Stranded

The day started out with big rain, which meant that JR's fun-filled birthday adventure plans had to be postponed. Instead of a long outdoor romp in the woods we decided a cold, rainy Saturday afternoon was a perfect opportunity to explore a new town and brewery our friends Stewart and Ryan recommended last night: s Haverhill, MA.

Haverhill (founded 1640) was once the gem of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it did have a big-time shoe-making industry, and was known for a while as Queen Slipper City, which is a pretty sweet, if weird, nickname. Another fun wiki-fact is that Haverhill was the site of the Haverhill Fever, also known as Rat Bite fever, in 1926-- something the Haverhill history museum failed to tell us, believe it or not!

Our primary interest in Haverhill, besides being told it was a very cool historical town on a river, was the Haverhill Brewery, which came highly recommended (and was in fact fantastic). Before making it there, we stopped at the historical society/Haverhill Museum to see if we might hear some interesting history or get some good local tips on places to explore.

We ended up talking to Wilbur (name changed to protect his privacy) for about an hour-- because Wilbur it turns out is a one-man New England travel agency and he had all sorts of great ideas about where to go in MA, NH, VT and ME. My personal favorite was Adventure Suites in New Hampshire which has exotic and enticing rooms one can stay in such as "The Cave", "Love Shack", "The Tree House", "Motorcycle Madness" and "Dragon's Lair". According to the Boston Globe "it's like sleeping in a theme park". We love it.

After looking through Wilbur's historic New England travel book collection and with armfuls of travel brochures, we ventured out into the rain. We headed to the nearest riverside trail, which turned out to be a walk along what we christened "trash trail". It was very romantic. We were below the level of the road beside the river, mostly walking on wet branches and trash. But we saw some birds, and there was a nice river, and, you know, it was only raining lightly.... We were glad that we didn't have anyone visiting us this weekend.

After our nice nature hike, we decided it was time for the brewery. It was interesting walking through the old shoe factory district - we found cool murals in some alley-ways, which seemed a bit of an odd place for historical murals, but whatever.





The Haverhill Brewery, which is located in a pub called The Tap is fantastic-- and we had several pints and some great homemade chilli. The place itself was old and cosy, and we flipped through some of our new travel brochures. After two pints for Grumpus and one for Mumpus, we decided that it was time to call it a day, so we went back to the car. When we got back to the car we couldn't find the keys. Anywhere. Not on the ground, not in our bags, not in The Tap -- nowhere. It was terrible.

We called AAA, and 20 minutes later the dude who uses a balloon-link tool to unlock car doors showed up. He was able to open the door but, alas, the keys were not in the car. Even more terrible!

We then learned about the most wonderful person in the world: the cut-a-new-car-key-in-a-van-so-idiots-like-grumpus-can-drive-home-man. After waiting for 45 more minutes, the key-man showed up, drilled a hole in the side of our door, read the key code on the inside and went back to a machine in the van that cut two new keys in about 5 minutes. He gave us the keys, we paid him, and then we were gotta there.

Our planned adventure was a lot more fun than the unplanned one, and we were happy to make it home with our car tonight.

Mumpus' Birthday!

Tomorrow is Mumpus' Birthday! So today I've decided to post a few pictures celebrating Mumpus at her finest, funniest and best.


Mumpus running on the frozen lake in Maine.


Mumpus enjoying a turkey leg at the Topsfield Fair.
Mumpus and the turtle we found and saved on the Minuteman Bike Trail.
Mumpus and Grumpus at the Taj after getting engaged.
Mumpus and her friend the goat in Israel.

Mumpus flexing at the Dead Sea.
Mumpus overlooking the Ganges in India.
Mumpus balancing at Balance Rock in Central Mass.
Mumpus getting ready for some candle pin bowling in Sommerville.

Scroll down and watch Grumpus Jump Across the River!

*Disclaimer* Yesterday was NOT a fun-day. JR went to
an energy conference at Tufts and Allie went shopping (which I’ve hated ever
since living in China because a) nothing fit my shoulders/bust/height and b) I had
to bargain hard for everything.) So our post this week will have 1) stuff about our
lame-Saturday and 2) a retrospective adventure from this winter.

 Tufts Energy Conference and Poorly Spent Tax Dollars

At the End of the World

Yesterday we had a great but exhausting day exploring. Our journey started at the End of the World (aka World's End) in Hingham, MA, a set of 2 peninsulas jutting out into the Massachusetts Bay, cris-crossed with carriage paths for houses that were never built.

It was perfect weather for hiking around, and we started with a scenic picnic by a tidal river (that was flowing inland very quickly while we were there). After lunch, we had a mini-adventure through the underbrush, and discovered a tidal pool filled with baby fish. Grumpus thought that they were going to die there, but Mumpus argued that they'd go back into the sea at high tide. The issue remains unresolved.

