Author: bbpeck

Bob and I arrived yesterday morning in Magnolia, Delaware, for maybe our 4th housesit where we will not actually meet the homeowners. We had lots of communication ahead of time, but our respective travel schedules didn’t overlap, so no meet up.

This is our first housesit in the state that was first of the original 13 colonies to ratify the constitution. The town of Magnolia, population 285, is in Kent County, just south of the state capital of Dover. The area was originally known as Caroon Manor when the land was given by the Duke of York, the owner of the land that was subsequently named Magnolia after his favorite tree. Another fun Wikipedia fact, the founders chose to have a circular boundary for the town to represent brotherhood (obviously, no one was thinking about representing sisterhood).

Within the town of Magnolia, we are located within the community of Champions’ Club. It is a 55+ active adult community. It boasts a golf course and has street names like Nicklaus and Augusta National. I do appreciate being consistent with a theme.

More importantly, we are caring for the very sweet Cassie, a 12 year old Golden Retriever.

Today, after stocking up on some groceries. We walked along the greenway path behind the community center. Along the walk, we saw indications that there was a former golf course along the walk that has given way to park space for the newer housing development.

This was a short sit for us. We leave tomorrow after just over a week stay with four fun felines. They have kept us entertained. Here’s some of our favorite photos.

Tomorrow afternoon, we head towards our next sit in Delaware.

Late this morning, Bob and I drove out to a trailhead to walk part of a rail to trail path that he had found. The temp was in the mid 20s F, but it was sunny and the path and trail were beautiful. Here’s the proof.

The part of the trail we were on ran alongside the Cheshire Reservoir of the Hoosic River. There appeared to be some cute houses or communities across the reservoir.

After our walk, we treated ourselves to a lunch out in a cafe in downtown Pittsfield before coming back to the house. And then this.

The snow wasn’t predicted until tomorrow night, so this was a surprise. Could get up to 5 inches tomorrow night, but parts of New York and other states have had over 1 foot.

Today, we picked the Berkshire community of Stockbridge to explore. With a population of just over 2,000, it is the smallest of the towns that we have visited. We started with a hike to a tower. It was a short but fairly steep hike and our first (almost) winter hike in a long time.

After we returned to the car, we headed to the Norman Rockwell Museum. We weren’t planning to go in today, but I wanted to at least get a photo of it. We got some extra surprises.

What we didn’t know is that Norman Rockwell’s son Peter is a sculptor and some of his work is displayed on the grounds. If you’re using your (perhaps big) head, you’ll see where this is going.

Then we headed back into downtown to check out the shops. We found a few to poke through as well as some just classic New England style buildings and a fun old hotel.

December already?! Today, I visited the home of the writer Edith Wharton (1862-1937). She was born into upper-class New York “aristocracy” who went on to become an award-winning author. Her most popular novels are “The House of Mirth,” “Ethan Frome,” and “The Age of Innocence,” for which she was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature. She was also the first woman to receive an honor doctorate of letters from Yale.

She was also a garden and interior designer and wrote several design books. The home I visited today, The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts, was an example of her design principles and her primary residence from 1902-1911, after which she moved permanently to France (without her husband from whom she was ultimately divorced).

When she moved, she took all of her belongings with her, so the furnishings of the house are period appropriate but not hers except for the architectural details, paintings put into the walls, and 1500 of her personal collection of books that the foundation purchased for the home.

The grounds are beautiful as well, and she designed the gardens. There is also a pet cemetery, as she and her husband had five dogs.

November is going out for us with an initial exploration of our new borrowed community. We didn’t start with Pittsfield, but headed south to I-90 to the town of Lee that caught our eye as we were driving in the other day. We then stopped to check out Laurel Lake and continued north towards Pittsfield, stopping in Lenox, another cute town in the Berkshires.

A brochure that we picked up in Lee mentions that National Geographic has named the Berkshires one of the world’s Top 10 Most Authentic Places to Visit for retaining their quintessential New Englandness. It also claimed Lee as the Shopping Capital of the Berkshires. All good marketing, but we did have a lovely walkabout today along the main street of this town of about 5,800.

