This year, Halloween came and went with barely a blip on the radar. It wasn't meant to be this way but my usual month-long festival of horror films was never going to be in the cards since we'd planned on being away the last half of October. Actually, we did go away on an oft-postponed Bucket List Road Trip to view the Autumnal splendor of western New England. 

Well, that was our intention, anyway. As sometimes happens with the best intentions, shit backfired and we ended up returning to southeast Florida a mere 9 days after first setting out. There was a cracked windshield along the way, and then a roofing nail found its way into a front tire as we drove around the historic district of Alexandria, VA. After getting the tire repaired, we headed out to Mount Vernon, George Washington's picturesque home on the Potomac River, where we toured the property with hordes--literally, hordes--of high school and middle school students, all of us jammed tightly together in the long, narrow hallways of the first American president's splendid mansion. In retrospect, that may not have been such a great idea, given the paucity of masks amongst the attendees, ourselves included (in fact, our own masks, forgotten and unloved, rested peacefully in the glove compartment of our car at that very moment). 

By the time we reached the Connecticut state line the next day, the sky darkened and began to drizzle as the storied fall foliage grew ever more obscured by thick blankets of fog and mist. A celebratory dinner with a close college friend and his family (who just happened to be in the area at the same time as us) brightened our mood considerably but, alas, things went downhill after that. 

The weather conditions were less than ideal the following morning when our train pulled into the station in bustling Salem, MA, where ALL of October is Halloween. Ordinarily this would be my kind of town, except on this cold and rainy Sunday, approximately 100,000 other visitors had deemed Salem to be their kind of town, too. There were huge lines of people everywhere: lines for the loo, lines for the cafes, even lines for all the shops in the neighborhood. And forget about getting in to see any exhibits, or the buildings made famous in history books, literature and film. Not happening. It was our fault, of course, for not better researching this segment of our trip, otherwise, we'd have known that people come from all over the world to experience the witching season in one of the most iconic of American settings. Luckily, we'd been to Salem a few summers before and managed to see the most prominent sights. My advice: if you want to spend time in Salem during the month of October, book your hotel room a year in advance and plan accordingly. If you are on an ill-advised road trip like we were, you'll need to consider what to do with your car, too, as we'd heard that not a parking space is to be found in those final weeks of October (hence our arrival via train). 

We'd considered making scenic Nashua, NH, a sort of headquarters for our wanderings but, after the soggy, dispiriting day in Salem, we hit the road once more, hoping to catch a glimpse of the spectacular colors between Nashua and Bennington, VT. Dublin and Peterborough, both in New Hampshire, looked like cool old villages but it was too nasty out for us to embark on any strolls, although we did manage a brief hike around the college town of Keene, once home to New Hampshire's pumpkin festival. Later that day, I had the urge to explore picturesque Brattleboro, VT, as we passed through town but the closest I got was when we pulled over so I could pop into the local Dollar Store and use the lav. By the time we turned south onto Highway 7 and wound up in rainy Williamstown, MA, the road trip was about to catch up with us. C began feeling unwell. Really unwell. Uh-oh. Was it possible that a stealthy airborne guest had taken up residence in C's nasal cavities? Well, yes, as it happened, yes indeedy, it was possible. 

And there it was, the icing on the cake, confirmed by a COVID test we picked up at a Walgreens store in beautiful downtown Great Barrington. Hastening down Highway 7, we were, by this time, oblivious to the unseen scenery lurking just behind the thin membrane of mist and drizzle that had plagued our stay in New England. On we drove, with barely a glance at the lovely villages we sped through, noting only that someday--somehow--we would return, though likely wearing masks, and during a season less prone to days-long drear. 

So anyway, that was that. 

By the time we hit New York the weather was clearing up, naturally, but we proceeded on, determined as I was to get C home before any infection moved to his lungs. After two short nights on the road with C periodically swallowing Coricidin to stifle some of the sniffling and coughing, we made it home in one piece. C spoke to his doctor and got a prescription for Paxlovid, and it was another two days before I finally tested positive for COVID (I'd actually convinced myself that I dodged a bullet--silly me). As of this morning, he's tested negative, and, except for some sneezing and extra irritability (imagine that), I never did feel badly enough to warrant taking anything other than Coricidin or Tylenol. Other than upping my dosage of Xanax, that is. 

On Halloween night I considered popping a classic horror film in the Blu-ray player but given the events of the previous week, that just seemed repetitive. True, we hadn't had cannibalistic mutants nipping at our backsides or inbred cults setting us ablaze in plus-size wicker statues, but the microbes lurking within our bodies were no less dastardly; had we not kept our COVID vaccinations current, we might not have fared so well. And that is the silver lining. 

Even so, I would totally go back to the chilly dampness and fog of an October New England if I could spend extra time--like a month--hiking and exploring the villages and environs. That is totally my element. Unfortunately, C is prone to lung infections and can't tolerate that type of weather so if I go back in any future Octobers, I'll have to go solo. Maybe he can take a trip to the tropics at the same time. BTW, I loathe anything remotely tropical, and C detests all that is cold and damp, so this seems like a perfectly reasonable trade-off to me. 

FYI: I did end up popping a classic in the Blu-ray on Halloween night but not one of the watch-from-between-your-fingers variety. Sometimes, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is all you need to lift you out of a major funk.