For the last 3 years I’ve challenged myself to do something Halloween or fall themed every day of October and document it on my personal Instagram. Now that we’re full-time RVers, our spooky season will be spent on the road! I’ll be documenting Spooky Season 2024 on the blog and Roaming Nelsons socials. This post will serve as a hub for all things spooky-themed, as well as a daily journal of the season- so check back regularly. If you’re looking for more spooky season reading, a big inspiration for this project has been J.W. Ocker of Odd Things I’ve Seen.
New Fall and Halloween Themed Blog Posts
- History in Stone: 10 Remarkable Illinois Cemeteries To Visit
- Exploring Abandoned Illinois: 5 (Legal) Spots You Need to Visit
- True Crime in the Heartland: Exploring the Belle Gunness Exhibit
Also make sure to check out the RV and camping themed pumpkin stencils I designed- they’re free to download!
5 Free Downloadable Camping & RV Themed Pumpkin Carving Stencils
Spooky Season 2024 Daily Blog
October 9th
We had another chill state park day, so that meant another fall recipe. This time I made french onion gnocchi- basically a thicker heartier french onion soup. I also made my favorite fall cocktail. This caramel apple cocktail is the easier thing ever, but my favorite drink this time of year.
Spooky Movie of the Night- Ginger Snaps (2000) is another teen girl horror movie favorite of mine and first time watch for Josh. It’s very obviously low budget, but a cult classic. Basically one of the main characters turns into a werewolf as a metaphor for puberty, but it’s also about the two sisters and their relationship. Someday I still need to watch the sequels.
October 8th
Tuesday was a laid back day and we didn’t do any big adventures- just explored the park we’re staying at more and played some disc golf. This meant I finally had time to cook a fall recipe, though. I made pizza with apples, bacon, caramelized onions, and goat cheese. It turned out awesome and definitely gave me fall vibes.
October 7th
Monday we drove out to Valley Forge National Historical Park. This was the site of George Washington’s encampment during the Revolutionary War. The park sights are mostly along a big loop road, so we were able to drive place to place. We ran out of time to stop at everything, but we did stop at the George Washington Memorial Chapel which was built in 1903 as a tribute to Washington. It’s still an active church and has a churchyard cemetery that we explored. The building itself is a gorgeous gothic structure and I hope sometime we’re able to come back and actually go inside.
The first gravestone that caught our eye in the cemetery was a full drumset. I think it’s one of my favorite gravestones I’ve ever seen. I love how joyful and fun it is- what a great way to be remembered.
October 6th
Sunday was our one chance to actually get into Philly, which is an hour away from our campsite. Since we didn’t have a ton of time, we focused on Independence National Historical Park and other nearby history sites. We, of course, found a couple famous graves.
First up was Benjamin Franklin’s grave in Christ Church Cemetery. Luckily he’s buried right next to the fence, since it would have cost $10 for us to actually enter the cemetery and we decided it isn’t worth it.
The other famous grave we found was Betsy Ross’s third grave, right outside her house. We toured the small museum here and then visited her grave in the courtyard. She was buried in a couple different cemeteries before being moved here.
We also found an interesting burial ground at the Arch Street Meeting House. This is a very old Quaker meeting house and thousands of people were buried here- but there are only 4 headstones left. The Quakers at one point decided that grave markers were inconsistent with Quaker principles and were almost removed.
We found three of the four remaining stones, including the memorial to Samuel Nicholas who was a big part of founding the marines.
Spooky Movie of the Night- The Blob (1985) is a fun classic that we enjoyed- it’s pretty bonkers. It was actually the wrong Blob movie though, I didn’t realize until afterwards that one I wanted was the 1950’s one since the diner and theatre from it were near our campground area.
October 5th
Our big activity of the day was joining Wild Ones and Colonial Canopy for a native planting project at a township building. Afterwards,though, we had some time for an afternoon activity. We went to Morris Arboretum, which besides its usual gardens, had its Ar-BOO-etum event going on. There was a pumpkin cottage and scarecrow walk for the event. Also, just everywhere throughout the gardens there were pumpkins and gourds tucked around, so the whole place had a great fall vibe.
