B-18 Plane Crash Wreckage - Woodstock, NH

During WWII, German U-Boats along the eastern coast of the United States fired upon and sank 233 American ships through a series of strikes named Operation Drumbeat. These sneak attacks were a tactic the United States was ill prepared for, and which ultimately cost 5,000 men and women their lives. In an effort to thwart them, American planes patrolled the Atlantic coast, but on the 14th of January in 1942, tragedy struck.

Having lost their bearings due to bad weather, pilots of a B-18 Bomber spotted what they thought was the city of Providence through a break in the clouds, and knowing there was an airfield in nearby Massachusetts, set their course north. It wasn't Providence they had seen however, it was Concord NH, and their search for an airfield that did not exist took them into our White Mountains. Their second and final mistake was to dip below the clouds for a peek, where the B-18 began scraping trees until crashing into the side of Mount Waternomee.

75 years later, wreckage from this tragedy still remains strewn about the mountain, and if you're up for a several mile hike with some fairly steep climbing, you can visit this crash scene for yourself.

It was nearly three years ago that I made my hike up Mt Waternomee, and as a guy who once lost his car keys in the pocket of the pants he was wearing, some of the finer details of that trip have escaped me. I was alone - having skipped out of work for a mental health day - and wandered from one chunk of metal to the next, taking pictures of each while trying not to smile.

When you visit a plane crash site in the mountains of New Hampshire, generally speaking, you're not going to find a plane but instead hundreds of pieces of metal. The remains of this B-18 were no different.

Some of the most impressive to see were the twin 1,000 hp engines this aircraft came equipped with.

Six men occupied the plane, and although two of them tragically lost their lives, four survived. According to a sign posted at the site by either family or friends of survivor Craig Fletcher, he went on to live a long and happy life back in California before retiring to Washington State.

I found a shard with a crumpled up star on it, and after spending a little time with Google found this picture of a B-18, which seems to have the same logo underneath the wing.

Unlike most adventures where we will spend a couple of hours enjoying our find, it doesn't take long to feel like you're overstaying your welcome in a place like this. One lap around the wreckage and I was ready to leave.

There are times when I am trying to tell a story and I'm lucky in that my posts seem to write themselves. If I'm describing something fun like an abandoned vehicle or a forgotten mineshaft, I can often knock out a rough draft in just one evening. Plane crashes are a whole other story, and particularly this one. Because so much about it has been written already, I didn't want to just rehash what better researchers and writers have already had to say, and instead tried to make it about my own personal trip. But that's where I kept getting stuck. Normally I try keeping my stories lighthearted and with a few laughs sprinkled in, but when you're standing at a spot where people lost their lives horrifically, there just aren't that many yucks to be had.

On my return back down the mountain I came across this narrow stream, and because I'm easily distracted, I followed it.

It led me to a small but picturesque waterfall, and although the pictures I took failed to come close at capturing its beauty, it nevertheless proved to be just the distraction I needed. After enjoying it for a while, I finished my descent feeling a little less heavy. Now I had it straight - I wasn't just returning home from seeing the remains of a terrible plane crash, I was also returning home from experiencing a wonderful day in nature.

Cave Hunting On Moose Mountain - Middleton NH

Northeast Caver Magazine, which maintains the most comprehensive list of caves within New Hampshire that I am aware of, had at last count over 200 wild caves in their database. 'Wild' means it is not one of our commercial caves, which for New Hampshire rules out just two places - the Polar Caves and Lost River. Everything else on that list is a cave sitting alone in the woods somewhere, waiting to be explored.

Within this treasure trove of a database there is one thing you will not find, and that is any limestone cave created by an underground river. We live in the Granite State, which means unlike those lucky folks down south, instead of long and winding tunnels, our caves are cubby holes and small pockets created by boulders getting tossed around during the last ice age.

A great example of one of these boulder fields is found on the south side of Moose Mountain, a region officially known as the Ellis R. Hatch Jr Wildlife Management Area. There you will find a long ledge littered with thousand of boulders, creating a playground of nooks and crannies to spend an afternoon crawling through.

Our goal this day was to locate and explore the Moose Mountain Cave, the largest of several small caves along this ledge. Between our hike to the mountain and all our searching, my GPS registered just a tick under 3 total miles we traveled that afternoon. And if not for the last ten percent that found us clambering over rocks, this would have been a pleasurable walk with a couple nice sights along the way.

Pleasurable is nice, but it's not something that's going to get me out of bed early on my day off. For that I need adventure. Also, I'm part of a marriage that is one big competition, so this quickly turned into a contest of who could find the official cave first. Bragging rights for the biggest unofficial cave went to my wife Tina, who found a crawlspace that opened into an underground chamber big enough for me to hang out in. Although we referred to it as Tina's Cave, a very old bear trap outside its entrance told us we were not the original finders of this spot.

