36 hours in the Berkshires

Or 72, or 108.  Either way, we had a fantastic week in the middle of August with visits by all our children and a grandchild.

How do you measure how fantastic it was?  By the overflowing trash on the curb when everyone had left?  By the number of times we put the dishwasher through each day?  By the total absence of towels in the linen closet?  By the toys strewn around the yard at any given moment?  By the trips to the grocery store to replenish food (even more than once a day)?  By the kitty running around the house looking for hiding places? By the lack of space on our phones from all the photos?  By the eerie quiet in the house right now?

They came by planes, trains and automobiles.  Joe, Leonor and Thomas were the first to arrive and spent almost a whole week.  Annie came in from the west coast by way of a couple of days of work in NYC.  And then Margaret and Andrew (and Dee) joined us for the week's festivities.  In between, John and Marilyn stopped by for lunch one day, Timmy joined us a couple of days, and Maura, Steve and Elsie came up for a barbecue. 

Many memorable moments.  First of all, the reason for all the family visitors was the Collins family reunion that Mary had been working on for five or more months.  Over 300 people came to the event on Richmond Pond (really a lake).  We saw Boyle cousins who live up the street here who we haven't seen for years.  We were not alone in meeting people we had never known.  One cousin saw a professor who had been her faculty adviser for over a year, only to find out they were both Collins descendants.   That so many people returned is a testament to the family story, the challenges that Mary's mother and her eight siblings faced and overcame.  One cousin had done extensive family history research that showed, surprisingly, a strong French side to everyone's background, as well as links to Grover Cleveland.  Swimming, good food, tug of war, mingling and a group photo rounded out the day.  We dodged the rain, as luck would have it that a huge thunderstorm arrived just as everyone was supposed to leave. 

It wasn't the only time were lucky with the rain.  Our smaller family unit headed over to Tanglewood one evening for a Star Wars concert, where the Boston Pops played the score to the movie.  Thomas was enthralled when the show started; he kept walking around our group on the lawn and pointing at the screen.

We rounded out the week with trips to King Cone, the outlets, playgrounds; with exercise to work off the abundant food - running, hiking, yoga; with board games, reading, and a few hours of paid and unpaid work scattered through the week.  Did I mention food?  Mary was active in the kitchen, baking muffins and a cake, Joe cooked a great meal of pasta and shellfish, and we enjoyed several barbecues.

We couldn't help but think of the times we descended on Pomfret Center, with a much larger clan and with much more chaos, in summer and winter.  Those too were fun days. 

In other news around the nation, we saw photos of Peter and Janet in Colorado, hiking and conferencing.  Andrew and Lur have been helping Claire and Daniel move into new residences.  And David and Paula, unfortunately, had to cancel their trip to Ohio and Kentucky.  

Did you celebrate the 50th anniversary of Woodstock in some form?  We went to a nearby park, called Look Park, where they had a day of tribute bands all playing the songs of Woodstock performers.  They called it Look-stock.  And, last night we went to Capitol Steps, which we remembered going to with Peter and Janet many years ago in DC.  While there's no current shortage of material for their cabaret spoofs, somedays it seems like they don't even need writers (I'm thinking of course of Greenland.)

On that toe-in-the-political-waters, I'll return to our non-partisan time together this past week with hope for many more happy days ensemble.  

Love from up here.

Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park

We are back from our trip to Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park. Here are some observations. I'll begin by stating the obvious: air travel is terrible.

Denver is a walkable city, but there isn't all that much to do. While Janet attended her conference (Leadership Exchange In Arts and Disabilities), I went to some museums and stores and relaxed. It's called Mile High because it's a mile (5280 feet) above sea level. You must drink a lot of water to stay hydrated, and we did. It was very hot (90 +)everywhere we went. Because the air is so thin and dry, it was okay to walk around. But it was hot!

The City is plagued with rental scooters, zooming around and unused ones littering the sidewalks. Annoying. It also has real tramcars, just like most European cities. There isn't a lot of traffic downtown.

Our hotel room had a nice view of the "front rage" of the Rockies to the west. There were late afternoon thunderstorms all over the place, local and fast moving. Sometimes we got rained on, sometimes not.

We stayed an extra day after the conference and went to the Denver Zoo. It's supposedly one of the best, but we couldn't help noticing the confined quarters for many of the animals and birds.

From Denver we went to Boulder, where the U of Colorado is located, and had lunch with a classmate and stayed in a funky old mountain hotel for the night. (It's for sale, $4.9 mil, if you're interested.) I left my credit card at the restaurant Friday night and when we went back the next day, on our way out of town, the restaurant wasn't to open until 4:00. I went around to the back, found a back door open and went in and found a kitchen staffer who spoke no English. A few minutes later, an older gent arrived on a bicycle and introduced himself as the chef. He got my card. But the real bonus was seeing the restaurant's kitchen: it was spotless.

It was on to Estes Park, the western gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. The plan was to hike for a couple of days and for me to spend a day with a fly fishing guide. I thought I had booked a nicer than usual hotel, and in some ways it was – we were in town – but the Wi-Fi was terrible, non-existent, the room was small and we had to keep the AC on the whole time. And we drank prodigious amounts of water. The town is 7,500 ft. above sea level and Janet woke with a bad headache one morning for lack of drinking enough water.

