Boston was a bust. The Freedom Trail offered no freedom: just tourists, intense heat, and tons of humidity. That’s the risk of visiting in mid-August. The highlight was the view from our room at AKA Boston Commons.
A room with a view.
The next morning we continued with a leisurely coastal drive to Portland, Maine.
Dave and I, like countless others, spent the summer enjoying Widow’s Bay, a creepy, dark comedy set in a small Martha’s Vineyard-esque town. A bit of googling led us to the film locations, some of which were along our route.
Downtown Gloucester.
Depending on how obsessed you are with the series, you could easily spend the day checking off the site list. But that kind of treasure hunt wasn’t on our agenda. We stopped for pastries in Gloucester (on the location list), then headed to Rockport (also on the list) to visit Halibut Point State Park.
Located on the northern tip of Cape Ann, the park is the former home of Babson Farm Quarry, where, from around 1840 to 1929, workers cut the Point’s 450-million-year-old granite into massive blocks of stone.
The quarry floor, once dry, is now filled with years of rain, runoff, and springs.
In its day, granite quarried here paved roads and built bridges, tunnels, and buildings nationally and globally.
Babson Farm Quarry.
We took the self-guided quarry tour, which provided some fascinating history of the area.
The grout pile-with a view.
A view from the Point.
For further exploration, the park and nearby Halibut Point Reservation also offer tide pooling, birding, and coastal hiking trails, plus sweeping ocean views.
Dave and I were craving a seaside lunch. Why does it always take longer to find a place to eat when you’re ravenous? After a forty-minute drive to nowhere (which turned out to be closed on Tuesdays), we stopped at Bob Lobster, a local favorite, in Newbury, MA.
It didn’t disappoint; those lobster rolls were amazing.