A fun cave to investigate if you don't mind getting dirty. Or eaten alive.

One of us eventually located Moose Mountain Cave near the top of the ledge, and the fact that I can't remember who it was means it wasn't me. The cave resembles a hallway, and for most people I'm guessing that walking to the end of it is their entire exploration.

But I'm also guessing that good judgement factors into most peoples explorations, and that's where our roads fork. I scoured the cave and found a small hole along the bottom-right wall which led to a second chamber, and looked barely large enough for me to slither into. I made it through the opening and into this second room, left a coin in the back as a present for the next person who dared venture inside, then posed for a couple pictures like a whack-a-mole before coming out.

In addition to being a successful exploration, Moose Mountain was a great example of one of our favorite types of adventures - it was a day spent out in nature, it was time spent doing things with friends, and it was a place that had just enough surprises to send us home that night with a couple of new stories to tell.

The Carved Stones of Newbury Massachusetts

Visiting the carved stones of Newbury is the type of adventure you go on when, after over and over failing to take serious your doctor's orders, you eventually end up with discharge papers that have the words no hiking written smack across the middle of them.

The Newbury Stones are roadside markers that take us back to the early 1700s, when without the aid of travelling gadgets such as Waze or Google Maps, people relied on rudimentary things such as stone markers to guide them from town to town. Ten stones still exist from the original Newbury collection, which are famous for being some of the most elaborate stone markers in all of New England.

Many of the stones had become lost over the centuries, only to be discovered in recent years either face down on the ground or tucked away on private property. Four of them were crated and shipped to the Smithsonian Museum of American History, one is in a private collection and has been replaced by a replica, but remarkably, five are back standing in the same spots they were placed nearly three hundred years ago, roadside in Newbury where anyone can drive right up and see them.


Located on a small patch of land within the intersection of Middle Road and Elm Street, is the 33 marker.

Look closely at the stone and you'll see a variety of things. On the left is the number 5 above the letter N, indicating that the center of Newbury was five miles in that direction. The right side contained the number 33 and letter B, which meant that Boston was 33 miles thataway. And below all this is the date the stone was carved, 1708.

Exactly one mile north is the only replica of the collection, the 34 marker. This was recreated from a partial piece that is now in the hands of a private collector.  Arrows point you either toward Newbury or Boston, and it also contains the date of the original stone, 1709.

By the 35 marker, travelers were close enough to Newbury it didn't seem necessary to mention it, so this stone came with only a 35 and a B, letting travelers know they had now progressed 35 miles from Boston.

In addition to being informative, each of the stones came with its own unique designs, which on this one consisted of two circles containing pie slices in each corner as well as a wavy pattern that runs along the bottom. With these clues, historians were able to piece together the identities of the various stonecarvers by matching them against similar designs carved into gravestones of nearby cemeteries.

As you arrive at the 36 stone you might just think you've run yourself in a circle, because at a glance this one appears to be the number 30. But don't be fooled, even though it looks like a cartoon bomb with a fuse sticking off it, this is a number 6. And although there's no date on the 36 stone, the triangle design did get fancier with some added loops and lines below.

The remaining mile marker is the 37 stone, which is also the least obvious to spot from the road.

Although partially sunken into the earth, the B and the 37 - plus a pinwheel on each corner - are still visible. The other side of the stone contains a mile marker for the nearby town of Ipswich, but because I short-cut my research and didn't know this at the time, I can only show you a picture of its front.

There is one more stone in the Newbury collection, and although it's not a mile marker this is the most elaborate of them all. It is called the Father Stone, featuring a two-dimensional figure dressed in 17th century garb, and was created as an entrance marker to the mansion of the family who commissioned many of the Newbury Stones, the Dummer family. That last sentence does not contain a typo. The Dummer family were prominent members of early New England society, and among their many accomplishments, their bequeathed estate led to the foundation of the Governor Dummer Academy, referred to now as just the Governor's Academy.

There is pleasure to be had in an afternoon ride, even more so when you can turn that ride into an afternoon scavenger hunt. There is also pleasure to be had in experiencing history, especially when it's history that took place close to your home. And there is pleasure to be had in the faces of passersby, as they watch from their car while you pose with a rock on the side of the road.

* To find the location of each of these stones, go to our Adventure Map and zoom in on the town of Newbury, in eastern Massachusetts. 

See also:
- The Mother Stone, now in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
- To learn more about the history of the Newbury Stones, visit www.stonestructures.org

Clinton's Abandoned Train Tunnel

Much like Pennsylvania's Abandoned Highway is a pilgrimage for cyclists to visit at least once in their lifetime, so is walking the abandoned train tunnel in Clinton Massachusetts for anyone with a taste for the creepy. This is such a popular spot to explore, you can even find it pinned as a destination on Google Maps with - as of the day I'm writing this - 72 user reviews and a 4.6 star rating.

