i’m going to vegas in just over a week — an unanticipated second airplane-involving vacation this year because jason plays poker really well and earned a spot in a national tournament! i’m going along to cheer him on… from beside the pool.

so, what better motivation is there to finally tell you about my last vacation to new england in september? if i don’t do it now, i might never do it.

we took a very early tuesday morning flight from minneapolis to boston.

the first order of business (for jason), once we reached a less chaotic stretch of road, was a stop at dunkin’ donuts. i met “gronk” there and since i’m a good groupie for just about anyone, i took my photo with him. and i took jason’s photo with him, too.

then we continued on to a very rainy, miserable salem.

i had bought what i thought would be an umbrella large enough to cover two people, so was quite disappointed when it proved to barely cover half a person. so we got a little soaked and maybe a little cranky. we took refuge in salem beer works — i ate shark for the first time! and certainly not the last time. it tasted so badass.

when the rain seemed like it was over, we ducked across the street into count orlok’s nightmare gallery: life-size replicas of people and monsters from countless horror movies! photos weren’t allowed inside, but it was pretty darn neat. i would’ve taken my photo with vincent price and alfred hitchcock but all of the monsters were actually kinda scary. some of them looked like they were just holding really still! what if they had grabbed me??

we stopped at a gift shop where jason put on his best pirate face:

behind that, we explored the oldest cemetery in salem.

cemetery squirrel!

then it was time for witchy stuff.

that guy isn’t a witch. he’s some sort of town founder or something. but i thought it looked like a cool statue despite his lack of interestingness.

it was difficult to take photos inside of the salem witch museum because it was very dark. and maybe photography was prohibited there, too? i don’t remember. but it was an interesting set up: it was like theatre in the round except the theatre was all around you — all of the seats were in the middle of the room and as the recorded story played, various dioramas would light up to show still scenes of the whole salem witch trials history. then we walked through a brief exhibit explaining why witches are so stereotyped and people should be more understanding of others’ ways of life.

i think that goes for just about anything, you know?

the witch dungeon museum was similar, but with just an excerpt of the story acted out by real people. afterwards there was a guided tour of replica dungeons in which those that had been accused of practicing witchcraft would’ve been forced to stay in. it would’ve been very uncomfortable. it’s amazing (read: appalling) how some humans treat other humans sometimes.

in other news, here is a nerdy picture of me with samantha of bewitched.

and as we were preparing to leave salem (we missed so much due to the rain and poor planning — i hope to return), i found a mega slug! the only other place i’ve seen slugs this big (probably bigger) was in morton, washington. i was excited!

my foot for scale — size 9 shoe. just fyi. that slug is big.

on our way over to new hampshire (where were staying with family for the first days of our trip), we stopped at another old cemetery for photo ops.

when we got to new hampshire finally, we met one of our hosts: paco.

to be continued (assuming i don’t get too distracted by shiny things in the next week)…