Robot Claw

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!

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…?