Boston/Salem - Minuteman Commuter Bikeway (9/1 - 9/8/2025)

We are now spending some time in Massachusetts to ride some more bike trails and to visit several significant historical sites. We stayed at Spacious Skies Minute Man northwest of Boston. Our main purpose here is to ride the HoF Rail Trail named Minuteman Commuter Bikeway. We also visited and took tours in Boston and Salem during this stop.

Growing up, I loved to watch the TV series "Cheers" for many years. So when we got to Boston for a history-based bar crawl/tour, we had to stop into Cheers to see what was there.

Of course this was a typical tourist trap, but was nice to see what they did to try and recreate the set of the TV show. I'm sure it was done to scale, but it seemed smaller in person than I remember from watching the show.

They even labeled bar locations with everybody's favorite spots. Obviously I sat on Frazier's bar stool. Norm's spot was on the other end of the bar.

After our tour, we went for some fresh seafood at the Union Oyster House.

For our bike ride, we started at the Bedford Depot to begin our ride of the Minuteman Commuter Bikeway. The trail passes by the town of Lexington that has major Revolutionary history and ends at the Alewife train station. We took the subway from the Alewife station to get to downtown Boston.

The trail is not very long at just over 10 miles, but is fully paved and in good condition. There was also quite a bit of riders and walkers on this popular trail. We just spent one day riding the entire trail out and back.

The trail was mostly wooded even though it resides in a fairly urban area just outside Boston. Overall it was a nice trail even though it was a shorter trail.

We also discovered the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail nearby that we even enjoyed more. This trail was also fully-paved and was just over 20 miles.

This trail is a little more rural and relaxing we thought. We didn't ride all of this trail, but did most of it.

A day off from the bikes we took a history tour of Salem to learn more about the witch trials in the late 1,600's.

Salem is on the water and has a nice harbor where hundreds of boats are moored.

The Ropes Mansion was built in 1627 and is one of the most iconic homes in New England. This house was also used in the Disney movie Hocus Pocus.

Walking through the city you see they maintained the architecture from hundreds of years ago.

Our campsite had one of the best fire pits I have ever seen.

This campground was also almost completely wooded. I was very surprised when I could still use my Starlink satellite for internet with only this small window of the sky to point towards.

Our next stop we move further south into MA to visit Plymouth, Cape Cod, Provincetown, and Providence, RI where we will also ride more trails. Check out my next blog post to find out what we did...