Yesterday's little hiking adventure took place in Dogtown in Gloucester. (You'll note once again that I made it out of the woods alive. Heh.) Dogtown was once a town or settlement that was abandoned, and though the houses are all long gone, you can supposedly find the old wells and cellars if you are on the right path through the woods. Which is pretty cool if you ask me, but we all know I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, right?
Well, we didn't particularly find those, but we did come across a spattering of boulders that had mottoes inscribed on them (in the '20s, according to my hiking book) like Integrity and Intelligence and Kindness. Why anyone would think that carving random virtues on random rocks in the woods was a fine idea, I don't know, but it was amusing. I should probably do the google and find out more about this. Maybe tomorrow when I'm waiting for HVAC Guy!
Before we went hiking in Dogtown, we went to lunch at the Gulu Gulu Cafe in Salem, which was a very cute place with yummy paninis and well-meaning but hapless servers. Actually, our hapless server implied that it was the substitute cook who was to blame for the interminable wait time, but in any case, our cafe au laits were comped and I wasn't too miffed. I was more miffed at myself for forgetting it's freaking October, i.e., not the time to go into downtown Salem on a nice weekend day.
But seeing as I did, I will give you Andrea's Little Helpful Hint: if you go to downtown Salem on an October weekend, do not pay the exorbitant parking prices they are suckering the tourists with. Park, instead, in the commuter rail parking lot, which is free and also 3/4ths empty on the weekend. No one will check that you are not actually taking a train anywhere.
You're welcome!
xoxo
9 comments:
Hey, I was about to do the Dogtown Google.
But since you volunteered, first (or at least, before I blogged my unhappiness with the Sox lack of offense) I'll leave it to you.
Perhaps all those rock-hard virtues are intended to be avoided, that's why they've been abandoned in the woods?
My googling was somewhat contradictory. They're the Babson rocks, named for a decendent of the guy who founded Babson, the college. In one version of what I found, he commissioned unemployed stonecutters to do them during the depression (contradicting the '20s info in the hiking guide.) But I also found a quote from him that sort of implies he did the carving himself and his family was pissed about it. Maybe he helped the unemployed stonecutters?
Anyway, there are apparently like 24 different ones, so we missed 5/6ths of them.
5/6th of them? Then it's like we didn't see them at all. :)
I wonder if anyone's mapped them out--would make for some good adventuring, trying to find them all and mark them exactly with a GPS--but I'd almost think someone's already done that since it seems like such an obvious thing to do.
Did you find out anything more about Dogtown itself? When it was? Why'd it disappear? Were we anywhere near the actual town?
OMG! I didn't know there was an essay assigned! :-)
Here's what Wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown,_Massachusetts
You'll note it also contradicts my info about how many Babson Rocks there are.
Yeh it was a Babson commission all right. Dogtown was where Gloucester's most down and out citizens--mostly women--lived. They kept really nasty dogs for protection, hence the name.
I once had a gig in the industrial park and the best thing about it was seeing how much of Dogtown I could hike on my lunch hour.
You missed out the part about being able to tell the skanky Gloucester bars by the proportion of concrete block to window in their facades ;)
I may boycott Salem this Halloween if they still mean to fuck over the MDA-benefiting Harley ride to Bickering Dwarf. I loved that event!
I've got to say, I've gotten more blog comments and e-mails about Dogtown than any subject since underwear. :-)
Everyone's like "oh, Dogtown! I love Dogtown!" leaving me to wonder why the hell *I'd* never been there before.
So, according to a non-AMC hiking book I perused in the bookstore, Dogtown has 9 miles of trails... I was unclear if that was all of them combined, or just the circumference, or what.
Especially unclear since both that book and the new edition of the AMC had no maps of Dogtown, just written descriptions and the information that the paths were neither well marked nor well maintained.
That's really helpful when you're lost in the wild for six days due to unmarked paths. :p
Some of the trails are roads, some are so-so marked, and some are like, where's your sense of adventure, dude?
I recall there are two books with maps of Dogtown, they don't agree and IMHO, they are *both* right. Bring a compass, and it's all surrounded by paved road anyway.
That's the thing. You can't get lost for six days because eventually you find the road. The road may be a long effin' way from where you left the car :-)
I think that's my new hiking motto: always bring taxi fare.
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