Tuesday, October 11, 2005
New England Updates
Massachusetts Rain (10/8)
We nearly didn’t get a camping spot in the park we chose in Littleton. It turns out that Columbus Day weekend is a 3 day weekend in MA and everyone goes out for a last camping trip and to look at the leaves.In the two days and nights we were in Mass., it rained 6 inches. It sure put a curb on our enthusiasm for camping. But my friends Art and Lynne came and we all went into Lowell and had a great time despite the rain. There is a National Historic Park in Lowell that relates to the industrial revolution. You can still see the canals and the old textile mills. The museum has a working textile mill (just the weaving part) on the first floor. It was like watching a bunch of automated Mexican weavers doing triple time. Fascinating—but noisy. Kit and I both think this would be a great soup supper program but we didn’t take many photos or buy a video. The most interesting part is the lives of the mill workers—first the farm girls who came to work in the mills and lived in boarding houses nearby, and later the immigrants. I can’t begin to cover all the interesting ‘stuff’ we learned in this brief entry. I also learned that Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell and so I finally bought a copy of On the Road for road reading.
East Coast Woes (10/9)
I am not sure why they do not seem to have real RV parks on the east coast. Both our park in Mass, and the new one in New York are “Family Campgrounds”—a term I have come to dread. This means they are out in the boondocks with trees and mud—nice quiet getaways for city families but totally inappropriate for travelers on the road. We cannot get cell phone coverage where we now and since my whole reason for being in this area is connecting with friends—AND the pay phone here is dead—we had to drive 10 miles until we could get a signal so I could make calls. But this is the only place to stay that we were able to find within 50 miles of Albany.
We did have a nice enough drive today, through the Berkshires and past brown rushing rivers. There are some bright patches of color but the majority of leaves are either still green or fallen in the wind. It is not a great year for leaf color.
Day of Culture (10/10)
Today we went to meet my friends Karen and Roy at MASS MoCa in North Adams. This museum of contemporary art is very unique and like nothing I’ve seen anywhere else. I was here last year and this year’s exhibits were all different. One was all this video of a Swedish performance artist calling herself “Queen of Mud”—totally bizarre.
We also discovered that you could get a discount visiting two museums in the same day so after a late lunch Kit and I went to “The Clark”—a more conventional art museum but surprisingly located in a small country town. (Williamstown, MA) The museum has a quite eclectic art collection including a surprising number of Renoirs and other impressionists. (collected by Sterling Clark and his wife) The special exhibit was Winslow Homer.
We nearly didn’t get a camping spot in the park we chose in Littleton. It turns out that Columbus Day weekend is a 3 day weekend in MA and everyone goes out for a last camping trip and to look at the leaves.In the two days and nights we were in Mass., it rained 6 inches. It sure put a curb on our enthusiasm for camping. But my friends Art and Lynne came and we all went into Lowell and had a great time despite the rain. There is a National Historic Park in Lowell that relates to the industrial revolution. You can still see the canals and the old textile mills. The museum has a working textile mill (just the weaving part) on the first floor. It was like watching a bunch of automated Mexican weavers doing triple time. Fascinating—but noisy. Kit and I both think this would be a great soup supper program but we didn’t take many photos or buy a video. The most interesting part is the lives of the mill workers—first the farm girls who came to work in the mills and lived in boarding houses nearby, and later the immigrants. I can’t begin to cover all the interesting ‘stuff’ we learned in this brief entry. I also learned that Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell and so I finally bought a copy of On the Road for road reading.
East Coast Woes (10/9)
I am not sure why they do not seem to have real RV parks on the east coast. Both our park in Mass, and the new one in New York are “Family Campgrounds”—a term I have come to dread. This means they are out in the boondocks with trees and mud—nice quiet getaways for city families but totally inappropriate for travelers on the road. We cannot get cell phone coverage where we now and since my whole reason for being in this area is connecting with friends—AND the pay phone here is dead—we had to drive 10 miles until we could get a signal so I could make calls. But this is the only place to stay that we were able to find within 50 miles of Albany.
We did have a nice enough drive today, through the Berkshires and past brown rushing rivers. There are some bright patches of color but the majority of leaves are either still green or fallen in the wind. It is not a great year for leaf color.
Day of Culture (10/10)
Today we went to meet my friends Karen and Roy at MASS MoCa in North Adams. This museum of contemporary art is very unique and like nothing I’ve seen anywhere else. I was here last year and this year’s exhibits were all different. One was all this video of a Swedish performance artist calling herself “Queen of Mud”—totally bizarre.
We also discovered that you could get a discount visiting two museums in the same day so after a late lunch Kit and I went to “The Clark”—a more conventional art museum but surprisingly located in a small country town. (Williamstown, MA) The museum has a quite eclectic art collection including a surprising number of Renoirs and other impressionists. (collected by Sterling Clark and his wife) The special exhibit was Winslow Homer.
# posted by Carol Harma @ 12:11 PM 
