Being Part 2 of the two-part photo record of the trip Sarah and I took through western Massachusetts back in July. As of this post, it’s been exactly a month since we went, which I guess tells you how good I am about getting these things done.

Part 1 is here, and is the post right below this one. Can’t miss it. As opposed to certain places in Massachusetts, but more on that in time.

When last we left off, we had arrived in Deerfield for the night, which bills itself as being Historic Deerfield, as well as the home of the Deerfield Academy, which I am told by my girlfriend who knows these things happens to be a prestigious boarding school. For our part, we stayed in the historic Deerfield Inn, in the “carriage house” no less, which isn’t so much historick with the k as it is rebuilt in 1982, but you know. It was nice anyway:

I didn’t get the room shot, but it’s nice. A little on the expensive side, but nice. It also, and this featured prominantly the next morning when we went to do stuff, had a jacuzzi shower. The function of this contraption is apparently to use several different jets to spray scalding hot water with no regard to the temperature knob, unless you know the secret turn to make it work like a normal shower. We did not know the secret turn. They tell us that the burns should heal in a couple more weeks.

…No, not really. Our college educations haven’t made us that dumb. Yet.

In the morning, we spent time in three houses there, which is about what you want to do unless you’re seriously interested in life in New England from the Colonial period to roughly the 1830s. If you ARE interested, definitely go spend a day or so in Deerfield. You’ll get your fill.

This is my postcard of the Ashley House, Ashley being the name of the town minister who lived there back in the day and who was connected by marriage to all sorts of important folks in the Massachussets colony, or so our highly informative and interesting tour guide told us.

We didn’t get to take pictures inside, but take my word for it that it is very dark, a little cramped, and a little lacking in windows because in the 1730s you weren’t all that far removed from a time when marauding Indians sacked the whole town, and it turns out that if you’re one of the marauding Indians, leaping in through the window is a great method of house entry.

It also seems that, not only can you fit two people in a bed that’s about a foot smaller than a queen in every dimension, you can fit an astonishing number of people in a bedroom smaller than mine at night, hence the whole bed curtains thing.

I was also not entirely aware of the extent to which people in colonial America were able to get such things as Chinese ceramics, although they were able to get fake Chinese ceramics, some of them hilariously bad, much more easily.

After that well-spent hour, we went to the Wells-Thorn House, which got done up with rooms in several styles, about one per 20 years from the 1730s to the 1850s. Very interesting, although you learn some interesting yet somewhat disturbing facts, such as:

- The second leading cause of death for colonial women after childbirth turns out to be burns, often caused by reaching into backs of fireplaces because that was where you put the bread oven. This fact has completely derailed my possible future career as a colonial housewife, although the part where you never, ever actual wash your cooking pots was a close second.

- Apparently, the big thing to do in farmhouse attics was to let bees live up there, because bees are useful for things. However, as you also need somewhere for your servants/slaves/whoever to sleep, you generally let them sleep in the attic. With the bees. I’ll just let you think about that for a moment. When you stop screaming, I’ll be here.

That would be the Stebbins house, which was something like the first brick house in town and features mostly 1820s or therabouts furnishings, which include room after room of some absolutely incredible wall paintings, done in a time when painting the inside of your house to look like fake classical architecture was cool, and when randomly having paintings of George Washington was also cool.

It was also done at a time when having exotic wall paper was cool, and on that note, I want you to imagine somebody’s front hallway. Include a really nice two story semi-circular winding staircase, at the top of which is a large landing. Then I want you to imagine the entire thing with this wall paper, which purports to show Captain Cook in Tahiti:

Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

You can see the whole thing here or at Wikipedia as you desire. Very stylish.

Deerfield having been accomplished, we went over to nearby Greenfield to find some food and go find this bookstore that was supposed to be inside of an old mill and which would combine perfectly our love of ridiculously touristy venues with our love of writing printed on dead trees.

First, however, we needed lunch. You know those highway billboards telling you where the nearest McDonald’s is? We had a conversation about like this while driving:

Sarah: I’m starving.
Me: Me too. Where do you want to eat?
Sarah: I don’t care. How about McDonald’s or something.
Me: Sounds good, but where is one in this town?
Billboard: *appears directly in front of us at that exact moment*
Us: Excellent.

As far as the whole bookstore thing went, we did not find it, but owing to the crazy layout of small town MA streets and a map from Google Maps that apparently wasn’t quite enough map, we did see just about every parking lot in central MA while turning around, including a funeral home, the Elk’s lodge, and what I think was a trucking company. Abandoning our love of books, we headed off down scenic MA Route 2, also known as the Mohawk Trail. From Greenfield, the whole drive was a couple of hours, and looks approximately like this the entire time:

There are many trees and mountains. Also water:

It is all very scenic, and quite enjoyable. Western Massachusetts is pretty good driving country, although as I was saying about Greenfield, the streets in the towns are…something. There was a point in North Adams (population of a few k) wherein I was looking at bridges going over bridges going over split roads, and seriously people why? They do have Mount Greylock, however. If you, like me, are a Westerner used to some real man’s mountains, you may wish to downgrade this one slightly, but it’s pretty nice, albeit featuring one of those lovely park service roads with 1.5 lanes, a 10 mph speed limit, and hairpin turns like mad.

