When we awoke, it was still cloudy but no sign of rain so we drove into central Salem and found a parking spot on the street before going out to look for some witches in Salem town. We immediately spotted a number of witches or at least people dressed in black and wearing pointy hats. We also discovered that Salem has quite a few Witch Museums, witch themed stores, fortunetellers, gift shops, witch trial walking tours, and one very cute statue of Elizabeth Montgomery, the best witch ever. We passed by the “witch house” which is a period house that used to belong to one of the judges at the witch trials but since all those executed for witchcraft were buried in unmarked graves, no one knows the location of the actual witches. There were quite a few beautiful old houses in Salem, many decorated for Halloween which provided a nice touch to the place.
We have a little video of our short stop in Salem:
The next day we drove to the town of Lexington where we took a quick look the Lexington Green where the first battle of the Revolutionary War was fought. There is no too much to see there other than green itself, now a small park and the building in which the Minutemen gathered before confronting the British. The battle of Lexington is one that neither side wanted. There were only approximately 70 Minutemen and about 800 British army troops and the Minutemen were lined along the road, not blocking the road just as a sign of protest. The British were on their way to Concord to seize the armory there so they were just passing through Lexington and not looking for a delay. However, there was a shot, nobody know who fired it but the British thought they were under attack and opened fire on the Minutemen, killing several and the rest ran away. This is known as “The shot heard around the world.”
Next we drove along the road that the British took to march to Concord, eventually reaching the Old North Bridge where the Battle of Concord took place. This was also a misunderstanding as by the time the British reached Concord the rebels had plenty of time to empty the armory of weapons. The British found a few old weapons and some suspected contraband and set it on fire in the town square of Concord. The Minutemen outside of town thought that the British were burning the town of Concord and when the British soldiers reached the Old North Bridge, a group of Minutemen went out to fight them. For the first time the Minutemen deliberately opened fire on the British troops and this is known as “The shot heard around the world.” Yeah, guess there were more than one “shot heard around the world.” Today there is a recreation of the Old North Bridge which washed away long ago and a field. There is not a whole lot to see but it was really cool knowing that we were on the hallowed ground where America was born.
On the way out of town we stopped by a Costco for gas and the gas attendant told us that RV’s often park at the Costco so instead of going to Walmart we spent a nice quiet night in Costco.