Hurricane Highwater

Some pics from Leverett, Greenfield and Shelburne Falls after Hurricane Irene blew through western Mass.

In Bloom

We're heading to Old Sturbridge Village today (Field Trip!) where they're having a Mother's Day special event. Kelly (and I) can get a glimpse of how old-time mommying used to work and steady her (our) perspectives in our daily tangles with the Bloggerette. I'll Hopefully get some decent images and send them your way.

Meantime, just a few flowery pics from our trip to Shelburne Falls last weekend, to help celebrate this day...













Happy Mothers Day to all!

I love you Mae.

North On The Fourth

We struck north on the fourth, with the plan being to end up at my friend's campsite up in Heath for a visit. We took the back roads up, mostly. Amherst being directly on our route of travel, and more serendipitously, their 3:00 July 4th Parade being directly in our window of opportunity, we stopped to check it out. We arrived just in time to plant ourselves on a corner across from the common as the festivities began...



Firefighting, police and public works vehicles and apparatus from towns all around formed an impressive convoy of wailing sirens and flashing strobe lights, constituting a good portion of the length of the parade.





There were a lot of emergency vehicles participating, causing Kelly to quip that there'd better not be an emergency anywhere...

There was a hubub in this town about their July 4th parade festivities, with some conflict arising between the town manager and the town's private parade committee about who could and should participate, and how those participants should represent themselves. It was (from what I gathered) basically a battle of the traditional versus the progressive in a town where the two ideologies often butt heads.

Concessions and threats were lobbed back and forth but in the end, the 4th of July parade remained largely a positive and reverent event.







Amherst; a proud, long-standing seat of book-learnin' and ideological debate.



With some of Hampshire county's long history of farming and husbandry sprinkled in for good measure.





Kelly, being always on the take, waved furiously for a cider doughnut as they were tossed out to the kids. They just waved back at her for a few seconds at first, before realizing what the adult in the sidewalk was doing...



Some Amherst officials were in attendance...



...and while the parade appeared mostly traditional, there were a few contingents with some opinions to express.





...and an opinion or two tossed in from the sidewalk...



Overall, it was a pretty traditional parade celebrating their town and our country...



But a hard-won traditional parade.



The parade was over and it was time to make tracks...



...and move on to far-off Heath.

We stopped for lunch in Greenfield, then headed out onto route 2 (Mohawk Trail). As Shelburne Falls approached, we decided we couldn't let it pass by without a quick holiday visit. We're not out this far that often. A quick stroll about the little town center, and a look at the famed glacial potholes...



...and a stroll across the more famous Bridge of Flowers to top off the quick visit. We were finally ready to press on to our final destination; Camp Berry, arriving at about sunset...

Campfire.



Satellite TV.



Friends and beer.



Summertime.

Flowers and Potholes

The Bridge to Shelburnithia

A crisp, gorgeous day in the 70's, we headed out towards Greenfield, got onto Route 2 west (aka the Mohawk Trail), and went to Shelburne Falls, mainly to see the famous 'Bridge of Flowers' , a trolley bridge abandoned and converted back in the 1920's into this 400 foot planter.

The bridge/flower idea is unique and supposedly the only one like it in the world.

This guy was playing his violin at one end of the bridge. I couldn't name any of the songs he played, but I did recognize the 'Harlem Globetrotters' theme song.

The bridge is well kept, and care is taken to always have something blooming at all times during the summer.

Lots of beautiful flowers...

Lots of weird flowers...

And some vines thrown in here and there...

These are Wisteria Vines, and they were left in place when all the other plants were removed for renovations to the bridge back in the 80's.

Hey, check out that glass

A very short walk from the bridge across the shop lined center of town and you come apon this glass works gallery.

Lots of nice glass vases, bowls, jelwery, ect. Anything they could think of that could be made of glass. Here's a bowl and butterfly:

Attached to the gallery is the actual glass-blowing shop where they make their wares.

Normally these doors would be open and you'd have to stand on your toes to look over the crowd of spectators to watch three or four glassmiths spinning their glowing orbs of blown melted glass into works of art, the heat from the 2000 degree furnaces pouring out into the street.

Unfortunately, the doors were closed today, and signs on the windows said the shop was closed for renovations until late September.

Riverdance

Further down the street is the other famed Shelburne Falls Attraction, the Glacial Potholes.

There are about fifty of them at the Falls, from 6 inches wide to the world record 39 feet across. They were created by small stones swirling around under melting glaciers back in the day.

Now its basically a water park for whoever can sneak onto the rocks, as the town officially recognizes the area as closed to the public except for viewing. Liability reasons I'm sure.

Someone forgot to tell these people, apparently.

Onward and Upward

After checking out some shops on the main street, we headed out. We drove a little further up the Mohawk Trail to this picknick spot by the Deerfield River and had some lunch.

Since we had to go by Greenfield on the way back, and since I'm a sucker for vistas, we made a quick stop at the Poet's Seat Tower, a sandstone lookout tower on built in 1912, with great views of Greenfield and the surrounding hills. Some say it's haunted. Muuuahahahahaaaaaa.

From there, it was homeward bound...