I could go on and on about the Rollins State Park that we spent two hours driving through and how beautiful the colorful trees were and how refreshingly crisp the air was and how personally recharging the experience was, but I think you pretty much get the picture – it was, you know, nice.

I could also go on and on about Salem, Massachusetts, and how it’s amazingly quaint and historical but also endearing and comfortable and that, unsurprisingly, there’s an acceptance of all things Halloween – the town is internationally famous for its 1692 witch trials, after all, and even the police department uses a flying witch as its logo – but there’s nothing surprising there, either.

I would like to discuss something a little more, well, widespread: Irish pubs.

We had dinner at O’Neill’s, which – as you can guess – is an Irish pub. For some reason, I went into dinner with a different mindset; being on the road for 23 days will alter your perception of what is ‘normal’ and what is ‘expected,’ traveling through the West will alter your perception of what is a ‘normal distance,’ traveling through the South will alter your perception of what are ‘social norms,’ and traveling through small-town New England will alter your perception of what is ‘average.’

I guess I just wasn’t thinking clearly, because this Irish pub was like every other Irish pub I’ve ever been to. I could have ordered a shepherd’s pie and a Guinness or I could have ordered a chicken sandwich and a cider or I could have ordered a burger and a Smithwick’s … and it wouldn’t have mattered if I were in Chicago or Salem or Dubai.

I did some research on the topic and found that Slate had quite a few words to say on why this phenomenon exists (hint: Diageo, the parent company of Guinness, and a Dublin-based company have been exporting various flavors of pre-fabricated Irish pubs, from ‘Gaelic’ to ‘Brewery’ to ‘Traditional Pub Shop,’ since 1991), and you can read the full article here.

Maybe I was expecting something a little more … spooky. I had just photographed Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famed House of the Seven Gables, after all, and I had just purchased a Tarot deck and kids in Halloween costumes were walking around all over the place, so I guess the Salem version of the Irish pub should have been more, I don’t know, eerie, I guess.

Like I said, I didn’t really think it through. But I did have a few pints of Smithwick’s, so I suppose I’m just fine with the way things worked out.

The reason this upstanding citizen got a statue was because he wore his Pilgrim-style hat with élan and flair. And the buckles on his shoes were always gleamingly polished.

While I was taking pictures in this graveyard that sits in the middle of Salem, I kept hoping against hope that we would have a Thriller-style awakening of the dead and a dance-off with 17th-century garb. Alas, it didn’t happen.

What? I don’t get it … why is the word ‘bunghole’ funny? According to the dictionary, a ‘bunghole’ is an opening in a keg or a barrel through which liquor flows. Or a liquor store in Salem. Whichever.