Where Time Stood Still in Worcester County

For our last trip before the Labor Day weekend, we ventured out to Moore State Park in Paxton, http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/central/more.htm which is a small town in Worcester County.  After parking our car in the lot, we headed out on the Healthy Heart Trail, which after about ten minutes, brought us out to the "Artist Overlook".  And an overlook it certainly was!  Looking up the stream was a series of waterfalls leading from an old sawmill.  In the 1800's, this was a mill village, complete with a swamill, gristmill, tavern, school house, blacksmith's house, and the mill owner's house.  The sawmill is the only house that is still standing, and it has the distinction of being one of the original sawmills in New England that is on the spot where it was originally built.   There are foundations of the other buildings scattered throughout the park.   Heading upstream of Turkey Hill Brook, there is a series of ponds and waterfalls that lead down from Eames Pond.  When we got to the pond, there was a beautiful structure, called Enchanta Bridge that had chairs for people to sit and look out over the beautiful pond.

There were many trails throughout this state park, but the 90 degree temperatures did not make it a day where you really wanted to keep walking.  According to the maphttp://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/trails/print/Moore.pdf, there is also a bird sanctuary on the park property as well.  This was a wonderful way to spend our afternoon in Worcester County and I would highly recommend it if you would like to travel back in time.

"Fowl" Weather Abounds in Barnstable County

The weather in the summer of 2010 had simply been lovely leading up to our weekend to visit Barnstable County.  The emphasis in the past sentence is the word "had".   David and I were heading down to my aunt and uncle's home and were eager to get out on the boat onto the Sound.  While Falmouth is surrounded by water on the east and west sides, there are a series of finger "salt ponds" that are on the east side that lead out onto Nantucket Sound.  The salt ponds are a beautiful haven for birds, and on this rainy weekend, there were many of them in this pond.

We'll start off with the swan family.  Two parents  and four cygnets (or baby swans) were soon heading up the path from the salt pond to my aunt and uncle's home.  I never had seen a swan up so close and the protective nature of the parents were similar to all parents -- they didn't want anyone messing around with their young'uns.   Swans are herbivores and they enjoyed the crackers that we fed the family.  Swans also mate for life.  They make a hissing sound especially when they thought we would come close to their babies.  There was no way I was going to tangle with these very large birds!

The rain let up for a little bit, so I headed out on the shore of the salt pond to see if I could collect anything interesting to bring to school.  Out in the middle of the water, a cormorant was perched on a buoy, looking around for a fish to eat for dinner.  On the shore, three mallard ducks gracefully glided past the cormorant.   There is a group in Falmouth dedicated to preserving these ponds so they can continue to support the wildlife.  If you want more information, you can go to:
http://www.preservefalmouthbays-ponds.org/content2.php?p=1

The next morning, the weather was not any better :(.  On our way home, we decided to go to the Cape Cod Canal Visitor's Center in Sandwich.  I had never been to this end of the canal before.  The Visitor's Center offers a comprehensive displays about the history of the Cape Cod Canal and how the canal works.  There is as lot of hands-on displays which would make it a great stop for those with children.  There is no admission fee, and if the weather would have been better, we could have walked along the trail to the true end.

So, even though this was not a beach and boating weekend, there is lots to see and do in Barnstable County.

Motoring Along in Middlesex County

On the banks of the Sudbury River

Since we live in Middlesex County, we decided to do something that we had not done before in our home county.  Several years back, I had received a gift certificate for a river cruise from the South Bridge Boat House.  During last summer, I had booked a dinner cruise on four separate occasions, but they had all been rained out.  So, I picked a date on the weekend where we would be heading out to Tanglewood and hoped for the best.  And the best it certainly was.

After being stuck in some very sluggish traffic back on the Pike, I was questioning the wisdom of booking this dinner cruise for this particular Sunday evening.  We were rushed getting home and had little time to change and head to the South Bridge Boat House on Route 62 in Concord.  Peeking around the corner of the boathouse, we saw the pontoon boat that would be our dining facility for the evening.   There was another group of folks who were celebrating their Dad's 80th birthday.  This party of nine was seated up front and David and I had our own little table for two in the back of the boat.  We left promptly at 6:00 p.m. and headed up towards Lincoln on the Sudbury River.  Martha, the chef, boat-driver, and crew, was delightful, full of interesting stories about growing up in the area, about the wildlife, and about the rivers in general.  As we motored along past Emerson Hospital, we were served a delicious dip and pita chips, along with ice tea.  The bird life along the banks was spectacular.  We saw numerous Great Blue Herons, cormorants, hawks, geese, and ducks.  The ride was extremely relaxing and as it went on, I felt the hurried feeling slipping away.