To reach the tunnel, park at the Wachusett Dam on Boylston Street and walk north two-tenths of a mile, at which point the entrance will be across the road and a short ways into the woods. Make sure to spend a few minutes admiring the dam, though. It's quite impressive.

Between the graffiti and the darkness, those first few steps into the tunnel can be daunting. We had both flashlights and companions for our trip, and both are recommended. The little dude with the black hat is our son Logan, and the fact that he had joined us tells you this adventure took place in the days before Fortnite was created. We were also joined by our adventure friends from WeRmudfun, who you can see approximately one and a quarter of in this picture.

Inside the tunnel we stopped to take pictures of everything interesting, especially graffiti. Much of it was the kind that would make young boys snicker, but you don't usually find a canvas this big without a few well done pieces.

About halfway through, the tunnel's surface transitions from smooth cement to jagged rocks, almost as if mid-construction the budget was slashed but workers still had to finish. Someday I will get a camera with a flash so I can properly show you details such as this.

These rocky walls provided some challenging areas for the children, to see just how high up they could climb.

In total you'll walk underground somewhere near one thousand feet. Once out the far end things get pretty muddy, and if like me you're tempted to continue walking until you reach a small overpass along the trail, save your sneakers. The excitement is all in the tunnel.

If you're an explorer and you live in New England, you were already aware of the abandoned train tunnel in Clinton Massachusetts. But if you're an explorer and you live in New England, and you weren't aware of the Clinton tunnel, then you still have a little bit more exploring to do.

Ruins At Franklin Park

Anyone can be an explorer, and anyone can go on an adventure. It doesn't have to involve things like bushwhacking to the top of some mountain in search of airplane wreckage, roaming through underground WWII bunkers, or even going eyeball to eyeball with porcupines deep within a mineshaft. Exploring can be as easy as spending a day wandering one of New England's most historic and unique parks.

If you enjoy ruins, trails, history, or all of the above, then Franklin Park of Boston deserves a place right at the top of your to-do list. Several different areas make up this park, and while each alone would have made the hour and a half drive from our house worthwhile, in this case you get them all together in one giant playground.


Overlook shelter Ruins
A short walk down one of the park's well-maintained trails will bring you to the Overlook Shelter Ruins, an area that once served as a site for sporting events. The field where games took place was overlooked by a building with a viewing area for spectators. In the 1940s this building burned to the ground, and what's left of the area today are several sets of stairs, a couple seemingly random walls, and one very picturesque tunnel.

99 Steps
There are plenty of trails to explore at Franklin Park, but make sure to look for one that contains something called the 99 Steps. This trail is just what it sounds like - you'll climb for a bit, walk flat surface for a bit, climb for a bit more, and continue this way until you've accumulated a total of 99 steps. Although I lost count halfway through, I exhaled at the top and announced that yup, that was indeed 99.

As you're climbing be on the looking for these old signs, and remember Tina, no "harangues".

Ellicott Arch
Franklin Park is bisected by a road called Circuit Drive, and although you can simply walk across this road at any point, don't be fooled. Instead you want to follow a trail that leads to Ellicott Arch. This beautiful tunnel brings you underneath Circuit Drive, and its many sealed doors will have you wondering what sort of treasures are hiding behind them.

Schoolmaster Hill Ruins
Although I was familiar with the name Ralph Waldo Emerson prior to this trip, until visiting this next spot I could only have guessed at what he was famous for. High school is just too far in the past for me. But as this plaque will tell you, Emerson was among other things a poet, and lived for a period of time on this very spot.

In later years his residence was turned into a clubhouse for the golf course it overlooked, but in the 1930s it was destroyed by fire, leaving behind pillars and stairs that are now referred to as the Ruins of Schoolmaster Hill.

As much as I'd like to pretend these ruins were something we had to trek miles through the woods to find, they are actually right in the center of the park, next to the road. Panning the picture just a little will show you that on the day we went, this was home-base for volunteers of a 5k that was taking place.

Abandoned Bear Cages
This final area was so cool I considered making it a post of its own. The Franklin Park Zoo opened in 1912 and remains active to this day, however in the 1950s it underwent an extensive rehab, and not all exhibits made the cut. Left outside the new and improved zoo were these bear cages, which now sit rotting and abandoned on the north side of the park.

We didn't know the purpose of several round cages that stand within the exhibits, but they looked just about the perfect size for someone to hang out in.

I was able to crouch down and sneak my camera into the bear tunnels, and although bars prevented me from accessing them I was able to see the network of corridors bears once roamed through.

To find the location of each of these spots, visit our Adventure Map and zoom in just south of Boston until you pinpoint Franklin Park. All of them are within a miles walk from each other and marked by a blue star, and with this information, the only thing left for your own adventure is a full tank of gas and a sunny afternoon.