Day 13 - Salem, MA & Providence RI by Kenny & Kristen

We spent the night in a Cabela's right outside of Portland. We woke up early and were feeling pretty sore from the hike the day before. We hit the road toward Massachussets and got a few hours driving in before stopping at Newburyport to go for a run. We found a really nice water front path that gave us enough space for an out and back 5K.  Afterward we headed over to Salem, MA to do some exploring. At first we struggled to find parking, especially because the roads were really narrow and clearly not designed for road boats like ours. Eventually we stumbled upon free parking at the ferry dock, which was conveniently right beside one end of the Heritage trail and also had public restrooms. We spent a few hours learning about the history of the town, and reading a bunch about witches and pirates. And people watching! There were a lot of characters roaming the streets dressed in witches garb. This would have been an awesome place to be around Halloween, or just a town festival in general. We grabbed some icecream on the way back to the car from a place called Melt - and it was amazing! Highly recommended! Originally we were planning to go to drive from Salem, MA to Hyannis, MA to catch a ferry to Nantucket the next day. However, the weather did not work in our favor. There were maritime weather warnings caused by remnants of a tropical storm and it was expected to rain the entire next day. Unfortunately we didn't have time to hang around and try again the next day, so we decided to just start heading further south. Our adjusted destination for the night Stamford, CT, just a few hours from Providence Rhode Island. We stopped on the way for our first truck stop shower (try as we might, we couldn't find good options in MA for a beach/river to rinse off in). The showers were supposed to cost $11/person, but the guy must have felt sorry for us because he decided to give us 2 for 1 (maybe we looked that desperate after not showing for a day or two). The showers were nice and I would definitely use a truck stop shower again. A little bit later we grabbed some seafood dinner in Providence at the Shaking Crab. We had our first (and probably only) lobster roll of the trip and also grabbed some sauced-up crab legs. The food was good, but the niehgborhood was pretty loud and there was nowhere good to sit and eat. So we drove to a near by Wal-Mart and pulled out our lawn chairs and cooler table :) We did try an interesting thai sauce on the crab legs, but if we could go back and do it again, we probably would just go with butter and garlic.  A few hours later we finally made it to Stamford, CT where we were planning to stay in WalMart. Almost as soon as we got settled in, we started hearing a major ruckus coming from the Home Depot parking deck next door. There was literally a gaggle of cars street racing and doing doughnuts all over the parking lot. It felt like a scene straight up out of one of the Fast and Furious movies. We lasted about 5 minutes before we threw in the towel and switched to a Costco further down the street.

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