I don't get Estes Park. You would think it would be full of stores catering to super-fit outdoorsy types. Nope. It is a honky-tonk touristy town full of t-shirt shops, ice cream stores and souvenir stores, and on the Saturday and Sunday we were there, mobbed with people who were quite obviously in no condition to hike anywhere or do anything outdoors. My overriding memory of Estes Park is people who didn't need any more ice cream sitting outdoors eating ice cream cones. What were they doing there? We did find one decent restaurant, but most seemed forgettable.

On Sunday, it rained all day and so we got into our rental Chevy SUV and drove most of the Trail Ridge Road, a depression era public works project in the park that rises up to several ridges, crosses the Continental Drive and has wonderful views of the peaks and valleys. I believe the last time I stood on the Continental Divide was on one of those road trips Mom and Pop took us on, and there is a photo of us at Berthoud Pass, in central Colorado. How's that for memory?

I don't get RMNP, either. For a park with many great hikes, it's very hiker-unfriendly. There is very little parking at any of the trailheads. So you either get there very early, or ride shuttle buses from town. And the buses are ridiculous. Only one bus goes deep into the park and makes only one stop. From there you transfer to other buses to take you to trailheads. They run only every half hour. Terrible.

I spent Monday with a fly-fishing guide, wading Glacier Creek and the Big Thompson River and getting all sorts of instruction on my casting and reading water from an older guy who is a retired Tennessee corrections officer. I caught some trout, too. All of this with those peaks in the background.

On Tuesday, we decided to skip the buses and drove to the Fern Lake Trail head, arriving at 6:15 and hiking out at 6:30. It was a great hike, watching sunrise on the high peaks. We saw a moose and her two calves (and got outta there in a hurry) and two waterfalls. But after three hours and another 700 vertical feet to go to get to Fern Lake, we turned around. Janet drank all of the 1.5 liters of water (about a half gallon) in her pack. She has been race-walking at home for several weeks, and it paid off.

I've crossed Denver and RMNP off my list and I don't think we'll go back. But once again I saw that we live in a beautiful country.

Poconos and other parts

Don't despair.  The summer is not over yet.  Even though it's August.

It hardly seems fair to relegate our weekend in the Poconos to just a photo album page.  Lazy is what that is, I can even hear you saying.

One of the fun things about the Poconos is the ride home.  It seems I hardly get to see Mary during these weekends so we share the gossip and stories all the way home.  Memories I have are of interactions between Donald, Thomas and Everett, and some fond hopes that these get-togethers will give them a chance to get to know each other – the next generation.  We took walks around the lake and played by the lake and the pirate ship.  There were some fishing frustrations, although I saw other fishermen in the family enjoying success.  When Mary took out her camera to get a picture of my fishing experience, she noticed a heron and got a great shot of it.

Can't forget the wonderful dinners and wonderful naps.  And a spectacular birthday party with a never-ending balloon bounce where everyone in the room became two years old all over again.  Fun. Of course, most important were the extended time to catch up where we learned of David and Paula's upcoming road trip to Ohio and Kentucky, Matthew's medical progress (looking good), Peter and Janet painting their house and planning a Colorado getaway, Sean and Erin drive out to Texas, Joe and Leonor's announced move to Brazil, Andrew and Lur's Ripon reunion.  We missed those who couldn't make it, but we know there's a next year and more times to join the fun.

It was especially nice to have Janie, Susan and Fernando along, as we got the news on the George Dean family, and we added another Portuguese speaker to the mix.  Janie talked about Pop and Grandma, so we felt closer to them this year.  We even got over a certain email message that hardly seemed funny by the end of the weekend.

Things didn't slow down for us once we got home.  Peace Corps friends, Madi and Dale, showed up a day later and after Tanglewood and Shaker village exploring, we headed up to Maine to Cliff's cabin for the weekend.  Have our lives boiled down to good food and long chats?  Because that's what we did.

Did I mention Mary's birthday?  The highlight of her day was a new vacuum cleaner, a cordless Dyson.  After years of lugging around the family heirloom canister (that works very well), we have moved into the streamlined light and easy jet-age.  I'll have to go to the gym more to get the exercise that the Electrolux used to give me.  By the way, who gets a vacuum cleaner for their birthday?  How romantic!

Back home and we're here to stay for the month of August.  The produce is piling in from the garden, and it's hard to keep up with the harvests.  While there are groundhogs, they're staying outside the fence.  This week is the 200^th birthday celebration of Herman Melville, so we've been attending assorted events in recognition of that.  Even a gala last night.  A historical society gala.  Imagine that.

We saw a wonderful movie – Yesterday.  Jumps past Love Actually and Family Man on my list of sentimental favorites.  We got a sneak preview of a Melville movie as well – The Act of Reading, which should come out in the fall, or at least included in film festivals.

I close with a couple of quotes from Pop's 1992 weekly letters, as we had a couple of conversations about when Uncle Gil passed away, and we couldn't consult Google for that.  And, from the second excerpt you'll recognize the origin of the Poconos weekend.

January 27, 1992 - On Saturday, Mom, Aunt Georgia, Uncle Jim and I went to Peace Presbyterian Church in Stuart at 2PM - the exact time as the burial for Uncle Gil in Wilton.  We got the news of his Monday death just as we had checked into a campground in Florida (via a phone call to Stuart).

February 17, 1992 - We are considering an Uncle Gil memorial/celebration some time next summer. If anybody has any ideas on location, pass them along. 

With that, love from up here.