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So today we did our weekly Tour de Turtle bone ride through the Blackstone Valley region, hitting up the following ten towns: Millbury, Grafton, Northbridge, Uxbridge, Millville, Blackstone, Bellingham, Mendon, Hopedale, Milford. 

Now, we normally rank the places we visit from nicest to dumpiest, and we will do the same again this week. However, this week comes with a disclaimer – none of these towns are that dumpy. But yet, one must come in last place. However, it’s all relative. There wasn’t a single town on this list that holds a candle to Warren or Athol or Winchendon. With that said, here’s how we rank em this week….

1. Hopedale

Love me some Hopedale. First of all, this town has no reason to exist. It’s literally a neighborhood of Milford. The center of town is like, a mile or two at host from Milford Center. But that’s the whole reason it exists – somewhere down the line everyone who lived here must’ve looked around said, “that’s it, we’re taking our tax dollars and starting our own community instead of wasting it on this dump.” The town is clean, the neighborhoods are pristine, and people like here jog, so there’s hardly any fat bastards.

The only downside is there’s literally nothing “downtown.” It’s cool though, Milford is right there and so is the highway. Problem solved.

 

 

2. Grafton

Another awesome town. There’s really only one part of it that could use some sprucing up – South Grafton. There’s some nice looking dumps down that way.

Other that that Grafton has a nice town common

Plenty of stores

And tons of new housing developments with stainless steel appliances

On second thought, Grafton is probably too nice for the Turtleboy family. Turtleboy Jr. would destroy property value in this town.

 

 

3. Mendon

Mendon is a cool town. It’s just kind of…in the middle of nowhere.

There are older houses

And newer homes

The downtown is bumping!!!

And the big store in town is apparently the Country Bumpkins

And you remember all those annoying car dealership commercials about being in “the little town of Mendon?” Yea, that’s here.

It’s really not that small towny though. There’s plenty of stuff here:

And you can drive fast.

But it’s got no highway access. Altogether though, it’s definitely not a bad place to settle down.

 

4. Millbury

Turtleboy likes Millbury. They’ve got the Shoppes at Blackstone Valley, but I much prefer watching a flick at this place:

It’s got plenty of nice neighborhoods

And it really doesn’t have a “dumpy” part of town. It’s just got West Millbury, home of Millbury’s finest lodging at the St. Charles Hotel:

Sure West Millbury isn’t exactly glamorous

But we’ve seen much, much worse in our journeys.

 

 

5. Northbridge

Whitinsville is the part of Northbridge where everyone lives. But don’t let people who tell you they’re from Whitinsville fool you – it’s all just Northbridge at the end of the day. They just say they’re from Whitinsville because “Northbridge” looks like post-Armageddon:

Not that “Whitinsville” is anything to write home about either:

But there’s a lot to like about this town. For starters it’s easy to get to since it’s got a few exits off of 146. It’s also got tons of new housing neighborhoods that are a nice little slice of Americana:

Some people don’t like the cookie cutter neighborhoods where everything looks the same. Not the Turtleboy family though. We’re huge conformos. I don’t get the fascination with old homes. Everything breaks down faster, so what’s to like? Plus, when they built that home in 1848, the guy who first bought it was thinking the same thing that Turtleboy was thinking in 2016 – get the hottest new shit on the market.

Most importantly, Northbridge has a Walmart. Nuff said.

 

 

6. Millville

Milville and Blackstone are basically the same thing except Millville looks slightly less dumpy. Some of these buildings look like the White House after the British ransacked it during the War of 1812

Millville has its share of boarded up wonders

Everything looks old, including the cars. And Millville is a great place to get rid of a rusty wheelchair or unusable camper:

It’s got a lot of breathtaking landscape

But for the most part this village along the Blackstone River is really just a quaint little suburb

A big downfall is, there’s literally nothing to do in Millville, and when the “big city” is Uxbridge, entertainment in town involves going down to this guy’s house and watching the goats eat snow.

 

 

7. Bellingham

Bellingham is a town that consists of shopping plazas

and crowded neighborhoods.

That’s about it. Oh yea, and then there’s this lovely piece of property right on Main Street

And this is nice

The place is overrun with turkeys though

And the downtown is a whole lot of what it is

Bellingham isn’t bad at all. It’s just nothing special. It’s just your average town with plenty of stores and access off 495. Yawn.

 

 

8. Blackstone

Once again, no town on this list is really that bad. But Blackstone really isn’t that good either. It’s just Blackstone. The place has a lot of potential, since it’s named after the Blackstone River, and has a bunch of bridges that run over it.

But it’s clearly one of those old mill towns where the guy at the bar who never left Blackstone is still holding court to this day. Plus, it’s like, a mile or two from Woonsocket, where you’re pretty much required to have an abandoned shipwreck on your front lawn. But we looked all over this town and couldn’t find a single neighborhood that even remotely resembles anything we saw in a place like Grafton or Hopedale. Just a whole bunch of this:

This is the plot of land where the infamous “house of horrors” once existed.

Maybe it’s just the fact that we knew going into this that Erika Murray called this place home for so long that made us put Blackstone this far down the list. Nah, it’s just Blackstone.

 

 

9. Uxbridge

Turtleboy doesn’t hate Uxbridge, we just don’t see anything to like about it. I mean, every town in America kind of looks the same when you get down to it, but there are things you could do to kind of spice it up a bit. Uxbridge is just kind of…there.

Granted there are some new developments on the outskirts of town that we found

But they were kind of few and far between. Once again, Uxbridge is a fine place to raise a family. It’s just nothing to get too excited about.

 

 

10. Milford

Honestly was expecting a lot worse. Everyone kept saying, “Turtleboy you gotta come to Milford, it’s a real dump!!” We were all excited, but we really had to search for the grime. In a really dumpy town, the grime comes to you. But yea, when compared to the other places we visited today, Milford easily took the cake for highest concentration of dumpage per square mile. Downtown Milford is actually quite lovely

And it definitely helps if you speak Portuguese in Milford

But once you start going down the side streets you can find some of Milford’s finest grime

Oh yea, and this is nice:

Who doesn’t wanna look at that thing while they cruise through town on a bone ride?

So once again, we could find a million neighborhoods in Worcester that would put all these towns to shame. I’d happily live in any of these towns, although some of them we’d be less enthusiastic about than others. Next zip trip we wanna find some real scum. Because those are way more entertaining. Where should we go next?

 

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