Hike, hike, hike

Time to fend off the stir-crazy, so we took a long weekend back in Great Barrington, staying at the same weird but wonderful house where we were back in September. (The one on such a steep hill that the roof of the fourth floor almost comes to street level, and they built a bridge from it over to the road.)

The weather hasn't been terribly cooperative, so Friday was simply a shopping out-and-about, checking out fun little stores in Lenox, Stockbridge and Great Barrington.

But the point of going to the Berkshires is hiking.

Yesterday we went out to Bartholomew's Cobble, a lovely wander through some easy nature trail down by a river, and a bit of uplands hiking scrambling around.

Today's main focus was Bob's Way, a nice forest walk with a lot of rolling hills -- several miles of ups and downs.

Following that, we still had a little energy, so we went back the Benedict Pond Loop Trail, which we had enjoyed last year but taken the relatively sedate road for a good chunk of it. This time, we did the real trail the whole way around the pond, which turns out to be much more fun but a lot more effort, especially in muddy conditions: much of a mile of hopping strategically from rock to rock to avoid the mud.

Good exercise all around, and helps me feel like I'm getting value from my AllTrails subscription. I suspect we'll find somewhere other than Great Barrington for our next discretionary vacation, once we can leave the state and not feel guilty about quarantines, but it does continue to be a lovely place to visit...