Quote Originally Posted by early morning View Post
Sounds like a great childhood, rr! I would have probably loved the crummy cabin, as we almost always stayed in the back of our pickup truck that had a camper shell - not a real camper- over it. Sleeping bags and all that. And seldom in camp grounds - who needs a shower or a *ahem* bathroom? All our family vacations when I was a kid were either fishing - which we all enjoyed- or scoping out good sites for bear hunting in Canada. You know where bears like to hang out? Garbage dumps. My vacations were visits to garbage dumps in Canada, lol. Made for some interesting "what I did on vacation" essays! And we saw lots of eagles and seagulls, and I got pretty good at looking for bear signs. Of course the country between dump sites was pretty! Cool about your early rock collecting, rosa. I'm not a rock "collector" and know very little about rocks, but I am a "picker-upper" of things that talk to me, and I generally have several small rocks, shells, seed pods, pretty leaves, or whatever, in my pocket. I have to be very careful in protected areas to NOT just pick up the pretties! I think the Berkshires are lovely. We stay at the Black Swan hotel -not swanky but nice (IMHO), reasonably priced, and you can request a room with a tiny lakeside balcony - and we have breakfast/brunch at the Chocolate Springs Café. We always try to make that a stop on our up-East trips - sometimes we manage to stop both coming and going.
The Black Swan is our favorite place to stay in the Berkshires! Small world, isn't it? The last time we went (2021), we were disappointed that hotel guests were no longer allowed to walk over the causeway to Sandy Beach, which had always been our morning walk while staying there. I'm not sure if that's a permanent change or if it was Covid related, but the inn is not in a very walkable area otherwise. We do love looking at Laurel Lake from the porch though, and their restaurant is very good if you like Indian food, which we do.
I made myself kind of sick one time when I had the bright idea of "let's just skip dinner and go to Chocolate Springs instead, and eat lots of chocolate and drink cocoa and maybe some cognac!" It was not one of my better ideas, lol.
The other place we often stay is the Holiday Inn in North Adams, not fancy by any means, but we have a deep affection for NA. It's a very walkable little city, and we get a kick out of the trains and MA MOCA. We can manage a pretty frugal stay there with IHG points.
I want to stay at The Guest House at Field Farm sometime: https://fieldfarm.org/. We are members of The Trustees, so that would give us a bit of savings, but it still is a bit pricey. We were pretty extravagant this year, so next year I should strive for a more frugal vacation.