Robot Claw

Laconia

August 4th, 2021

Yesterday we drove to Laconia, New Hampshire. We chose this place due to the mega-arcade Funspot, one of my favourite locations (and one I’ve shown on this blog several times before).

Yesterday we only ate there, as well as played a few games and ticket machines. The plan was to return today and spend much more time enjoying the games.

But first, this morning, we went on the mail cruise once again! The weather was wonderful and we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the breeze and the views as the boat made the mail deliveries. I may have even sent a few postcards from one of America’s only floating post offices…

Then we went back to Funspot to spend the afternoon playing games and ticket machines. It’s been a few years since we last visited and it was nice to see the place had updated with quite a few new games (the focus is still on the classic era, up to the mid 80s). I played dozens including many I’ve never seen or even heard of before, and it was a real treat seeing (and playing!) original cabinets of some very rare arcade games. The art on some of the machines was fantastic, such as this example of the bezel art on Lady Bug:

I could just go on and on about Funspot, and truly wished it was closer to where we lived so I could visit whenever I wished.

I love seeing and playing all the games, and just being surrounded by the lights and sounds. The nostalgia is sky-high at Funspot, and I wish you could all visit.

Oh and the ticket machines? We invested about $30 in them and won just over 2000 tickets. This was enough to get an LED light strip with an MSRP of about $25, which isn’t bad at all given most the machines themselves are fun to play! I’d say it was a big success 🙂

Tomorrow we head home, which means this is the last post from this trip. We’ve had a great time and these posts have only partially described what we saw and done. There’s more on postcards, of which I sent over 100! Most of you will receive several, some will receive too many. Please look forward to them 🙂

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Bangor

August 3rd, 2021

There’s a place just outside of Bangor called Bangor Forest that contains about a dozen miles of hiking trails. One of them leads to something quite special: the Orono Bog Boardwalk.

This is a floating one-mile boardwalk through a peat bog! It starts in dense swampy forest – the ground here is very wet with lots of standing water – and after a few hundred feet emerges into a very different type of landscape.

This is the peat bog, where only very hardy plants can survive and the ground is covered in moss. To our great surprise one of the more common plants here is the carnivorous pitcher plant, and the ground was covered in them:

It takes about an hour to walk the entire boardwalk, and despite not seeing any of the animals mentioned on the information boards – such as snowshoe rabbits, cougars or leopard frogs! – we found the experience fascinating and even spent about 15 (unsuccessful) minutes trying to spot a sundew plant 🙂

Afterwards we went to a ‘museum of land transportation’, which was a giant warehouse filled with an insanely large collection of vehicles and paraphernalia from the last 120 or so years of American life. From roller skates to trains, this place had it all.

You could spend days here reading all the info sheets just for the vehicles alone, but the museum has so much more including rooms of WW2 artifacts and an encyclopedic history of road shipping in Maine. It’s the work of one man (who owned a trucking company) and is one of the most impressive private museums I’ve ever visited.

Shortly after we left it started raining, which was somewhat appropriate since we then (after a visit to a casino where I won $23!) went to visit Stephen King!

Yes that’s his home, but no he no longer lives there. As Bangor’s most famous resident his house has become a tourist attraction, and while it’s gated and doesn’t do tours, there’s an endless stream of people stopping briefly for a quick photo. One lady we saw yesterday had a red balloon with her as well, an obvious nod to King’s novel It 🙂

I write this from our final destination on this trip… but you’ll have to wait for the next post to see where that is!

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Portland

August 1st, 2021

To break up the drive north, we spent a night in Portland. On the way we stopped at New Hampshire’s beach resort Hampton Beach, which was way better than we expected.

We spent a few hours there in the boardwalk shops and arcades before continuing on to our Portland hotel. The rest of the day was shopping (including in a great comic shop) and lazing around like sloths.

The next morning we visited two lighthouses. The first was the over-200-year-old Portland Head Light, which was breathtaking!

The area around the park is now parkland, and has a lovely cliff walk that provides great views of the lighthouse (which is still functioning) from several angles.

It was a beautiful morning and the sound of the waves on the rocks was occasionally broken by a bell from a buoy or the engine noise of a fishing boat going out for the day. Standing on the cliff and looking out over the water was mesmerizing.

Next we drove a few miles north to a second (active) lighthouse built at the end of a jetty like the one I crossed in Provincetown.

Once again KLS waited on the shore (these rocks weren’t trivial to negotiate) and I sprinted out for a close look.

It was bigger than expected and seemed to be occupied! It was also well fortified with trapdoors limited access and preventing trespassing – probably a good thing since it’s built right next to a university campus!

