Meandering

 So when we first talked about a road trip, we tossed around ideas as to what our final eastern destination might be. We talked about the "capitals" of New York and Washington D.C. but decided we did not want to deal with the traffic or frankly, the politics.  Kris had spend a whole professional career helping sell children's books and Eric Carle's museum in Amherst, MA seemed to be to be very mutually agreeable destination.

So we set out.  We have traveled more than 1300 miles and honestly, we have spent only about 3-400 miles on the interstate system.  Blue highways, indeed.  Yes, it is slow but it has been a blast.  And, 8 full days in, no one was left on the side of the road for even a few minutes.  I think that we are under our theoretical budget--lodging has been a bit higher than I thought it would be, but food has been less than I imagined.  Gas is just a disaster--we didn't plan on all of that, and I doubt that puzzle will be solved before we get back.  Thankfully, our new car gets great gas mileage, especially when you drive at 45MPH!  And thank heavens it isn't a diesel.  We would have had to turn around in Wisconsin.

Today was that museum.  It was beautiful.  The campus was carved out of another campus as it is on land once owned by Hampshire College. A side note, this is the last semester Hampshire College, which is still next door to the museum, will be open. It faced the harsh reality of shrinking enrollments and endowments and decided to close.  I fear that will not be the only small liberal arts college to face that cliff.

 The museum is significant.  Even in my VERY limited child care responsibilities I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar enough times to memorize the text.  And I didn't read about fireflies and blue horses and countless other creatures and stories from his more than 70 books.  Best of all, it designed for the primary customers of Carle's work.  Art work is child-high, there are opportunities to draw your own animal in a huge art room that overlooks an apple orchard. It was well worth the 1,300 mile drive.

 Getting there was half the fun.  We have both noticed a zillion farm stands along the way, and we have stopped at one before today.  We stopped at one today and bought peaches and maple syrup.  It was just beautiful.  We wished that we could just load up the car with pumpkins and apples and the fall flowers that this stand was selling.  These adventures fit in well with the other adventure of the day, like laundry.  Hey, we have been gone awhile!

We have mentioned the privilege that we have and have enjoyed on this trip and there have been many markers of this. Here is another--we have absolutely no idea where we are going and where we will be tomorrow.  We will be heading west, sort of, though we are going a bit southwest.  Sort of.  All we know is that we will have fun.