Spooky Movie of the Night- Jennifer’s Body (2009) is one of my favorites, but new to Josh. It’s very much a teen girl horror movie- kind of spooky Mean Girls vibes.
October 4th
For today’s Spooky Season we did a fall farm double feature! We started off at Mast Farms, primarily for the corn maze. This was a good corn maze- pretty big, not too easy, not too hard, and we picked a good time with no one else in the maze. The field is actually split into two mazes- one large and one small. We did a few other small activities there and then had a hayride all to ourselves.
After Mast Farms, we went over to Weaver’s Orchards. We skipped the activities here, but did a good amount of shopping. They have an amazing farm market and store. I seriously wanted everything there and it was so hard to decide what to get. We ended up getting apples, apple cider, apple cider doughnuts, apple butter, corn, and a few gifts for family. We also grabbed ice-cream while we were there.
October 3rd
Our big activity of the day was visiting Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site. We were able to go into a bunch of the buildings to learn all about how the iron furnace worked and the community that built around the industry. After seeing everything in the main historic site, we took a quick drive over to Bethesda Church and Cemetery. The church was originally non-denominational and was used by many of the Hopewell workers and their families. The cemetery was used from 1807-1997.
The most interesting graves here are the table tombstones (also known as a pedestal tombstone). This style of marker was mostly used in the 19th century for prominent or wealthy people. The ones in Bethesda Cemetery are for members of the Lloyd family, which was the family that originally built the church as a meeting house.
October 2nd
We’ve settled into home for the next couple weeks at French Creek State Park in Pennsylvania, so it was time to go get groceries. We decided to go to the store in nearby Pottstown so we could check off a few things to do there too. We stopped in at the River of Revolutions Interpretive Center that’s part of Schuylkill River Greenways NHA, Edgewood Cemetery, and Ringing Rocks Park.
Our first person to visit at Edgewood Cemetery was social reformer Annnie Wittenmyer. Annie was involved in the temperance movement, but also did work like running the local soldiers’ aid society, establishing the Women’s Relief Corps, helping pass a law to create pensions for army nurses, helped found the Kentucky Soldiers Home, and much more.
Other graves we found interesting were Sarah and Anna Potts Hobart, who had a unique arch connecting them, Bessie Hitner with a marble tombstone, and WM Price Coryell’s treestump tombstone.
Spooky Movie of the Night- Ready or Not (2019) has been on my list to watch for a while and unexpectedly was available on Hulu. I know a love of people who really like this movie and now you can add me to the list too. The main character Grace is an awesome final girl, and there was a lot of dark humor throughout the movie that I really enjoyed. The ending is a little controversial, but I thought it was a fun twist.
October 1st
We started off Spooky Season strong by waking up next to a cemetery. September 30 and October 1 were both long drive days, so we stayed at a Harvest Host overnight. We had originally been trying to stay at a winery, but didn’t get the reservation approval in time, so we ended up staying at Unity Community Church. At first it was disappointing, until we realized that the church had a cemetery right next to the parking lot where we would be camping. Monday was too rainy to check out the cemetery, so right after breakfast on Tuesday we went for a cemetery walk to start the day. It was actually a pretty interesting cemetery too, because parts were better maintained than others. Usually with church cemeteries it’s pretty even.There were boundary markers up that looked like maybe they were working on some mapping projects too. My favorite markers we found were these two zinkies (white bronze) markers- not only are zinkies always fun to find, but these were especially ornate ones.
Spooky Movie of the Night- Trick ‘r Treat (2007) is a modern classic that I’ve somehow never seen before. It’s usually listed as an anthology, but is really five interwoven stories about Halloween night. It was the perfect start to the season and has great Halloween night vibes. Unlike a traditional anthology, it was fun to see how the separate stories crossed paths.
