A Good Trip Over Memorial Weekend

Got the chance to leave the city and venture to Vermont. Part of the fun, though, is getting there and returning via the beautiful Berkshires. Oh, yeah, I did my first camping of the year, by a river! The problem was that ..someone forgot to bring the tent poles! Well, I had to string together a concoction of a shelter... not bad as a couple of the pictures below indicate.



The "finished" product. Yeah, a bit tight, but without the flexible poles the tent can't be fully deployed. It was cozy though!

The College Experience

The following several pictures are from Williams College in MA. Once, I wanted to work there. It has a beautiful campus; actually the most of the Williams town is the college. Nice, neat, but probably long winters and not much else in the near vicinity. Ah, well, I teach elsewhere now. By the way, I got the students reviews for this past semester and they look really good. I guess most of the students I leaned on heavily didn't bother to evaluate me.

How would you like to dorm in the building below?

One of the scenes common this time around is students moving out of their dorms (pix below). I suppose it's OK for those who are returning, but it must be a very emotional time for those who have just graduated... I totally understand the feeling. There's a big difference between those colleges that attract local students and those whose student body is of out-of-staters. For the latter, there's a moment of separation and the knowledge that you won't see this place for a very long time, that those past 4 years are over, and that you won't see many of your fellow students again...

I don't know how many students do go back to visit the place they spent 4-5 years at, but most people do maintain the emotional connections to a place they got a valuable life experience, often the first one as adults away from home for such a long time.

I'd definitely recommend this, first for the academic value--the building of intellectual capital--and for the experience itself. Dorming or living by the place of study is also recommended....it's so much different that staying at home. I don't think many young students really appreciate the college-attending as much as they should; maybe in the last year they begin to realize it...

Moose project...

In Bennington, VT, they're doing a moose art project. Now many communities picked up on this theme of decorating animals and placing them around the town.. They're pretty!

Vermont's Attractions

Manchester, VT, is nicely located for many outdoor activities. OK, including shopping for those who might be interested; there's an outlet center there. But, for the rest of us, the Green Mountain forests are nearby. Plenty of recreational opportunities. In Dorset, there's this cooling hole called Dorset Quarry. It used to be a place where marble was cut from the mountain but it's been abandoned and now it's filled with water where people go for a swim or just hang out.

The first marble quarry in the US was opened in South Dorset in 1785. The lower part is visible from the road and it gets very crowded, but the footpath a while up the hill leads to the less crowded, clothing optional, water hole.

Above, someone is jumping into the waters. Below, you can see the marble cuttings. The whole place has many large marble slabs laying around...I wonder why...

Ah, the summer is still young... Many more trips to plan... Stay tuned...

PS>for some reason clicking on the pictures doesn't open them to show them bigger. Sorry, but I don't have the energy to re-upload them or tweak the html code right now.

:(