We had our home base in Bangor, Maine, for two nights, but we had a couple of important sites to see before we left this morning. The first item on our list was this:

Yep, that’s a 31-feet-tall, 3,700 pound Paul Bunyan statue, the base of which contains a sealed time capsule from 1959, slated to be opened in 2084. Pretty impressive and also pretty… spooky, right? I mean, if that thing lived in your neighborhood, you’d probably be inspired to write, say, horror novels. Kind of like Stephen King! Here’s his house around the corner from our “Maine” man (ha!) Paul:

I’ve actually never read one of Stephen King’s books (though I do enjoy his column in Entertainment Weekly), and Brian hasn’t either, but we wanted to see his awesome spooky gate with bats and three-headed dragon-monsters on it. Also, he has an Obama/Biden sign in his yard. Nice!

After that, we headed to Scarborough, Maine, where Brian said there was a roadside attraction, but he decided to keep it a secret from me to surprise me. The surprise attraction was at Len Libby’s Candies and it was (drum roll)…

A life-size moose sculpture made of chocolate! Killer combo, Len Libby’s Candies! You’ll notice that, as a bonus, there are also some life-size chocolate bear cubs scattered about the scene.

After that, we bade farewell to Maine and went back into New Hampshire:

New Hampshire, I’m sure you have a lot to offer, but I’m afraid this trip wasn’t about you. We just passed through a tiny piece of N.H. before getting back into Massachusetts!

In Massachusetts, we ended up in Boston’s evening rush hour, which was exactly as fun as it sounds, so I won’t talk about that. We had planned a couple of other stops in Mass., but timing and the cold and the traffic and whatnot foiled us, so we only visited one place on our list: Jordan’s Furniture in Reading. I can’t believe I didn’t already know about this place. Their website looks very innocent; do not be fooled. It’s a local furniture store chain in the Boston area, and each store has a different crazy theme complete with crazy stuff in it. The store we chose to visit, for example, includes an indoor trapeze school and “Beantown,” a Jelly Belly store and series of Jelly Belly mosaic–covered sculptures of iconic Boston buildings and scenes. There’s also a giant Jelly Belly banana split on top of an ice cream stand inside. I mean, I really don’t know what to tell you about it. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it was there!

Okay! Moving on, we then went to Rhode Island!

Our primary destination in Rhode Island was the Hasbro headquarters, which boasts a giant Mr. Potato Head:

After that, we headed out to Connecticut:

We’re now in for the night and are most likely going to make our way home tomorrow, with a few exciting stops as always!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 10:23 pm and is filed under 2008 New England Road Trip.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.