Ghosts and Gunshots

A year or two ago I stumbled across a website that talked about the Babson Boulders in Gloucester. I am not going to claim to be an authority about this area, I found these websites useful in learning a bit about the area and how to get there (one, two) and from what I read it was a place I wanted to explore. On this beautiful fall day a friend suggested an outside adventure so I suggested we try to find these infamous Babson Boulders of Dogtown with inspirational words and phrases carved on them. And Dogtown is referred to as a ghost town so given that Halloween is right around the corner it seemed an appropriate adventure. 

We found our way to the parking lot which was full of cars, checked the information board where they provide maps, picked up a map and headed out. 

 

And then we heard gunshots. This beautiful serene place where we thought we would just be hunting ghosts turned in to dodging bullets. We knew there was a shooting range near by but then we saw hunters emerge from the woods. They informed us that there was at least one more pair hunting and that the woods were stocked with pheasant. Had we known we probably would not have chosen this as our destination for the day or at least worn some florescent orange. The hunters assured us we would not be confused for pheasants and we decided we were up for the adventure so we continued on. 

And found the boulders, some of them at least, I believe there are 24 and we found 14. 

It was a beautiful place to hike, I look forward to going back and finding the rest of the boulders and of Dogtown but next time will make sure it's not hunting season. It was not a nice relaxing journey to connect with nature when there were gunshots from hunters & the shooting range and we were anxious about ending up in the crossfire. We did a lot of loud talking to make our presence known and we didn't see any pheasants. We were really surprised that on our way in and when we stopped to pick up the map there was nothing indicating that hunting was allowed or that it was hunting season. 

The only indication we found was this sign high up on a tree on one of the trails as we were heading back out to the parking lot. 

So we headed to Good Harbor in Gloucester to relax a little with a walk on the beach. 

This sign to cross over to the beach wasn't the friendliest invitation but was better than gunshots.