We passed Laurel Lake on our way into Lee and stopped for a photo on our way out. It lies between the towns of Lee and Lenox, and the estate of Edith Wharton (more on that tomorrow) lies on its western shore. Wikipedia says that it’s actually a great pond rather than a lake for any sticklers.

Then we were off to the super cute community of Lenox (population 5,000), home of Tanglewood, famous for its outdoor concert series as well as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. We walked the main shopping streets and found a few fun stores to pop into.

Yesterday, Bob and I had a two hour very rainy drive on Thanksgiving from Worcester to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to start our next housesit.

We had a great walk through with our homeowners before they headed to a hotel near the Newark airport to facilitate their efforts this morning in catching an early flight to Turks and Caicos.

While they are away, we will be caring for their four cats and home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which is in the Berkshires. The Berkshires is Berkshire County, a rural region along the entire western border of Massachusetts that includes 30 towns and 2 cities. You can drive the length of it in 1.5 hours, if you can resist stopping to check out the many cultural or natural attractions in the area.

Pittsfield is in the central portion of the Berkshires and is the largest city with a population of about 44,000. The house we are in is almost closer to the smaller but very cute town of Lenox.

Meet the feline crew.

Bob and I had a great anniversary yesterday on the last relatively warm winter day we might have for awhile. We had a lazy morning in the room and then headed out about midday to check out the library, a park, a tower atop a hill in honor of a local celebrity, and then do a tour of the American Antiquarian Society that we had read about in a paper in Canada. As an additional bonus, we saw a couple other museums and landmarks related to the first two US presidents.

The American Antiquarian Society collects and preserves all materials (graphic art, newspapers, pamphlets, books, etc) printed in the US prior to 1900. In 1876, the US government passed the Copyright Act mandating that two copies of all printed materials be maintained by the Library of Congress, so the AAS focuses primarily on preserving and storing materials prior to that. They have 25 miles of shelving and over 4 million items. They provide tours for the public every Wednesday at 3:00 pm, so we had timed our walkabout to take advantage of this opportunity.

Bob and I left Rochester. NY this morning for a 5+ hour drive to Worcester, Massachusetts. We had a mostly rainy drive but didn’t run into heavy Thanksgiving related traffic until we were pretty close to our destination. We arrived at the AC Hotel in Worcester at about 2:15 pm.

We unpacked and then headed out to explore a bit of the city and pick up dinner and restock some of our food staples.

Worcester (pronounced Wooster) with a population of 208,000) is the 2nd largest city in New England. New England consists of 6 states — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhodesia Island, and Vermont. We have also learned that Worcester is famous for these firsts —

• The 1st reading of the Declaration of Independence
• The 1st National Women’s Rights Convention, that Susan B. Anthony attended
• The 1st American Nobel Prize Winner, Albert Michelson for his measurement of light
• The classic smiley face created by Harvey Ball of State Mutual Life Assurance Company.

We offset our fairly sedentary day yesterday with a good walk (actually just under 10 miles) around Rochester, seeing everything from more of the downtown, to part of their Heritage Trail, to a great view of the city, and then a walk back to the hotel through a artsy neighborhood.

Mondays are closed days for many museums, including the Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester. That was okay by us, as we weren’t sure we wanted to pay the $20 a person price for a ticket, but we did want to see the museum, so that was our first destination. Our route took us through the northwest quadrant of downtown, where we saw a few cool buildings.

Just past the downtown area, we crossed under Interstate 490, and saw the first evidence of Rochester’s Heritage Trail, which is a 1.25 mile walking path that leads to 15 points of historical significance.

After having seen the house, we then walked for 1.5 hours back across the city to Cobbs Hill Park, which was to have a great view of the city. We got to see a number of attractive neighborhoods on our route.

Our third destination for the day was a Wegmans grocery store, one of our favorites. They have an amazing selection of to-go items — Asian, seafood, comfort foods, salads, pizza, wings, etc. We perused for awhile, as it is just a lot to look at and very attractively presented. Once we were finished shopping, we walked back on University Avenue through the very artsy neighborhood and ended up walking by the other museum we were interested in (though also closed on Monday and pricey to visit), the George Eastman (Kodak fame) Museum.