Emily, Angela, and I, Monado, left Zanesville right after work on Thursday. We got a really good start! On our way out of town, we stopped in St. Clairsville to a quick birthday party and to enjoy some flowers, before heading off again to spend the night in DuBois, PA! I argued, and Angela and Emily agreed, that making the whole drive from Zanesville to Salem, MA, would be a bit much. Emily’s grandparents live in Treasure Lake in DuBois, so we spent the night with them. Treasure Lake is a beautiful place, and we were able to roast some marshmallows!
After breakfast on Friday morning, Emily, Angela, and I got back in the car to finish our drive to Salem! It was a long drive, but absolutely worth it! We got to Salem in time to do some shopping at Wynott’s Wands and get dinner complete with a non-alcoholic Butterbeer, of course! We all learned a little bit about being witches and wizards and discussed the ethics involved of learning witchcraft in Salem over dinner. After dinner, we spent some time walking to the Revere Bell and the Sabrina the Witch Statue. We even snuck in some magical cookies at Goodnight Fatty. They contained potato chips, chocolate, and all my favorite goodies. It was worth every calorie. It was getting dark and spooky, but the long drive really took it out of all three of us, so we headed over to Marblehead for the night.
In the morning, Angela, Emily, and I woke up bright and early to squeeze as much out of Salem as we possibly could. We made it over to Salem before everyone was awake, so we got a lot of walking in! We stopped by the Salem Witch Trials Memorial early, but first we stopped for breakfast at Red’s Sandwich shop, a favorite hangout of Paul Revere. Walking into the Witch’s Memorial, the atmosphere of witchy wonder gave way to something more serious. There in the alcove hung 20 benches from the three to four foot retaining wall. Each bench contained the name, date of death, and method of murder used on each of the innocent victims. This drove home that there were real people who lost their lives to claims of witch craft in Salem’s stimulating streets.
The first organized event we had was a tour of the House of Seven Gables. I picked this event for our trip, because I love Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and English instructors are easy to convince to participate in anything literary. The original house (before it had seven gables) was built in 1668 by merchant John Turner and purchased by Captain Samuel Ingersoll in 1782. Ingersoll is the reason that the house has seven gables, and he died at sea, leaving the house to his daughter Susanna, a cousin of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The house lived a life until it was purchased by Caroline Emmerton in 1908; Emmerton turned the house into a museum to fund her local philanthropy work, and it has been a museum since then, capitalizing on Hawthorne’s popularity and his 1851 novel based on the house, The House of the Seven Gables. Emmerton actually restored the 1908 house to look more like it would have during Hawthorne’s life and remodeled the house based on the fictional novel, including a secret staircase! Though, Angela had a personal attachment to this house. It seems her grandmother’s family use to get mail addressed to the House of the Seven Gables, because their last name was Gable and there were seven of them. Yeah, I didn’t find it that funny either.
Across the street from the House of Seven Gables is Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie, the oldest candy store in America. This store was packed, and I ate so much I got a tummy ache, so we don’t have a lot of pictures. The other reason is that Angela and Emily had our hands full of chocolate! After lunch, we went on a trolley tour of Salem, and I decided to stay in the bag to avoid feeling worse after my lunch and candy binge. But I did take a peek at the house of the hanging judge who ordered the murder of the Salem “witches”, the lighthouse at the shore, and the statue of the man who started the temperance movement in Salem. Oddly, his statue is right next to a bar.
We The last thing we did in Salem was visit the Peabody Essex Museum. I was a bit skeptical that Salem would have an art museum that would catch my interest. However, I was enamored by the exhibit on seafaring art. One of my favorites was a large miniature boat that stretched along the back wall of the room. It was strange how much tiny details the ship contained. Then we went up stairs where we were able to experience one of the largest exhibits of Asian art in America. Objectively, the coolest thing was the old Chinese house that stands right outside the museum, and we didn’t even get to tour it! Though, I am looking forward to returning to tour that someday soon!
Bright and early Sunday morning, the three of us left Marblehead to go to Gloucester to see the Hammond Castle. The trip there took all coastal roads. I must admit that it was simply breath taking. Hammond Castle was built by John Hays Hammond, Jr. in the late 1920s. Hammond wanted his home to be a medieval castle on the outside, but each room represents a different architectural period, because why settle for one when you can have them all? Hammond also filled his home with mostly-historically accurate replicas or actual antiques transported from Europe to style each room. When he wasn’t collecting and working on his house, Hammond played a lot of pranks on his friends and experimented with radio, television, missiles, kitchen appliances, pipe organs, and sailing ships. Hammond had more than 800 foreign and domestic patents to his name and something like 400 inventions before he died in 1965. While Hammond was alive, he offered tours of his home, and after his death, the castle was donated to a museum so that others could still enjoy it.
When we finished touring the castle, we headed off to stay the night with Angela’s family in Macungie, Pennsylvania. In the morning, we learned that we were really close to the oldest bookstore in America, the Moravian Book Shop! Of course, we had to stop by! This bookstore is part of Moravian College located in historic Bethlehem, PA. We spent most of our time looking at books, but we also managed to wander around the campus a little bit. It was beautiful!
We did spend almost too much time and money in the Moravian Book Shop, so we had to rush home after that! We had a great time and hope to travel again soon!
