Monday, July 6, 2015

The Berkshires

My super-wonderful Hubby got me tickets to Tanglewood for Christmas.....for James Taylor on the Fourth of July!  As usual, we made a nice little mini-vacation out of it.

We left on Friday morning and stopped at our favorite breakfast place, Parker's, on the way out.  From there we got onto the Mohawk Trail.   This road is really Route 2, and it extends the length of Massachusetts.  My fabulous AAA lady (me!) picked up a Mohawk Trail brochure that showed some of the places to stop along the way.

Our first stop was Greenfield so we could see the Poet's Seat Tower, so named to honor a long tradition of poets being drawn to the spot.




Continuing on, we stopped in Shelburne Falls to see the Bridge of Flowers  - very inspiring!







It's a quaint, cute little town with shops and art galleries.  We also saw the Glacial Potholes 


We ended our day at MoCA - the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA 


We didn't bring the camera in because we figured they wouldn't allow pictures....but they did.  So it was a shame we didn't have it because most of the things we saw were indescribable  - they are so weird!  Hubby loved it!

The highlight of my time there was getting a call from the HR lady saying I had gotten my promotion to Assistant Manager at work - she wanted to give me the good news even though it was my day off because she wanted me to have a nice weekend!

It was getting late and time to head to our Bed and Breakfast.   You can sometimes take your chances with a B and B....you never know what you're going to get.  This one turned out to be a gem!


When we called for directions the owner, Bruce, said to turn at the orange lilies....he wasn't kidding!


He and his wife Joanne were fabulous hosts.  The room was lovely:



They had homemade cookies out at night for a snack, as well as some brandy.    In the morning they served a 3 course breakfast.  Yum!

Saturday was raining, with everyone checking the weather constantly to see if it would clear up before the concert.   Hubby and I wiled away the time by going to downtown Stockbridge.


Hubby got some good deals on some used records. Unfortunately the junk store he loves to go to was having a going-out-of-business sale.   We browsed some of the other shops and it continued to rain so we decided to go to the Norman Rockwell Museum...another favorite place.  Even though we've gone there every time we are in the Berkshires we still love it!

Finally it was time to head out to the main event! Unbelievably,the rain stopped right at 4pm when the gates opened to the public.


The place was completely packed!!


It seemed like just about every spot of lawn was taken. However, we went over to our "usual" spot and managed to squeeze our two lawn chairs and our cooler into a perfect place to see the big screen.



And what a concert!!  James Taylor sounds just as wonderful in person as  he does on his recordings.  He sang old songs and new songs and kept the audience in the palm of his hand!   We had a wonderful time!


And the evening was capped off with fireworks!


But wait...there's more!

On Sunday we left the B and B and went to Great Barrington to a wonderful and very inspiring craft fair.   And, because Hubby has always wanted to go there, we headed back up to the Mohawk Trail and went to the Clark Museum in Williamstown.


Their special exhibit was Van Gogh......they did a whole timeline of all his life's works.   And they had some beautiful Impressionists and lots of other artists too.   And right now they have on loan from Paris...."Whistler's Mother".


We spent a little bit of time outside near their new reflecting pool.


We finally headed home but not before making one more stop.  Somewhere along the way they have a statue of a Native American called "Hail to the Sunrise" so we had to stop and see that.



It was a wonderful weekend and so nice to have a mini-vaca with Hubby!









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