measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We found the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! No, really... we did. Take I-495 north toward Lowell, MA. Turn onto Rt. 2 East. About two miles in, you'll see him looming in a field. Seriously. No... really! I'm not lying! You don't believe me, do you? Well... *shoves Erich into the journal* Erich... you tell them! *grin* It was quite cool, I have to admit. We're driving down Rt. 2 Thursday night to go to Witches' Woods, which is a Halloween-themed park set up at Nashoba Valley Ski Area in Westford, MA. And as we came over a hill on Rt. 2, there was this eerie orange glow through the leafless trees. And then all of a sudden, this HUGE orange pumpkin was glowing in the darkness. Erich and I both had a Monty Python accented "Jesus CHRIST!" moment, and then cracked up laughing. A perfect way to start an evening of Halloween fun. As people who live in New England know, and quite possibly many other places don't ( I wouldn't have, if I still lived in Montana), Halloween is an extravagant affair around here. Halloween was MADE for New England, just as autumn was. In fact, Halloween is that last breath of tolerable autumn: the leaves are off the trees, and the branches give off an eerie barrenness to the world that no one has quite adjusted to. Everything crunches as people walk. Dead, dried leaves are EVERYWHERE on the ground. The nighttime air is thick with a cold heaviness that ominously warns of the winter cold only weeks away. Everything about Massachusetts has that creepy look that is perfect for Halloween. So we get to the Witches' Woods... a nice little homebrew Halloween theme park to help the ski resort in the off season. There's a graveyard tour set up in one corner, a haunted hayride off in the woods on the other. And the ski lodge has been taken over by a haunted house. Plus the standard collection of food stands... mmmmm... fried dough.... We got there around 7, by which time it was completely dark and starting to get rather chilly. We get tickets, and are in awe of one of the park actors who has a full Jack-like costume from Nightmare Before Christmas on. He's on stilts, and watching him trot in the dark after kids with huge arms stretched out just kept drawing my eye. Quite impressive. :) I recommended we do the hayride first, since they're a bit rarer at Halloween parks, and the line tends to get long. Oh how glad we were that we did this, because as we were walking over, we saw a MASS of junior high-aged humanity gathering to head over there. We ran ahead of them about thirty feet or so in order to get in FRONT of the storm. (there is nothing quite as hellish as standing behind multiple busloads of middle school kids waiting to get on an amusement ride). The hayride was mostly cheesy... goofy little roadside setups that were more amusing than they were scary, although still a bunch of fun. Plus the fact that the road they take back in the woods gets completely blocked from view through the trees, so it's completely isolated. HOWEVER... (as I hear Erich chuckling already) there also were the damn chainsaws. Two different sets of them. (grumble) Make me curl up into a ball on the back of the flatbed. And the guys running with them find a spot on the flatbed and "cut" THROUGH the grove on the flatbed. The first time I went on one of these hayrides, I was the victim who had the groove between her knees. I've been scarred by the experience, and now just curl up anytime the damn things come near me. (a healthy lifelong fear of band and table saws doesn't help, either). So Erich is laughing at the sight of me huddling next to him as we end the hayride. And then as we walk down the exit ramp, I'm wound up tight enough that simple "boo's" from people waiting in line make me jump. grrrrrr..... Oh yes, I hear the laughing out in the audience now. Leave me alone. I'm a wimp. I admit it. :) We then go through the haunted graveyard, which was again, more fun than scary... but still quite well done. Lots of running through a mini-maze of tombs and gravestones as people play booga-booga with you. They went quite heavy on the fog machine. Erich wanted to steal it. But the best part of it was the haunted house. I think most people by their twenties groan about haunted houses inwardly. We've all been victimized by so many lame ones, that it's instinctive to think it's going to be lame and stupid. I admit I did as we roped around the corners toward the door to the ski lodge cafeteria. Of course, there then was me RUNNING out the other side door about five minutes later, screaming and nearly taking Erich's shoulder out of socket as he tried to hold me from tearing off into the woods somewhere. What made this extra creepy is that we happened to come up to the haunted house when there literally was no one ahead or behind us in line. We were it. Meaning two people in a haunted house full of booga-booga actors. They could have more fun with us that way. And stupid me made the comment that Erich should go first. So then they ALL followed me in the back. And some of the actors were so still on the wall, we thought they were mannequins until they moved. Even Erich got jolted in there. It really wasn't anything huge-- just well placed, dimly lit catacombs of cardboard. But with no other visitors screaming to warn us that something might be up ahead (and KNOWING that there was something up ahead... just where and what?), it became a tomb of horrors. Particularly by the last room, where a talking skeleton was set up on one side of the room to draw attention, and there was an open casket on the other. Erich thought the body in the casket would rise up. But in reality, it was someone hiding UNDER the casket who crawled across the floor to stand up behind you. All of a sudden, I saw him crawling and just BOLTED out of the room screaming, nearly crashing into the poor soul walking into the doorway of the ski lodge going to either the bar on the 2nd floor or into the bathrooms. I had a bit of a heart patter for the next hour. I was even jumpy by the time we got back into the car. And as we'd commented off and on all evening, next year we gotta drag JT and Tan. Because I think Erich's shoulder is about done for. (sorry dear!) 9:00 a.m. - 27 October 2001 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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