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....