After driving winding roads through quaint Vermont villages while practicing our Spanish we made it
to North Adams, MA located in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains
to visit one of Morgan's college friends, Rachel. While she was
finishing up with work, we drove around the small town trying to get a
hold on what life is like here in the far Northwest corner of
Massachusetts. The town is a very industrial looking boom-town with many
old run down buildings and houses, but also with some beautifully
up-kept buildings turned into artist studios and galleries. Once Rachel
explained the history of the town, the layout made much more sense to
us. The town had been a center for mills and manufacturing companies
until the mid 80's when competition from abroad put those companies out
of business. These businesses were the life of the city so without them
there weren't many other options for work and the town was left with
huge unused industrial buildings. So, businessmen and politicians were
looking for creative ways to use the space available and ended up
opening the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999(where
Rachel works as the Education Coordinator). Now the downtown streets
are lined with artist galleries and studios.
After driving around for a bit we met up with Rachel and
went back to her huge, high ceilinged apartment lined with old Victorian
wallpaper. After chatting and catching up, she took us to "the top of
the world" to look out over the entire valley that the town sits in.
Once
done enjoying the beautiful views we decided to drive to Northampton
where we had heard Trampled By Turtles was going to be playing that
night. We made it into town in time to enjoy some burgers, sweet potato
fries, onion rings, and beer at a place called Local Burger before
seeing the show. They had an awesome maple mayo sauce for sweet potato
fry dipping.
A funny, hip country band called Johny Corndawg opened up the show and then Trampled came on after them. For those of you who don't know Trampled By Turtles, they
are an awesome high-energy bluegrass band from Duluth, MN and they are a
favorite of ours, so when we heard they were playing near us we had to
check them out. They played a fantastic show at the Pearl Street Venue
and we were happy to see how much support they were getting from fans
this far away from home.
The night ended back at Rachel's place after being very thankful we did not get lost or run out of gas! Now we are just starting our Wednesday morning with some coffee and soon we'll be heading to check out Mass MoCA here in North Adams. Nos vemos mas tarde!
