New England Foliage Blog →
Foliage Forum Regulars Tour Salem!
Putting faces with the names of forum writers
by Jeff "Foliage" Folger
The With House at the corner of Essex and North streets
I captured Mary Jo and Leroy during the day.
Posing with Samantha
One of Mary Jo's favorite shots that she took this fall.
One of Mary Jo's favorite shots that she took this fall.
I have to admit that I took this with their camera just to show that I don't need a big fancy camera to take a nice shot. That is the Marblehead Old Town House in the background.
Greetings, Foliage Peepers!
One of the more enjoyable things I got to do this fall foliage season was to meet a few of the Yankee foliage forum members. I was able to finish my stay in Barre, MA, over the Columbus Day weekend on Monday and then Tuesday I met Mary Jo and her husband Leroy for a tour of Salem.
They (Mary Jo & Leroy) had already been touring around New England for the better part of two weeks and they were ready for a little slower paced day taking in the sights of Salem.
I started them off at the Witch Dungeon Museum on Lynde street. The WDM is one of the better tours that you can do in Salem to learn about the witch trials of 1692. They start you out with a theater production of a witch trial and from there you head down to the dungeons where you see what the dungeons would have been like for the poor souls incarcerated during that time.
Mary Jo and Leroy were enthralled with this first stop and I then took them to the Witch House at the corner of Essex and North streets. The name witch house is a bit of a misnomer since the only relation this house has to witches (who weren't witches at all) is that one of the presiding judges, Jonathan Corwin, lived in the home.
It's the last remaining building from 1692 that has a link to the witch trials. There are several other buildings from that period but they don't have this tragic link to the witch trials.
I took the tour with them since it had been many years since I last went through it. In fact, I may have been a child the last time! So we followed the young woman who went from room to room detailing the different functions of each room and what could have been expected in that day and time.
We finished that tour and I had them walk across the street to the "Bewitched" statue of Elizabeth Montgomery, aka (Samantha Stevens) and I took their picture there.
Then we went to Reds sandwich shop on central St. Red's is one of those "must-eat" places and eat well we did. This is the place to bring your appetite to, since the portions are large and the prices aren't.
We then went to the Nightmare factory and Dracula's castle witch (pun intended) are two of the best haunted houses in Salem. We also went through the Nightmare Gallery which is less haunting but still a great walk through tribute to the greatest masters of the macabre and monsters of Hollywood.
I won't say Mary Jo is timid but in the scarier places she stuck between Leroy and me in hopes of keeping the zombies at least an arm's length away! (Or that they would take Leroy or me first...)
We headed over to Marblehead to walk through Abbot Hall on Washington street to view the painting, The Spirit of '76, which is housed behind glass in the meeting room. After which we headed down into the old town to widow shop before meeting Lisa for dinner at the Barnacle Restaurant on Front street.
There are many restaurants to choose from in Marblehead but this one is a little more rustic with a view of the water. So after a bright sunny day with mild fall temps, we breathed in the fresh sea air and enjoyed telling each other tales of our foliage leaf peeping.
We soon parted ways as they had to head off to Ogunquit, Maine.
I doubt that I will always be able to make time in my schedule to meet with the forum members who come up to New England, but if you post your itinerary, I will see if our schedules overlap somewhere. I really enjoy putting a face to the posts.
Also of note is I'm not a tour operator or a historian (hardly) and I have no affiliations with any of the above mentioned historical locations or businesses. They are merely places that I have visited and I enjoy nothing more.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them here in the comments section or over in the foliage forum and I and the other forum regulars will do their best to answer them
Reader Comments
Comment from Donna Frost on January 3, 2009
Hey Mary Jo and Leroy, it was great to "see" you via Jeff's blog. Looks like the colors were perfect during your visit. Hope you enjoyed Red's. Friends and I went there a couple of years ago on Jeff's advice and all were very happy with it. It's like the restaurants we remember from our youths.
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