Next, we walked to the main land bridge connecting the peninsulas and had a black swan sighting (by Allie, aka Mumpus), although JR wouldn't believe it, and insisted I saw a black duck (not true). It was at this point that we noticed that no one else was looking at the black waterfowl or the rest of the nature. We also saw huge hawks (one was carrying a baby snake), and a large white egret. It was a little sad that so many people paid $5 to go to such an incredible park but were too involved with their conversations and lives to look around and see the nature. The only comment we heard about the scenery was from a guy exclaiming that "the skyline was beautiful."


The other highlight for Allie was making new discoveries about rocks in budding her career as an amateur geologist (She loves rocks, and we discovered the rocks at the world's end are both of the Puddlestone and Slate variety-- although there's a smaller chance they were Argillite.) Either way, we had fun throwing them against bigger rocks to have them break into perfectly flat pieces.

After finally making out way out of the nature, Grumpus, out of the corner of his eye, noticed a wonderful thing: FRESH MARKET (A grocery his mom goes to in the Cleve), and we made an amazing detour to this cheaper, better but equally sheeshee alternative to Whole Foods (it plays classical music over the loud speakers). Inside we had samples of: babyback ribs, fancy juice, cake, delicious vegetarian meatballs, curry chicken salad, and Easter m&m's. Those of you who know me well know that I can't resist grocery stores, and for once JR was just as happy as me to spent an hour looking at varieties of seafood, breads, sauces, produce and beer. Oh and I got the most amazing Fine Cooking Magazine of Indulgent Delicious Breakfasts--- Naomi you must see this you will love it- and I think I'll need your help making some of it. OH and I finally got a good recipe to make Masala Chai using the spices we got in India last summer

Finally, we stopped at a Borders going out of business and got half a dozen great books. These included: 2 books on rocks for Mumpus, a book on the history of Medford, (our current home-town, founded in 1630), Shackleton's book describing his last Antarctic Expedition (to inspire us as adventurers), Barbarians at the Gate and Winner-Take-All Politics (both obviously bought by Grumpus).

Tonight the adventure continues with a seder for the Boston diplomatic corps (our first seder in years) .....

Witches, Moms and Sticks

This week we had a special guest: JR's Mom. She flew into town on Thursday evening and joined us for our adventure on Saturday. The first part of the adventure, a trip to the Willowdale, where we'll be getting married in November, was more exciting for Mom and Mumpus than it was for Grumpus. After doing a tour of the venue, we struck out into the woods.

We started by heading off of the trail and towards a bridge, which we scaled and followed into the woods. There was a fresh snow on the ground even though it's April, so we walked through the slush (or "muckus") according to JR. The first exciting thing was a tree that needed to be climbed, so JR decided to climb it. I'm still looking for adventurous things to do on these adventures, so I jumped at the chance to climb the tree. Alas, I only got to the first branch, and Mom and Allie weren't impressed, so we continued on.

One of the sad and interesting impacts of the massive amounts of snow this winter was the number of trees that cracked, lost branches or fell over and died. We passed one of these that looked as though part of it decayed, and the snow became too much and it fell over. We'd never seen a tree that was broken in such a jagged manner, so it was really cool to look at it.

We came to a clearing in the woods and instead of retracing our steps, Allie decided to lead up (walking stick in hand) through the clearing and back a new way. There was no path, and the route was unclear, but she led us with skill and expertise, and we eventually returned to the car after all three of us had our turn with the walking stick.

Despite the late season snow, it was a beautiful hike, and I'm glad we're getting married in this area.

On to Salem, MA- famous for its Witch Trials of 1692 - where we were greeted by the full MA Calvary (about 8 horses) and marine troops for their annual muster (review). We went to Salem hoping to browse some shops and visit the Peabody-Essex Museum, but sadly the shops seemed to exclusively sell witch and paranormal paraphernalia, so we stuck with the Museum. For those of you living in the Boston area: you can get FREE or heavily discounted tickets to local museums at your local library (if you book ahead)! The Museum was great, as usual, although quite crowded. The exhibit of Dutch masters was particularly crowded, with people all standing nose-to-paint with giant magnifying glasses provided by the curator, peering at the details. I (Allie) thought it was a great idea at first, but it quickly got old when we couldn't see any of the painting through the crowds with their glasses.

A quick jaunt around Harvard Square, where International Pillow Fight Day was in full gear, and then dinner at Bistro 5 a fantastic hidden gem in Medford, and we were all exhausted. I fell asleep first-- at an embarrassing 9pm I think. Those who know me well probably aren't surprised :)

Anyways, not the craziest of adventures this week, but we will pick it up next week! Meanwhile JR and I continue to be swamped with the last few weeks of school.