The Distracted Wanderer

One of my favorite places to wander to on Cape Ann's North Shore is the town of Gloucester which was one of the first English settlements in what would become the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Settled in 1623 by an expedition called the "Dorchester Company" which was appropriately made up of men from Dorchester (in the county of Dorset, England), Gloucester predates both Salem in 1626 and Boston in 1630. It is also home to a well-known sculpture that you've probably seen a time or two in your local grocery store's frozen food section but you'll read more on that later in the post! When visiting Gloucester ideally you should begin at Stage Fort Park where the Gloucester Visitor and Welcoming Center is located. Here you can park your car and hop on-board the seasonal Stage Fort Park Shuttle run by the Cape Ann Transportation Authority to see the sights or grab a map and talk to the knowledgeable staff about what to see, where to eat, and what not to mis...

As I mentioned yesterday, Jamie and I came up to Salem, Massachusetts to spend a couple of nights at the Hawthorne Hotel before bringing Amanda back down to Connecticut for her Christmas break from college.  True, I could have just driven up on Friday to pick the oldest daughter up but I was offered the opportunity to check out the two "haunted" rooms at the Hawthorne after I did a blog post about our stay here  back in September.  Turns out that the General Manager of the Hawthorne, Juli, also writes a blog and she and I struck up a bit of a correspondence after I wrote my post. When I asked her about the accuracy of the post that I had written as I hate to write something that I think is true but later turns out not to be, Juli pointed out a couple of inaccuracies based on misinformation that had been going around for awhile (there's a mix-up between the Hawthorne Hotel and the Lyceum Restaurant - both of which were featured on the same Ghost Hunters episo...