Post by Ella. “It was too short, wasn’t it?”. That’s what Grubb and I always remark to each other at the end of a trip. Somehow, it always is too short. Because I can never see everything or get the total measure of the nature of a place. We’ve made our almost final hop. From…
Month: October 2023
Walking the Newport walk
Post by Grubb. Monday, with one last look at the sea, we did the Newport Cliff Walk. This asphalt path along the coast was made for tourists. Pursuing their promenade, their heads can swivel between cliff top ocean views and voyeuristic peeks at the backyards of the rich or, even better, the campus grounds of…
Lobster and old synagogues
Post by Ella. The Newport harbor area, where we went after the Cliff Walk (see Grubb’s post), was packed. Tour busses galore, two cruise ships parked in the outer harbor, lines of people waiting for harbor cruises (or maybe they were waiting to be ferried out to one of the humongous cruise ships). We were…
Not a mental institution
Post by Grubb. The drive we took on Sunday from Sunderland, Vermont to Providence, Rhode Island got us into Providence late in the afternoon. This gave us enough time to twist our way through the cramped downtown streets and visit the museum at the Rhode Island School of Design before it closed at five. RISD…
MOCA in the mountains
Post by Grubb. Why the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is located in North Adams, Massachusetts only Ella can tell you because, well, I was going to say I don’t have a clue, but I think abandoned factory space might be one of the reasons. The town is in the Berkshires and has a lot…
Mass MOCA
Post by Ella. After sweet, pastoral Vermont, we crossed the state line into busy Massachusetts arriving at the Mass MOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) in North Adams. As we wove our way around decrepit, foreboding prison-like brick buildings to find the entrance, I wondered what awaited inside. The site has a long history. The…
Forget spooky, it was deliberately delightful
Post by Ella. The town of North Bennington was deeply offended when their resident author, Shirley Jackson based her dark short story “The Lottery” on their idyllic town. When we stopped to get a photo of Shirley’s homes, while Grubb was aiming for the perfect photo of her abode on Main Street, I sidled around…
The folksy farmer and the queen of the dark
Post by Grubb I don’t know if Robert Frost and Shirley Jackson ever sat down together and knocked back a few glasses of cider, but the places they resided into do their writing weren’t far from each other in the Bennington area of Vermont. So on our way to Providence on Sunday we stopped to…
From mountain to city: today’s route
Post by Ella. We reluctantly left our Eden in the Green Mountains to join the city folk in Providence. Why yes, we did make a few stops along the way. Grubb couldn’t pass up a stop at the Robert Frost house in Shaftsbury and a drive by of Shirley Jackson’s homes in North Bennington. Then…
We couldn’t help it, Mr. Frost
Post by Grubb. It’s Saturday. We’ll be in Rhode Island tomorrow. So after our visit to the American Museum of Fly Fishing and the Orvis fly fishing flagship store, we paid our respects to the rural American poet Robert Frost who, back in the day, had a cabin in the Green Mountains. So one last…
Our place in Sunderland
Post by Ella. We have an apartment on the lower level (first floor) of a three story house. Like our cabin/cottage in Randolph, this comes with a tremendous view, a nice porch with grill and hot tub, two bedrooms and a kitchen/living area. The place is heated with two heat pumps and solar panels provide…
One last escapade in Manchester
Post by Ella. We’ve been passing a nursery the last couple of days on our way to and from Manchester. We are staying in Sunderland which is just 6 miles down the road. The nursery has a splashy lawn decked out with straw-stuffed mannequins celebrating Fall and Halloween. Today, we stopped. There was a whole…
Casting back
Post by Grubb. There was an art exhibit at the American Museum of Fly Fishing we went to this morning. As i might have expected, there were paintings of people in mid-stream trying to hook the big one. Bent pole, taut line, straining angler, splashing fish, it all makes for a great field and stream…
Tie those flies
Post by Ella. “Which of you is the fly fisher?”, the grey bearded, robust man boomed as we walked into the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vt. “Um, neither of us fish at all, we just wanted to see what fly fishing is all about”. “Okay, let me get you started”, he said…
Book haven
Post by Grubb. On this road trip through the northeast it seems almost every town has a barn full of antiques and a white shingled house selling used books. One could promote a regional tour of used book stores modeling it after a scavenger hunt. Every old person getting on the Yankee Tour bus would…