For this entry in the “My Favorite Meal” series, we are heading back to Hingham, Massachusetts’s Scarlet Oak Tavern. Upon moving to the South Shore about ten years ago, this was the first restaurant that really took my breath away. The whole experience here is just perfect. On a winter’s night, the roaring fire, colonial […]
Scarlet Oak Tavern: My Favorite Meal Read More »
Although Plymouth, Massachusetts, will never be confused with a major metropolis, it has a surprisingly thorough and utterly delicious culinary scene. Being a tourist town, many folks think of restaurants that are lacking in taste and heavy on the wallet. Not Plymouth though. From gastropubs to upscale dining, seafood spots to ethnic restaurants, Plymouth’s got
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As a nonfiction writer, I honed my chops writing about the weird, the paranormal, and the odd. This came full circle when a post from two years ago about Primitive Crow, an antiques and primitives store in Bozrah, Connecticut, recently saw an upsurge in website traffic. This is because the Primitive Crow was featured on
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My never-ending quest to find interesting, and if possible, family-appropriate hikes continue. Living in the South Shore, although quite built up commercially and residentially, there are copious numbers of walking trails. Recently, my family and I took a trip to the Stewart/Person Preserve in Kingston, Massachusetts. With the main loop around Sylvia Place Pond about
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Located twenty miles from Boston, Lake Cochituate is a popular freshwater recreation area. With swimming, boating, and grounds for picnicking, Lake Cochituate State Park in Natick is a top destination during the summer. Visiting any time of the year though, the sparkling waters are a much-needed respite from the highly trafficked roads of the Mass
Earlier in the year during the height of the springtime pandemic, my Backyard Road Trips became so limited that I literally wrote about cleaning my basement and a living room road trip. As the weather is becoming colder, the daylight waning to a 4:30 sunset, and COVID cases spiking, it’s back to enjoying the great
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As the care for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled has progressed from state institutions to group homes and day programs, the buildings that once housed the state hospitals are left vacant. The process of deinstitutionalization has left impressive buildings to a variety of fates. Some, like Foxboro State and Taunton State Hospitals, have been
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In August, Backyard Road Trips branched out from the blog into the world of podcasting. The clever name, “Backyard Road Trips: The Podcast” was born. Take a look behind the scenes of our podcast. In early summer, my good and longtime friend Jim Wheeler, hiker, photographer, craftsman, and musician extraordinaire, contacted me about the possibility
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As Jim and I were sampling pumpkin beers a few months ago, one of us mentioned that there were notes of brown sugar in a beer that we tasted. (Listen to the podcast here). Jim offhandedly suggested that the Rolling Stones’ classic, “Brown Sugar” should be the next track to be a part of the
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With the unfortunate news that the Norwich Sea Unicorns are no longer affiliated with Major League Baseball, I felt that it was time to reflect on minor league baseball at Dodd Stadium and what it has offered the Norwich area community for the last 25 years. Dodd Stadium began hosting baseball in 1995 with the
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