The whole point of the eastern road trip was for my wife Diana to visit Ruby, the five-month-old daughter of her niece Jen. Ben is Jen's husband, and they're wonderful folks, indeed.
The Confidentials rented another excellent Airbnb, this time the basement apartment of a house in a rural area a mile away from Jen's and Ben's house. It is so "country" that the owner recently saw a mama bear and cubs in the back yard, and garbage left too long in the outside can is in danger of being disrupted by critters.
However, within a 50-mile radius of our lodging, there are ample human populations as well as 51 colleges and universities, including UMass (Amherst), Smith and Mount Holyoke, the latter located in South Hadley, our base of operations for three days.
The next three days were destined to be about family, babies and the sort of domesticity that I've seldom experienced in my life. Perhaps for this reason, it was enjoyable in ways that I wouldn't have expected prior to arrival. I let go of my walking obsession and relaxed. It was high time for such. We hung out a lot, and took a few excursions.
There were beers and food, as at the fine Yarde Tavern in the center of South Hadley, where my Saturday lunchtime Reuben sandwich was delicious with a chaser of Allagash (Maine) Witbier.
Our visit to the Montague Bookmill is described at the Potable Curmudgeon blog:
About the Montague Bookmill, and a few beers in the Massachusetts countryside.
Following are a few frames of many casual photos.
Labor Day weekend in New England is something I could do more than once.
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