We’ve been traveling in our trailer now for 100 days. Living in a trailer is a bit of a balancing act. I had a dream last night that Stephen told me we had too much stuff and that it would never fit in our house. I looked at him in surprise and reminded him of all our things that we gave away when we moved into our trailer. As my father always says, (and perhaps he was quoting someone else?) stuff will accumulate to fit the space available. What seems to be multiplying in our closet space is paper. I thought I was being wise by buying sketchbooks for the kids, to keep the loose leaf paper strewn about the trailer at a minimum, but the sketchbooks have been designated as “storybooks,” (Zoey has co-opted both her sketchbook and Zane’s to draw and write stories) so that she still wants loose leaf paper. Tonight she and Zane were using the loose leaf lined paper to wrap Christmas presents for me, Stephen, and each other. How can I say no to that when it keeps them occupied and they enjoy doing it?

We’ve started turning on the heater a.k.a. the “furnace” in our trailer the past few days. We’ve been in Chester, MA the past week. Before that we were in Rhinebeck, NY. We’ve had some sunny days and some rain with cooler temperatures in the 60s and 70s, dropping down to the 40s some nights. Here in Massachusetts, it is starting to feel like autumn and the leaves are just starting to turn yellow and orange but the trees are mostly still green.

Over Labor Day weekend, we had an enjoyable visit with cousins from my dad’s side of the family and we went to the Columbia County fair. Later in the week while I began homeschooling the kids, Stephen toured Primrose Hill School in Rhinebeck and Mountain Laurel Waldorf School in New Paltz.

A highlight for the kids was going to a grocery store in Amherst, MA and seeing a robot going up and down the aisles. Zoey took the photograph below. This is our first grocery store we’ve been to with a robot. Stephen tells me that Walmart also has them.

We are now in Chester, Massachusetts between Great Barrington, Hadley, and Amherst until tomorrow. Thursday afternoon we went for a short hike on the Keystone Arch Bridges trail, which were built in 1840 and are some of the earliest railroad bridges in the country.  It rained fairly hard Wednesday night, but wasn’t raining much Thursday afternoon so that we could get outside. We saw several newts, a frog, and a slug while hiking.

Today we toured the Naumkeag estate, a “country cottage” spread over 48 acres in Stockbridge and built by a rich 19th century Manhattan lawyer, Joseph Choate.  The cottage contains 44 rooms, including 17 bedrooms, and large servants quarters.  It was one of many Berkshire cottages built in the Gilded Age.

 

Tomorrow we leave for Brattleboro, Vermont for a four day stay, then on to Southern Maine before heading back to East Montpelier and Burlington, Vermont.