This would also be the part where we, like many before us, hiked the Appalachian Trail, and we have proof:

For you political types out there, note that apparently the Trail does not extend to Argentina. This may be important to you if you are a governor and get lost. Just saying.

What it does feature is a lighthouse which is also a war memorial, erected in a time when doing these things made a lot of sense to a lot of people:

The view, as I am about to demonstrate to you, is pretty great:

That’s the park lodge.

That’s looking at what I’m pretty sure is North Adams.

I have many more, but I think you get the idea. It’s very nice. I keep saying it because it’s true.

Lastly, the Obligatory Shot Featuring Both Of Us So We Can Prove We Went There, Instead Of, Say, Kenya:

As a brief end note, we then drove for a ludicrous time south back into CT, where we drove for a less ludicrous time back to New Haven. It’s really quite astonishing to me how fast the whole thing goes from completely rural to intensely built up urban density along Whalley Avenue. It’s really crazy.

Not quite as crazy as that wall paper though.

Being Part 1 of a two-part photo record of the trip Sarah and I took July 11-12 through various parts of Western Massachusetts. This part looks at the sights of scenic downtown Springfield, MA.

Why Springfield, you may wonder? Well…

That’s one reason. If you know anything about guns at all, you may know that Springfield is the home of the Springfield Armory, which along with another place you may have heard of named Harper’s Ferry used to make a good chunk of the federal government’s small arms.

You may know them for such iconic rifles as the M1 Garand:

The M1903 Springfield:

And the Springfield rifled muskets, M1855, M1861, M1863, and a few others:

They tell me that at one point, there were over a million of those stockpiled.

They also made the M14, but apparently I didn’t bother to get any good pictures of it, so you must do without.

What used to be the federal armory is now a technical college, with a random little driveway that goes around the back to another building which is run by the National Park Service, which may be my favorite federal agency, as a museum. Which it is. It is also a ridiculous collection of US and foreign rifles. They have displays on just about everything from the Revolution to the 1950s. Ever want to know anything at all about any random experimental variant of the M1? Here’s the place. Trench devices for the M1903? Got those too. They even have a collection of foreign WWI/WWII weapons, including to my delight an StG44 and an FG-42, which you may remember from the Normandy level of every WWII shooter ever.

In short, if you have any interest whatsoever in things that use propellant to shoot lead out of barrels, you should probably go here. Sarah, despite having no interest in these things (girls, man, I dunno) was remarkably patient with me.

It helped that there were displays like this:

In which you learn that you should not leave your rifle in the barn, in the damp, in salt water, and via that twisted top one, should not let your rifle be struck by lightning while on guard duty. If we are to believe the story, lightning hit the rifle, mangling it as you can see, knocked the soldier in question silly but didn’t harm him particularly, and didn’t set off his powder. Electricity, we learn, is crazy times.

They also have a whole half devoted to the actual industry of gunmaking as practiced at the armory, in which I finally answered the question of how you actually machine a rifle stock. There are lathes for these things, it turns out, such as this neat water powered one:

Waterwheel and river no longer included, but once upon a time.

After an emergency Starbucks run for Sarah, who was Very Tired (instead of me for once, ha!), we roamed Springfield, which is…whatever it is that Springfield is. We’re not sure. The 20-story apartment towers seemed slightly random and superfluous, but hey, whatever. On the other hand, Gilded Age libraries are cool no matter what:

“Can we take it home with us? Please? Pleasepleaseplease?”

“I don’t think it will fit in the car.”

“Boo.”

Behind the library is, of course, the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden:

It’s larger and more varied than I show you here, but I needed a picture to capture the feeling of Sarah running around and going “Squee!” and “Wai~!” and generally acting as if she were five again, so here you are.

Also, apropros of nothing, Epic Puritan Founder Is Epic. During the Founding. Of Springfield. In Epic Fashion.

There were also a bunch of museums sprinkled around the garden. Science and fine art and local history and the other art museum with the Japanese armor and Chinese ceramics. I’m pretty sure you can figure out which one we went into.

Among other things, they had really supercool engraved and inlayed muskets:

Also this shrine, which is far more awesome than I can possibly hope to convey to you with this shoddy picture:

And here I am with some armor. Japanese people in Sengoku period were…short, let us say. Very short:

Note that the shortness would not prevent me from getting the hell out of the way if they came charging at me wearing said armor and wielding one of the many fine katanas also displayed, which pictures do not well display the quality of the craftsmanship.

Also, we went upstairs to the kid’s room, where I found a helmet. Yes, I put it on. I have self respect. Of COURSE I put it on.

There were also some Chinese ceramics, which we mostly blew past, although I will show you this awesome vase in passing:

There was also a collection of plaster casts of Greek and Roman statues, most of which Sarah and I had already seen the originals of in, you know, Europe, and this awesomely bad video about the Romans which we laughed at because we are classics geeks and also snobs, as you may have previously guessed.

Then we decided we were starving. So we went to Northampton, home of a webcomic you may or may not read. We went to a place that served cow. Good cow. Delicious cow. And we ate of the cow, and saw that it was very good, delicious, and filling, and seriously we were both full for DAYS was how good this cow was.

And then we went to Deerfield, but that’s a bunch of photos for another time.