While quite different, both of these lighthouses were great to see especially up close! If you’re ever traveling and have a chance to visit a lighthouse, I recommend it!

The other thing we did today was visited a fort in the Maine capital of Augusta. We took an excellent guided tour that covered the history of the fort as well as what life in those days (>200 years ago) was like. It was definitely worth the stop. Unfortunately I didn’t take a single photo so the one above I borrowed from the internet 🙂

Oh yes we’re in Maine, which is famous for moose. We’ve seen signs warning of them, but haven’t seen any yet. The closest we’ve got was this life-sized statue at a rest stop:

Imagine running into one of them in the wild!!

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Salem

July 30th, 2021

On the way to Salem we stopped at Plymouth to visit a reproduction of The Mayflower and see the famous Plymouth Rock.

Both were worth the trip! Afterwards we ate fish’n’chips on the wharf and then walked out into the jetty you can see in the background of the above photo.

Kids were ‘fishing’ for crabs from the bridge, and we watched them lower nets down and pull up crabs almost immediately! It was quite extraordinary to see, and I imagined how much I would have loved doing something like that as a kid. (The crabs were smallish, and they release them all when they’re done.)

After our stop in Plymouth we drove to Salem, our second major destination.

Salem is one of the most unique places I’ve ever visited. While it has a rich history – only a small part of which involves witches – the tourist industry has become a quirky blend of witches and horror movies and magic. There’s dozens of shops and attractions crammed into only a few blocks selling all sorts of ‘witchy’ souvenirs or offering magical experiences. The town has embraced witches 110%, and that’s why the tourists are here 🙂

We of course partook, and bought some insane stuff. I also found an amazing comic/collectibles shop and we stumbled upon an extraordinary artist in his studio and bought a framed print of an octopus directly from him!

Oh and I had a Pluto Pup. Or a Dagwood Dog. Or a Corndog. Whatever you call it, it was fantastic:

And KLS had these:

The macaroon flavours were earl grey tea, lavender, rose, chocolate, lemon and birthday cakes! The other thing was chocolate mouse with a thin crunchy center and a mirror glaze. She said it was all fabulous 🙂

Salem was great and weird and well worth the trip (and I didn’t even mention the tourist trolley or the wax museum we did), but it’s now time to continue our road trip. Where will be going next…?

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Cape Cod

July 28th, 2021

We’re on a road trip vacation, and our first two days have been in cape cod. Due to a covid outbreak in these parts, we’ve restricted our activities to outdoor only, which isn’t hard with the beautiful weather and lots to see.

Yesterday we visited two salt marshes. Boardwalks had been constructed over them so you could walk above. We learned that they have plans to rebuild the platforms six feet higher due to future sea level rise.

At the second one the tide was coming in and we watched thousands of crabs and fish moving around as the little pools filled with water. It was mesmerizing!

We then walked along a two mile beach, well past the swimming area, and into dunes where protected birds nest. We were charmed by plovers darting in and out of the waves as they fed. The beach was quite nice and very popular, with loads of people sunbathing and splashing about. We didn’t bring swimmers, so walked in the waves to cool our feet 🙂

Today we went to Provincetown where I walked a causeway across to a sand island (while kls waited, since it was a bit risky for her). It was a challenging walk since the rocks were not level, and a few times I had to jump! Roses are about 9 feet here, and it was low tide when I crossed; I learned that at high tide the waters lap at the top of the causeway. It was extremely windy and a little chill, and the return trip took me 51 minutes! Not bad for a hike that they claim takes an hour each way 🙂

Provincetown is a popular tourist town on the very end of the cape known for its LGBTQ community. The homes and gardens are beautiful and immaculately kept and – since we looked at some listings in a realtor – incredibly expensive!

Provincetown is also in the news right now for recently having a bad covid-19 outbreak and for the first time in many months we were masked everywhere (and so was almost everyone else we saw). It was a bit strange, but I fear it’s the near-future of most of the world (due to Delta) so we may as well get used to it.

We had lunch from a near the pier which serves fresh (fried) seafood. My flounder burger was great but KLS says her scallop roll was ‘beyond excellent’. Even better than the lobster roll she had yesterday!

Afterwards we went and visited the location where Marconi sent his first transmission to England. There was a nearby hike through a swamp which looked great but was ‘infested’ (according to the sign) with ticks and also (according to reviews) with mozzies so we piked out and moved on. Needless to say there’s been a good deal of souvenir shopping as well; mostly for salt-water taffy 🙂

Tomorrow we move to destination #2. I’ll leave you in suspense as to where that will be…

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