New England in the Fall (Part 1)
We drove straight to Salem (30 mins), our first stop was Proctors Ledge, it's a memorial to 19 innocent people who were executed right at this spot in Salem in 1692 for the crime of witchcraft.
We then drove to Pickering House, the oldest house in the USA and onto Winter Island to see the lighthouse and the small beaches.
The next day we covered the Witch Dungeon Museum, the Salem Witch Museum, Wax Museum, Witch Village and Frankensteins Castle, all are tourist attractions and all repeat the history of the witch trials, they are not high budget - but when in Salem. We also visited a couple of Hocus Pocus film locations.
It's a very compact walkable town, has a laid back diverse vibe with lots of restaurants, shops, etc. In October people were walking around in Hallowen costumes. Great place!
We drove from Salem to South Portland on the scenic route and boy was it scenic!
Fall colours were out everywhere, we stopped off at Gloucester, Rockport, Rye and Kennebunkport. All were very pretty towns by the water and glad we stopped and took our time, around 7 hours later we arrived at our overnight hotel in South Portland.
In the morning we drove into Portland to have a wander around the town, it's a large town on the water with lots of shops, wharfs, markets, restaurants, etc.
We then went onto Fort William Park to view The Portland Head Light (Lighthouse), its only a few minutes drive from the town.
Our next stop was the White Mountains in New Hampshire, again taking the scenic route, stopping at our first covered bridge in Jackson en route (approx 4 hours total).
We stayed for 2 nights to give us some time to get out the car and do some walking trails, we spent the next day in 3 nearby State Parks and we were the only ones there, the weather was sunny and we wandered around the trees, sat by the lake and came across lovely streams, it was peaceful and beautiful.
After 2 nights we drove the scenic route through Vermont to Woodstock town and visited the famous Sugarbush Farm, we passed by covered bridges and then drove to our next overnight stop in Andover, Vermont (approx 6 hours total).
In the morning we went in search of a few more covered bridges, there are a lot in Vermont, then continued South to the next state of Connecticut, we stayed in Hartford for a night so we could visit the Mark Twain House and also Yale University.
Yale University is in a great area, very picturesque and we walked around to see the different residences.
Hartford has some beautiful buildings and a lovely park to walk around, we weren't there long but it was a nice stopover.
We continued to Rhode Island and stopped via Providence to have a look and also to grab some food, everywhere was closed as it was a Bank Holiday, so we grabbed what we could and moved on. Downtown Providence is nice but the rest of it is not great from what we saw.
The 2nd week of our holiday continues in my next blog....
Notes: Average eat out £15 to £30 for 1 course Only paid parking at 1 hotel (out of 8) No resort fees payable to the hotels