Punkin' Pickin'

Since Kelly has been around it has become a 'tradition' to hunt for, bag, and emboss an unsuspecting pumpkin. Something to do with her Belchertown country back-woods upbringing, I think.

We struck north on our hunt.


No shortage of scenery on this brisk, windy October day as we drove up through Sunderland.

Always loved how the Sugarloaf and Toby mts. suddenly jut out above the flat floodplain of Sunderland.


There was also no shortage of pumpkin stands, either.
We decided to give last year's pumpkin supplier, Laurenitis Farm, some return business.

We pulled in to their nice looking stand on Rte. 116.


Apparently they were big on mums as well as other fall-farm-fare.

After careful deliberation and thorough comparison we decided on our respective pumpkins.

Coming back down Rte. 116, we came through Amherst.

We could use a snack to tide us over until dinner, so we stopped in at Antonio's Pizza for a slice.

They have a wide variety of pizza by the slice, and I mean variety. If you can eat it they've probably made a pizza out of it. Antonio's is famous around here, especially among the college crowds that cram the restaurant and sidewalk after the pubs close.

I know this is true, as they have a camera out front, aimed at the sidewalk.

Video is fed to MassLive, 24/7, via this "Campus Cam".
http://www.masslive.com/campuscam/

We then made a couple stops at the Hadley mall for supplies, and headed home.

After dinner, we began the gruesome business of carving out pumpkins.

Like most things in life, the time and care put into the carving, equaled the quality of the carving. Chris was done first. I churned out a satisfactorily scary pumpkin head. Kelly pulled out all the stops with hers this year.


A couple of 'tea lights' or tiny candles, and the job was done.

"By a rather circuitous route"

On Sunday, we went out for a drive after lunch, and headed north up through Sunderland, and on into Montague. Plenty of color along the way...

Going through South Hadley, I noticed the restaurant 'Woodbridges' appears to be empty and undergoing some changes. It is located just across from Mt. Holyoke College. I ate there once a long time ago. They had tables outside, real nice.


Also on the way, on a side road in Sunderland, is this cool waterfall. Unfortunately (for visitors), it is on private property. You can easily see it from the road though, and the property owners on either side didn't seem to mind when we stopped and gawked.


We continued on this nice country road. I saw an old Datsun 280Z sitting in a clearing by a house. I had one just like it years ago. It was an incredibly cool, fun car. A poor man's corvette. Half the car is engine. This one was begging for a restoration. It had been sitting here for a long, long time though. A LOT of work to be done.


Moving on, the road emptied out onto a main road, and at the corner was the famous 'Book Mill'. We stopped in, I hadn't been there in years.


It is what the name implies; an old mill converted to a book store, with a cafe next door. The lower floors have been converted (i think) into a dining hall. We couldn't go down to the lower levels as there was a wedding going on. A beautiful building, with a roaring brook behind it, and many decks and tables all around. Excellent book-browsing atmosphere.

These bikers had been shadowing us the whole time we were stopping and going on the back road. They caught up and stopped for a rest nearby.


From there we continued on up to Montague, and Turner's Falls. Took a left after the bridge, and parked in a lot along Rt. 2 where you have a great view of the dam there, next to the bridge.

Turner's Falls is named after a Captain Turner. In 1676 he led a group of soldiers here on a raid to recover stolen cattle from the natives. You can read the full story of the massacre and reprisals that ensued here: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/massacre.html

The river was low today, a lot of the riverbed here was exposed. We climbed down the embankment, and onto the rock below.

There a lot of drift wood around the edge of the exposed rock, marking the maximum height of the river when it's full. The edges are all smoothed out and the wood is bleached from exposure to the sun and the tumbling along the water.

I'm no geologist, but I found the rock formations on the riverbed interesting. I could see that there was Basalt (lava) rock along the outer edges, and sedimentary rock jutting out diagonally from the bottom.

We walked right up close to the gates of the dam. Supposedly they sound an alarm before the gates are opened. (My escape plan involved little more than "RRUUNNN!!!")

Fossil??

Pock-marked Basalt. I guess the softer sediments in the lava were washed away over time...?

