Better get used to that seatbelt kid

In the past two weeks I cheated. Cole was away at camp and I needed to get out of the house to keep from missing him (seriously, it's the first time but I suspect it won't bug me as much next year). I took Marley on a big day trip that also counts for her US Geography and Cultures home-school high school course. I couldn't help myself. We had a week to ourselves and were only too happy to do something interesting with it. Only since we also knew that we were going to be away for so long that we did all our touring...in ONE day.

Since we had to drop off our dog in Massachusetts with my parents (he is shown here loving up my dad), we decided to come back the next day along the scenic Berkshire to Catskills to Poconos route which is super out-of-the-way but avoids the snarl of cars that is also known as the New Jersey Turnpike. Although my parents live 5 hours from here, a trip to visit them always leaves me almost completely drained from having to maneuver through the chaos of offensive drivers. I once drove from Albuquerque to White Sands, New Mexico in one day, five hours both ways, and it didn't bother me half as much as one trip to Massachusetts through New York City.

The next day, Marley and I headed to the Hancock Shaker Village in Hancock, Massachusetts on perhaps one of the muggiest days of the month, one of the days where all your pores feel like fountains.

The Shakers are similar the Amish, only are celibate. Interestingly, I learned that there are still communities in America. The common house reminded me of convent where I used to take piano lessons as a child. The convent was communal and lacking in personal warmth like the Shaker house. I went to the village as a young student and wanted Marley to experience it. The Hancock Village was one of the most peaceful places I remember visiting. Perhaps their consideration for orphans, caring for the land, and their vision of peace and community was so inspiring to me. I had another perspective as a middle-aged adult. Plainly, it felt like a cult.

Before going we stopped at the round barn where we talked to a historical engineer. She felt right at home...in a barn. Of course. I have included a picture of the round barn above.

Our next stop was the Norman Rockwell Museum in the Berkshires. In recent years, Norman Rockwell, once considered "almost an artist" because he used photographs as references and was more of an illustrator than a master painter, has been praised for his sense of design and cultural significance as an American artist. Marley loved his work as did I. The museum is terrific and the basement movie about Norman Rockwell is narrated by a descendant of his. The covers of the Saturday Evening Post (the full collection) were catalogued along the wall and Marley quietly surveyed all of them which was more patience than I have. His significant work was painted in the 1960s when he no longer romanticized the idea of a perfect America during the time of the civil rights movement. I was so newly impressed. The museum sits in the clearing of the most enormous feathery pine trees I have ever seen.

Crossing into New York state, we went into the Catskill mountains. I was once in the Catskills as a young teen to visit my Grandfather's sister. I didn't remember the town of Woodstock, but I do remember her house in the dark pines and the way it smelled like a cabin with her wood-burning stove and low ceilings. It was a magical place to me. I remembered how my Grandfather cried when he saw her. Thinking back on it now, I am still confused how they just didn't see each other more often. She lived and hour and a half away!

I wanted to see Woodstock because it's Woodstock. I was depressingly let down though. It was full of pseudo hippies eating in swank restaurants, old hippies hawking rainbow t-shirts, and other culture vultures cashing in on a long-ago weekend. No one was obnoxious of course but there was a sense that this place, marketed for a concert, had become a spiritual epicenter of a whole lot of nothing. There were psychics, acupuncturists, and gurus marketing their services with cute little signs but not much else. The artistic shops were interesting though and worth the trip to look at the practical arts. We did get to see the World's Largest Kaleidoscope though in Mount Trembler. It was a kitchy little place with weird graphics of early America in the show, but oddly sweet in a way. I was just thrilled to be close to my old haunts as a young person. Marley was impressed how the Catskill Mountains play hide-and-seek when trying to find them. Suddenly, you turn a bend in the road to be greeted with an enormous peak that seems impossibly high not to have seen it from farther away.

We made our way over the Delaware Water Gap where the Delaware River makes a wide cut into the rock walls on either side. I had heard that there was a large waterfall somewhere in the park. Driving slowly through the meadows, I saw a sign for it along a hill and we decided to take an impromptu hike along a steep path to see it. It was just lovely and worth taking the time to hike to it.

This park has one of the largest concentration of black bears in the nation. I know this because I am really wary of bears and read a book about how to avoid ticking one off. I don't fear big cats, snakes, or even rabid raccoons the way I fear bears. It's funny. So when I found out there were loads of bears in these woods I was hyper aware of every crick and crack in the woods descending to the falls. We were hauntingly alone this night on the trail. Hunting the bear in this forest was outlawed in recent years and they are happily multiplying and competing for resources in a park that is 40 miles long and only one mile wide. I camp still though and don't let bears scare me from the enjoyment of sleeping outside. However, I follow every bear rule there is without question. (See more about it when I go to Yellowstone where a woman was recently mauled while sleeping in her tent).

We went home to sleep off the exhausting day then picked up Cole and headed for Margate City, New Jersey where my husband's family has a little home on the second from beach block. It was perfect in the intense heat but the ocean was freezing cold and the air was over 100F so the contrast was enough to make you sick to your stomach. No relief from the extremes either way. It was like sitting on the desert next to an iceberg.

We did get a chance to see Cape May, New Jersey though and I was so appreciative to see something other than Atlantic City / Ocean City over

again. Cape May has the most amazing homes in one location that I have ever seen. The Victorian period homes all were meticulously kept. The shops, the preservation, and the colors were mesmerizing. I was simply enchanted. It was only an hour from Margate and I kept wondering why I had never gone there before!

It was time to come home. I had only one week to get ready for the big 44 day trip around the country. I leave tomorrow, July 30 for the trip to the rest of the country but it was good to get a snippet of the world to come and the pace of the traveling life.

You'd better get used to that seatbelt, kid.