Martha pointed out many historic sites along the way.  Native American sites as well as Henry David Thoreau's boat house were some of the things that we saw along the way to Fairhaven  Bay.   You can read some of Thoreau's writing about this peaceful bay here.   There were no other boats here on this quiet, cloudy Sunday evening, so we felt as if this was our own private bay.  Martha cut the motors and started the main course.   When you call to book your reservations, there are several options in which to chose from.  David had Shrimp Scampi, while I had the Salmon.  Both were delicious.  After this very filling dinner, we then had our choice of wonderful pastries for desert.   We slowly started to make our way northward back towards the South Bridge Boat House as the sun was beginning to set.  Both of us were extremely relaxed and happy as Martha pulled the boat up to the dock.  We wondered why we had never done this before.  In addition to dinner cruises (90 minutes in length), Martha offers breakfast, lunch, and high tea cruises.  When I arrived home, I told my son that this would be a wonderful way to spend our 25th anniversary in a few years.

Funky Southern Berkshire County

Great Barrington

Giant Jaw-Breakers

Having been in northern Berkshire County at Mass MOCA and Williams College, we decided to go to southern Berkshire County.  The main goal of our trip was to go to Movies Night at Tanglewood, but the other sites that we found were equally as captivating.  We continued west on Route 57, down huge hills in Sandisfield before heading more northwest on Route 57 into Great Barrington.  Great Barrington was another really funky WMass town.  There was lots of unique shops, great restaurants, and friendly folks.  We decided to do dinner before going to Tanglewood and headed to BabaLouie's that had wood-fired, all-natural sourdough pizza.  There was a large crowd waiting to get in, and we were fortunate to get a seat for two.   We shared Phoebe's Greek Salad, a delicious salad consisting of Romaine lettuce, organic mixed greens, feta, calamata olives, roasted red peppers, roasted pumpkin seeds and our lemon herb dressing and a Pomodoro Bianco
Fresh mozzarella, roasted portabellas, roasted garlic, tomatoes, red onions, chêvre, pesto and parmesan Pizza.  This was a delicious meal and we poked around in a few shops, where I saw the world's largest jaw-breaker.  We headed north to Tanglewood, on a "short-cut" given to us by the Front Desk Clerk.  We successfully avoided the usual traffic found going to Tanglewood.  Sitting under the stars on a coolish summer's evening, we listened to classic Hollywood scores and music from Steven Spielberg. The next morning, we went to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge.  This is a wonderful museum that was quite crowded.  His actual studio was moved to the grounds and that was very interesting to visit.  He had an eclectic assortment of objects on his fireplace!  

We decided to hit the road, but first wanted to eat lunch.  Somehow, we ended up going west instead of east towards the Pike and ended up in West Stockbridge.  Parking the car, it was quickly evident that we stumbled onto something pretty special.   I loved the feel of this town, there was something really special here.  There was a unique selection of shops and restaurants.  As we walked down the road, there was a collection of green, white, and red flags with a big zucchini in the middle of them.  Turns out we had just missed the Zucchini Festival that was held the day before.  However, there were still "left-overs" from the day before.   There was a shelf display of huge zukes and a dress up your zuke contest.  It was really cute and I could see my own students loving to do something like this.    We were quite hungry by this time and were lucky to get a seat at Caffe Pomo d'Oro, the old West Stockbridge Train Station.  This is an European-style cafe and the sandwiches were delicious.  After lunch, we wandered over to the Charles H. Baldwin & Sons store, another really cool general store.   We finally needed to get started as we had Middlesex County awaiting us later that day.

As we sat in a massive traffic jam on the Pike, I was sad that we were done with our Western Massachusetts counties.   Each one of them offered something unique and enchanting....

Hampden County: Off the Beaten Path

Granville -- a quaint town off the beaten trail

Granville Country Store

Hampden County:  home to larger cities like Springfield and hilly towns like Granville and Sandisfield.  Per the advice of The Berkshire Hills and Pioneer Valley book, we got off the Pike in Westfield, traveled south down Route 10/202 to Southwick and then banged a right onto Route 57 west.  In the above book, this route is called "one of the most obscure and backroaded of the state's historic east-west highways.  It's the most southerly and one of the highest, obviously the reason that the railroad chose to follow the Westfield River instead."  This route did not disappoint.  After the busyness of the Pike, it was so relaxing to be driving amongst the emerald green hills and winding roads, where there was barely any one else on the road.  Having packed a picnic lunch, we stopped on the Granville Town Green, right across from the Granville Country Store.  The store is home to many eclectic items.  There was a small restaurant inside the store, and rows of unique canned fruits and vegetables, fun crafty items, and their very famous cheese.  We didn't buy the cheese as we weren't sure if our accommodation in Great Barrington had a refrigerator.   The sign on the front of the store listed all the owners from the time the store opened in 1851 until now (only four owners - pretty good stability).  We sat across from the store at a picnic table and watched a steady stream of customers.  The cars came from both Massachusetts and Connecticut and there were also a lot of bicyclists coming through (a friend of mine said this is the stop to make while bicycling to get ice cream).  Across the town green was a library that had really neat architecture.  There was also an old Blacksmith's shop.

After our lunch, we headed back west on Route 57 and before long, we were heading up and down some really high hills with beautiful views.   We went through Tolland before heading into Berkshire County.

If you want a ride where you will be the only one on the road, this is the route to take.  It is indeed a hidden gem.