The Buyin, The Witch, and The War Probe

Hello one and all,

This morning after Starbucks, we drove from Boston into Salem, Massachusetts. We have both always been curious about the little town of Salem and the witch history, so we decided to stop and check it out.  

I must say that neither of us very much enjoyed our time there.  It was extremely commercial and a total tourist trap. Basically, we spent money for no good purpose. 

We took a trolley ride around the town at first to get a bit of a feel for it.  That was somewhat interesting in that we saw both the "custom house" (tax house) and the actual House of the Seven Gables which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about in his novels. We also rode by several attractive harbors and historic homes. And there was a bit of interesting history in terms of the Revolutionary War and World War II.  We learned that Salem was one of the few safe harbors in the region for boats to dock protected due to the shallowness of the harbor.  Since Boston Harbor was blockaded by the British during the Revolution, Salem became the shipping capital of the whole area.  In fact, so many ships sailed from Salem that people in other countries began to think that Salem was actually a separate country.  Then, during WWII, the Coast Guard had a base there for amphibious patrol planes.  The Atlantic was full of German UBoats (submarines) trying to spy on and do damage to US ports.  Since Salem harbor was too shallow for a submarine to get into, they put the float plane base there knowing it would be safe from any UBoats.

Other than this, the overload of witch lore, witch costumes, witch themed restaurants, etc. seemed - well - downright cheesy.  We went to one of many Witch Museums which recounted the entire fiasco that befell the poor accused men and women back in the day, but neither of us learned anything new or interesting. The material wasn't presented very well. 

Here is another cool fact about Nathaniel Hawthorne.  One of his ancestors was John Hathorne.  John Hathorne was the only judge involved in the Salem with trials who never repented of his actions.  In other words, all of the other judges knew they did wrong and repented of it.  Therefore, Nathaniel Hathorne added a "w" to his name and became "Hawthorne."  He did not want to be associated in any way with that judge.

Salem was so hokey that we didn't even bother to take any pictures.  We feel bad about that now.  We should have at least taken a picture of a witch for the blog.  But, we were bummed and just wanted to leave. So, we left Salem a bit earlier than we expected and continued our trek northward. We passed through beautiful New Hampshire. Peak leaf time there as well!  We managed to snap a pic or two as we drove along. 

We drove on into Maine and into the beautiful York Harbor Inn to spend the night.  

The York Harbor Inn has two restaurants and a ball room as well as the guest rooms.  It is just beautiful.  We had a really nice, reasonable priced dinner and then trotted off to bed.  The gas fireplace in the room was just the right touch.  Good night everyone!

David and Karen