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November 28, 2006
Project 351: Out West, Part One
Four-day weekend? Good weather? Time to get cracking on Project 351. And this time, since no watercraft were involved, I brought my Mom along for the ride. She even brought her Street Pilot; it was nice to have my maps and innate sense of direction confirmed, especially in a British accent.
So we headed out West, up Route 2 past the Twin Cities of Fitchburg and Leominster ("This road is a deathtrap", said Mom 2/3 of the way there) and headed for the town of Orange.
Orange is just on the other side of Athol (later, we'll have a contest to see whether Athol or Hull generates more bad puns), and one of its landmarks is a Peace Statue called "It Shall Not Be Again". It depicts a World War I doughboy, just returned from Over There, possibly telling him the horrors of war, possibly flying a kite.
Then something you don't see in Eastern Mass. - unpaved significant roads. Up some hills, alongside some swamps, through dust and dirt. My poor car. But we emerged, battered and surviving, onto a paved road in Royalston, near Doane's Falls. It's pretty cool, and doesn't involve a lot of hiking. You can get there off Route 32, you don't have to take Mrs. Todd's shortcut.
Back through Orange to Route 2, over the French King Bridge over the Connecticut River. My one-pic-per-town policy kind of gives Gill the shaft, since we were only technically in Gill by a few feet. But I like the picture from the bridge, so there you go. Oddly, there's a parking turnoff right after the bridge, and in the middle of the parking turnoff, near nothing whatsoever, there's a handicap parking spot. Weird.
Next stop was the anchor for this trip; the world-famous Montague Bookmill, which I thought was just a great used-book store, but is actually a little complex with a music store, an antique store, art studio, and cafe. They even do a Game Night, which may help tide you over between the monthly Exploit Boston! Game Nights (like the one Tuesday, Dec. 5th) at Soul Fire in Allston.
We poked around the used books for a while (here's what I got), then hit the road. To decide whether to head southwest or southeast from Montague Center. Either way, it turns out, leads to Sunderland and Amherst. Didn't stop for pictures, but we did stop at a Friendly's for lunch. I was pleased to see that the staff at Friendly's still exudes their sort of pleasant, good-natured borderline incompetence.
One last photo stop at Winsor Dam, overlooking the Quabbin Reservoir, but I still haven't figured out exactly which town we were in at the time. So no 351 checkmarks there.
34 down, 317 to go! Here's the whole set.
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