Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for massachusetts
Three Sisters
By Linda Tancs
The Three Sisters Lighthouses in Eastham, Massachusetts, are so named because the original masonry towers looked like three women with white dresses and black hats when viewed from the sea. The original towers were replaced with wooden ones and moved further inland. Ultimately decommissioned, the lights were moved to their current location on Cable Road in Eastham after being purchased by the National Park Service.
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Classic New England Scenery
By Linda Tancs
Spanning 35 towns in northeastern Connecticut and south-central Massachusetts, The Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor is a federally-designated National Heritage Corridor boasting a pastoral landscape interspersed with historical points of interest. You’ll find a plethora of museums, mill villages, rivers and quaint town centers, together with the last stretch of dark night sky in the coastal sprawl between Boston and Washington, D.C.
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Chasing the Wind in Nantucket
By Linda Tancs
Nantucket, Massachusetts, is the place to be this month for sailing enthusiasts. Beginning on August 12, Nantucket Race Week kicks into gear. From young dinghy sailors to Grand Prix racers, there’s something for everyone. The festival culminates in the Opera House Cup, an all-wooden, single-hulled classic boat regatta, on August 20.
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Two Downtowns and a Train
By Linda Tancs
The Hoosac Valley Train connects the downtowns of Adams and North Adams at the northern end of Berkshire County in Massachusetts. The round-trip, scenic ride operates regularly with a classic 1955 Budd RDC or self-propelled passenger car, and volunteers narrate the history of trains in the mountains. Trains leave from the platform beside the Adams Visitors Center on weekends from May to October in addition to holiday-themed special runs in December.
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A Poet’s Homestead
By Linda Tancs
Located on a hillside overlooking the Westfield River Valley, the William Cullen Bryant Homestead is on the site of the original community of Cummington, Massachusetts, founded in 1762. One of America’s foremost 19th-century poets, Bryant’s boyhood home is a National Historic Landmark. In addition to an iconic red barn, the estate features a two-story-farmhouse-turned-three-story Victorian cottage full of colonial and Victorian heirlooms as well as memorabilia from his European and Asian travels. He captured the literary world at the age of 13 with his first major poem, no doubt influenced by the idyllic landscape of pastures, fields and woodlands that surrounded him. Enjoy the grounds year round; guided tours of the house are offered from June through October on selected days.
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Billed as the Great North American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada. The path of the eclipse begins in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. This will be the last time any solar eclipse will be visible within the United States until 2045.
Be prepared! So long as supplies last, you can purchase eclipse glasses and other accessories, like a phone app and photo filter, from American Paper Optics, a NASA-approved manufacturer. The link in the preceding sentence is an affiliate link, which means that if you click on the link and purchase merchandise from the page, then I may receive a small commission.
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A Little Cottage in the Berkshires
By Linda Tancs
A home with 44 rooms might not sound like much of a “cottage,” but that’s the way the owners of Naumkeag liked to think of it. It once was the family home of Joseph Choate, a prominent New York attorney and U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, and his family. Located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the 48-acre bucolic estate boasts 8 acres of formal gardens for your strolling pleasure. Depending on when you visit, part of the house may be open. The estate’s name is derived from the Algonkian word for “fish,” owing to its roots as a fishing settlement.
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A Big Tree in a Small Town
By Linda Tancs
Egremont, Massachusetts, is a small town in the Berkshires, the kind of out-of-the-way place you’d expect a celebrated writer to hunker down in while writing the next great American novel. But the most celebrated thing there is a tree. Not just any tree, mind you, but a colossal twin-trunked elm about 150 years old lovingly named Elma. It resides alone on Baldwin Hill in the middle of a cornfield, its isolation credited for its survival against that elm-felling, beetle-borne fungus known as Dutch elm disease. It strikes quite the pose against the rural landscape (which includes the Housatonic River Valley and some of the Berkshire Hills), making it perhaps the most photographed tree in western Massachusetts.
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To the Heights in Massachusetts
By Linda Tancs
At 3,491 feet, Mount Greylock is the highest point in Massachusetts. On a clear day, you can see as far as 90 miles away. Nowadays, Mount Greylock State Reservation is bursting with spring color. Shortly, you’ll also be able to take the high road (literally) to the peak via Rockwell Road, which is open seasonally. The crowning attraction is the Veterans War Memorial Tower, a 92-foot-tall granite tower dedicated to those who served the U.S. during World War I.
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A Little Lamb in Massachusetts
By Linda Tancs
For fans of nursery rhymes, you’ll find a nod to “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in Sterling, Massachusetts. The story goes that Mary Sawyer was followed to school there in the 1800s by her pet lamb, prompting a town visitor to write a poem about it. To commemorate the event, a statue of a lamb was later erected to boast of the locale as the birthplace for the nursery rhyme beloved by many. You’ll find the statue at the corner of Main Street and Meetinghouse Hill Road.
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The City That Lit the World
By Linda Tancs
New Bedford, Massachusetts, was the 19th-century capital of the whaling industry. Most of the whale oil used in lamps derived from the locale, earning it the moniker “the city that lit the world.” Home to about 500 whaling ships during its heydey, the city also inspired Herman Melville’s classic, Moby-Dick. Its whaling heritage is preserved as part of New Bedford National Historical Park. One of its most impressive buildings is the U.S. Custom House, the oldest continuously operating custom house in the nation. Historically, whaling masters registered their ships and cargo at the two-storied, Greek Revival building; as the New Bedford office of the U.S. Customs Service, commercial fishing and cargo ships continue to log duties and tariffs there. The visitor center in the heart of the park provides orientation materials as well as information on city attractions.
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