On our way back up this man appeared. He was on his way down to the dam, with some kids in tow and a miner-type chisel in his hand.

It turns out he is Jim Aronson, a Professor of geology at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He had come down from New Hampshire "By a rather circuitous route", to Turners Falls to examine the rocks we were just on. He was pleased to see that the rock was exposed today, and that they had arrived with time to examine them.

He happily answered a couple quick questions I had about the rocks here, and went on his way, chipping off and showing the kids samples of Basalt.

We started heading back, and along the way saw some hot air balloons landing ahead of us. We saw several cars pulled over, and stopped to see a balloon being taken apart, with a crowd of spectators around watching.

The owner of the balloon, a self described 'Huckster', started recruiting the people around to help take the balloon apart and put it back on it's trailer. I was one of the recruitees.

The basket was kind of heavy, 7 of us struggled with it over the corn-rows. (maybe I should have used both hands).

Once the basket was on the trailer, we went back for the 'balloon' part. It had to be picked up bit by bit and stuffed into a giant duffel bag. Ever hear that saying about 20lbs of 'stuff' in a 10lb. bag? Multiply that by $30,000 worth of nylon fabric.

Unbelievably, like a magic trick, the whole balloon fit into this bag.

We all sat on it in a circle to squeeze the air out, then carried it back to the truck.

The whole kit and caboodle fit on the back of a small trailer.

In case anyone needs a reminder just how big these balloons are, here's a quick video of another balloon that was on the other side of the field, tethered to a truck. They were giving short up and down rides.

That was it for daylight. We stopped for a coffee in Northampton on the way back, and reflected on our afternoon.

a-MAIZE-ing .... (sorry 'bout that)

The rain kept coming until noon-ish.


Phone calls were made, and the consensus came down to postpone the Mt. Monadnock hike for a couple weeks. Maybe.

I had been up since 7 o'clock and had a backpack full of gear. I was going to do something with the day. We headed out and decided to have breakfast and think of something to do.

We stopped in at Stables Restaurant on Rte. 9 in Hadley.


It was packed with customers as usual. A short wait and we were seated and served by this lovely lady, with the fitting name of Joy.


Stable's has great breakfasts, true to their motto of 'Country Cookin'. They also make they're own bread, sliced toast as thick as a book.

The sky had finally cleared up by the time we finished eating, and we headed north up Rte. 47.

The idea of going to that cornfield maze in Sunderland came up. We kept on Rte 47 and soon saw this sign:

Mike's Maze has been an annual attraction since 2000. Each year they trace out a maze through several acres of cornfield. Really amazing designs. This year's design is Jazz great Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong playing his horn.

I had never done this maze before. I was suprised at how well organized and designed the experience was. It's not like they just collect your money and set you loose in a cornfield.

Rather, they have devised a cool music game, where you have to locate about 20 music chimes in the maze,

play them with a metal baton they supply, and guess which popular song matches which title from a list they give you.

Get a certain number of songs correct, and they give you a little pumpkin.

This girl shows you the ropes before you enter the maze.

Each group gets a numbered flag to wave in the air in case you need help, and you mark your number on this board before you go in, so they know who makes it back and who has been lost to the abyss.

The pathways were well packed with loam and clean, just a few small mud puddles from the rain.

We had good fun tromping around in the cornfield and arguing about which song was what, and which way to go.

Somewhere in the maze is this cool potato gun you have to shoot through a hole on a board, to win a prize.

There is a food tent nearby, and of course pumpkins and other farm products available for purchase.

They have they're own website with more info at http://www.mikesmaze.com/

We left with our prize pumpkin and smiles on our faces.

Right across the street is this interesting looking store, with grindstones built into the facade.

I was going to ask my kid to put his nose against one for a picture, but I think he's starting to get to old to cater to my whims.

I did however get him to stand next to this MASSIVE Sycamore Tree nearby in town.

In front of this tree is a plaque from the National Arborist Association commemorating it as being alive during the signing of the Constitution... yeah, at least.

From there we were still feeling our oats, so we crossed over the Connecticut River to tackle Mt Sugarloaf.

Because it was there.

More on that coming up...