could find.  (Brian ordered crab cakes as an appetizer at every restaurant to compare).

Sunday morning we got up and headed for church.  We got there at 9:00, but no one was there because of the area broadcast, which was being broadcast from Salt Lake City at 10:00.  I was really excited because I thought we would miss the broadcast. Evidently our area is huge (Indiana/Ohio on the west, DC area in the south, and Nova Scotia to the north).  It was an excellent broadcast and I was super glad we could see it.

On the way back to the inn to change, we saw some awesome signs.  Since we were driving we only got a picture of one.  The first sign was a crosswalk  sign, but it said "Elderly Crossing".  The second was at a stop light and it said "To request green light stop on" then it had a picture of a bicyclist.  Brian and I wondered if we ran over the wicked witch of the west on a bicycle if we would get two free green lights.  The last one we got a picture on, and I want to put by my porch light and leave the light on from February on.  The sign says, when lit snow ban in effect.  I would love to ban snow once I get sick of it.

After that we went to the Inn, changed and started learning about witches.  Salem is a very walking friendly town, which is wonderful, and so much better than looking for parking spaces.  Everywhere we wanted to be was within 15 minutes of walking.  So we didn't even mind back tracking occasionally.

We went to the Witch History Museum first. 

They had mannequins showing the basic parts of the Salem Witch Hysteria.  Our guide for this museum was quite witty, but did not have very much patience for the Puritans. We learned here that Cotton Mather's father and grandfather were both the president of Harvard.  He assumed that he would be next.  Well he was crazy beyond just the witch trials, (he dug up the bodies and tried to figure out what made them demons), so Harvard wanted nothing to do with him.  So he started his own college and got Eli Yale to do the financial backing.  Since I just finished watching Gilmore Girls, I feel like they left something out of the Yale history they kept talking about.

After this we headed to the pirate museum.  I knew the least about the pirates, so this was the most interesting.  The only bad part was that the plaques you could read were only during the tour part, and they wouldn't give you enough time to read the plaques.  So that was kind of a bummer.  My favorite thing I learned here, is that a tavern in Salem was the very first sting operation in America. The pirates would come in get drunk, and whoever told the best tales of piracy for the night would win the contest. They would win a free room for the night.  The next morning the police would be in their room arresting them.  Here are some pictures from that museum.

We also learned that the Jolly Roger flag is named after the devil who was portrayed as a skull during that time period, and they decided his name was Roger.  So the happy skull was the Jolly Roger.  There were variations on the one you typically think of, as each captain would often design their own.

After that we went to the witch Dungeon Museum.  We watched a witch trial and then saw the dungeon they stayed in.  Some of the cells were so small they could only stand up in there.  It was crazy.

Then we walked down to the wharf.  I guess it was a pretty big wharf back before the war of 1812.  But the water level keeps getting lower and lower, so they can only bring boats in, in certain areas that they dredge.  They had this big ship there, we couldn't go on it, but it was cool to look at.

Then at the end was this tiny little light house.

Then we went to dinner.  We love it when we are in an area with good seafood, and Salem did not disappoint. We also walked around and checked out a couple shops.  Since it is the off season (which I loved it not being crowded), everything shut down kind of early. Which was okay because we had covered a lot of ground that day and I was tired.

Monday we packed up and went to our car and found the battery dead.  Evidently one of us had hit the emergency lights after church, and we hadn't been out there since.  The nice inn ladies jumped us, and that was good to go.  Then we had a couple of hours before we had to get back, so we walked around bought some delicious chocolate, hit up a couple of fun little book stores (in which I wrote down titles to check out at the library), and when to a couple of antique stores.  It was fun seeing all the old stuff.  We even bought a few little things, that are not antiques.

After that is was back to reality.  It was a fun weekend away.