Parental Parolees: The Great End of Summer Road Trip

One of the interesting things about traveling full-time in an RV is finding out that despite how long you've lived together, you can still find out something your spouse hasn't seen or done in their life, especially in the state of their birth and spending more than 30 years living there.

Which brings us to western Massachusetts, specifically the Northampton KOA for a week.

As we were planning the Great End of Summer Road Trip, knowing we'd be knocking off the last 3 eastern seaboard states on our travel map, finding our way back down south became – interesting. Our ultimate destination on the way back to Georgia was the annual Hershey RV Show held each year in late September, but between Maine and Hershey were three weeks of travel to states we had already visited.

Come to find out, Barbara had never visited western Massachusetts. Go figure.

I, on the other hand, had visited the western part of our birth state a few times, and knew of some nice places to encounter that are very un-Massachusetts-like compared to the eastern side of state – er- commonwealth.

The first place to visit was a drive to the top of Mount Greylock; the highest peak in Massachusetts. Rising more than 3,400 ft above sea level, it has some spectacular views of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and of course, Massachusetts. I had always though that Mt. Greylock was part of the Berkshire range of mountains, yet came to find out it is part of the Taconic mountain range.

The drive is steep and narrow, and very tree-covered. Multiple small bridges were one lane only due to wash-out from the heavy rains western Mass. had been receiving over the summer. There's a ton of hiking trails that crisscross the road to the summit, so drivers have to be wary of hikers more focused on the hike than any traffic they might encounter.

The summit has a very nice war memorial with a beacon on top. The beacon is lit up most nights and can be seen for more than 70 miles, but is shut down during bird migration seasons so as to not confuse the birds as they head to more temperate climates.

The Mt. Greylock War Monument

Grover and I enjoying the view from the summit

Another day was spent in Shelburne Falls, home of the world-famous Bridge of Flowers, a beautiful bridge spanning the Deerfield River. It is maintained from April to November with floral plantings suitable for each growing season. A lot of hard work goes into keeping the bridge beautiful while open.

Bridge of Flowers from the bridge connecting Shelburne Falls and Buckland, Ma.

One beauty deserves another . . .

Just below Shelburne Falls is a very strange rock formation called the Glacial Potholes. Very circular and very deep holes have been created in the rocks below the falls by water runoff over centuries, and the Deefield River is shunted off to one side in order to expose the rock formations for year-round viewing.

They're kinda weird, but cool . . .

What's left of Shelburne Falls is shunted off to one side to preserve the level of the Deerfield River

We stopped in for lunch at a local diner, where I was able to see the cook preparing bacon for the next day's breakfast (the diner was only open until 2 PM every day). For bacon lovers it was the coolest thing; she'd take a large sheet of wax paper with about a dozen strips of bacon adhering to the paper, drop it on the griddle bacon-side down, and start cooking it. The paper was removed as it heated, leaving a dozen strips of bacon simply waiting to be turned over for it's second side cooking. It was a bacon assembly line, and could only be found in a country as great as America!

I even got a free piece of bacon just for asking her about the process. It pays to be curious . . .

So here's a bit of KOA campground trivia for those already RV-ing or thinking about doing so.

There are three levels of KOA's; Journey, Holiday and Resort. They are pretty self explanatory just by their names; Journey is for the one-night stops as you're heading down the road, with lot's of pull-through sites for easy in and out, and few amenities.

Holiday has some basic amenities like playgrounds, pools and games, while Resort has bigger and more elaborate pools, more recreation like jump pads and mini-golf, and usually contains some sort of snack bar for quick meals throughout the day.

The KOA in Northampton was sort of a KOA Holiday trying to be a Resort. Their pool was small and unfortunately for me, unheated. A clear violation of my needs and wants. And due to the colder than normal weather, the water temps were in the low '60's at best. Their snack bar was only open Saturday night and Sunday morning, although they did a pretty darned good burger.

But the biggest turnoff to the KOA experience was the large amount of what are called “seasonal” campers; people who have bought some pretty old and sketchy-looking campers and park them on a site all year (closing them up for the winter months) and using them almost full-time in the warmer months. And I get it; campgrounds need seasonal campers as much, if not more than us transient campers because it's steady (although discounted) money coming in.

But today's “seasonal” camper tends to be a little lax on the cleaning and maintenance aspect of their campers and sites. And because of the large number of them in this particular campground, it's a bit – untidy. And some of the “seasonal” travel trailers were derelicts more than 20 years ago. Don't get me wrong; they're generally as nice as the campers we meet as transients on the road (although they do tend to stick together in seasonal groups at social events), but the look isn't good if you're trying to move up from Holiday-level to Resort-level at KOA.

Rain kept us indoors for 3-4 days of this stop, but we did manage to find one farmer with a sense of humor on the road just outside the campground. Seems he has a problem with a particularly large rock on his property, and is trying a unique way to solve it – by offering it for sale. I give him an “A” for effort.