Salem Massachusetts

The weather is absolutely perfect. I must admit that I never thought I would say that on this trip. But it was in the low 80's today and very pleasant.

Bob has continued to be very tired and I think it may be that he has not been sleeping well. We don't know what to do about it. He slept better last night and felt less tired today. I am thinking that maybe he has what my little sister has - she reports being very tired. It is probably just going around. But that has not stopped us from enjoying the trek. We just go slower.

Today we drove about 40 miles to Salem. The ride itself was interesting. First, all of the houses are bigger than I am used to seeing. That is probably because they have to spend all winter locked up in their houses, huh? There is, of course, a lot of traffic. The drivers are pretty aggressive. Bob starts to call them bad names. When I call him on it we begin to notice how little good it does any of them. But they continue to be aggressive and act as if they are getting somewhere faster.

We had been warned that Salem is pretty touristy and that the tours and the Witch Museum are not worth the money. But we understood that the Witch Dungeon was a good sight. So we found a lucky parking place - Bob really does have great parking karma- and went into the Witch Dungeon. There was a short play taken from the actual transcript of the trials and then there was a tour of some recreated jails. The actual jails had been torn down in the 50's to make way for a mall. Apparently at that time there was not much effort being made to preserve historical spaces. The play was scary in that it was so easy for the girls to make the outrageous accusations. Anyone who was accused of witchcraft lost their property. Some folks obviously got very rich off this. Those who pled guilty were allowed to go free. Those who maintained their innocence were hung. Scary right?

The jails were also scary. Prisoners had to pay for their own upkeep. If they did not have money, they did not eat. If you had lots of money you could get a bigger cell. Some of the cells were no wider than the human body was round. In other words, if you were in one of those small cells you could not lie down. You could only stand. Apparently some prisoners who had been accused and claimed innocence died before they even got to trial. The whole thing only ended when the girls accused the wife of the governor of the state of being a witch. Then suddenly it stopped. Could that happen today?

I then went into a museum about Lizzie Bordon. (She was accused of killing her mother and father with an axe.) Bob did not want to go in so I went by myself. The museum presented information on all the players, the facts that had been learned before trial, the opening and closing statements at trial as well as summaries of the witness testimony. There were also diagrams of the house. She was acquitted, but the question that the museum asked was whether she really did it. I came out not sure, but leaning toward believing that she did. Interesting.

The rest of Salem was pretty touristy, or too far to walk, so we went back to the car - stopping for a Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone. Yummy. I am being careful on my diet, but you cannot give up everything.

We had campfires at our site both last night and tonight. Very relaxing. There are enough trees that I could actually sense that there was more oxygen - maybe it is just that I miss the people to tree ratio that we have in Oregon. Tomorrow on to Cape Cod. It turns out that the campground that we have reserved for our visit in Cape Cod is owned by the brother of the people who own the one that we are currently staying in. That bodes well. I hope it is as nice.