Excellent weekend trekking over Massachusetts
On Saturday I puttered around the house in the morning, doing cleaning in preparation for the Big Party (tm) later this month.
In the late afternoon I went to Purgatory Chasm in Sutton, MA, near Worcester, with endlessgame and puppy Fiona. We climbed through the chasm, which itself is not a very long walk, nor particularly rigorous. We watched someone rock-climbing, and mostly tried to keep Fiona away from other dogs, who she was way agitated about. We walked to "Little Purgatory," which is really mostly just a scenic waterfall in the middle of a rock field, and got eaten alive by mosquitos in the progress. (Well, Chris did. I am less delicious to mosquitos). Then we walked back to the south end of the chasm and took the Forest Line trail back, which takes you over the eastern wall of the chasm.
"Purgatory chasm view 2" by Dale E. Martin ( Martinde) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
I didn't take any pictures, so have this one instead.
Not a long trip, all in all, and we topped it off with ice cream at Cherry Hill (after much driving around the Leominster area--I had Groupons for Elvis' Hot Dog Palace, which I was trying to use, but their hours of operation are a damn dirty lie).
On Sunday I drove out to Deerfield for acousticshadow2's wedding shower, with Stacy in tow. The shower was at the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory. They had a lovely package for us--a tasty brunch, followed by cupcakes made by Alison while we opened gifts, followed by a guided tour of the conservatory.
Alison says, "Do not trust these women."
I had been to the Butterfly Place in Westford a couple of times, so the basic experience was the same, but the space is much MUCH bigger, and also includes a large area with non-butterfly type creatures--lizards, skinks, poison dart frogs, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, giant stick insects, and giant millipedes, just to name a few. EB got to release a butterfly, and the rice paper butterflies found Marsha delicious, and Erin and I tried desperately to find the Atlas Moth that we were told lurked somewhere in the conservatory. I petted a bearded dragon (I think? or a similar lizard) and an angry Russian tortoise. I watch one of the staff feed a stick insect to a skink. After finding out the giant koi were the biggest predators of the butterflies, I watched the pond for a while, hoping with morbid hope to see one devoured. (There were butterfly wings floating on the water, so I am pretty sure this was not a lie).
Afterwards we drove back to Bolton and I laid in the hammock in Chris and Stacy's living room for a while, before we went to dinner at Red Ginger in Stow. We came back afterwards and they decided it would be funny to watch me play Frog Fractions, since I never had. It was... an entertaining experience to play through. It has very little to do with frogs or fractions, but I will say no more, as it is the kind of thing that must be played to be understood.
Looking over Chris's collection of games, he described Miasmata to me, and I decided that sounded like a game I had to play. And it kind of is. I described it as "an Elder Scrolls game, if it was all about alchemy." Basically you are dying of a plague and you have to wander this island and find plants to synthesize a cure before you die. All the while you are, of course, getting sicker and sicker.
So I played that for about an hour, and soon realized that while I loved collecting plants, I am not so good at this whole "triangulation" and "finding my way around" thing. So.
I still think I'll be adding it to my Steam wishlist and picking it up sometime!
In the late afternoon I went to Purgatory Chasm in Sutton, MA, near Worcester, with endlessgame and puppy Fiona. We climbed through the chasm, which itself is not a very long walk, nor particularly rigorous. We watched someone rock-climbing, and mostly tried to keep Fiona away from other dogs, who she was way agitated about. We walked to "Little Purgatory," which is really mostly just a scenic waterfall in the middle of a rock field, and got eaten alive by mosquitos in the progress. (Well, Chris did. I am less delicious to mosquitos). Then we walked back to the south end of the chasm and took the Forest Line trail back, which takes you over the eastern wall of the chasm.
"Purgatory chasm view 2" by Dale E. Martin ( Martinde) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
I didn't take any pictures, so have this one instead.
Not a long trip, all in all, and we topped it off with ice cream at Cherry Hill (after much driving around the Leominster area--I had Groupons for Elvis' Hot Dog Palace, which I was trying to use, but their hours of operation are a damn dirty lie).
On Sunday I drove out to Deerfield for acousticshadow2's wedding shower, with Stacy in tow. The shower was at the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory. They had a lovely package for us--a tasty brunch, followed by cupcakes made by Alison while we opened gifts, followed by a guided tour of the conservatory.
Alison says, "Do not trust these women."
I had been to the Butterfly Place in Westford a couple of times, so the basic experience was the same, but the space is much MUCH bigger, and also includes a large area with non-butterfly type creatures--lizards, skinks, poison dart frogs, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, giant stick insects, and giant millipedes, just to name a few. EB got to release a butterfly, and the rice paper butterflies found Marsha delicious, and Erin and I tried desperately to find the Atlas Moth that we were told lurked somewhere in the conservatory. I petted a bearded dragon (I think? or a similar lizard) and an angry Russian tortoise. I watch one of the staff feed a stick insect to a skink. After finding out the giant koi were the biggest predators of the butterflies, I watched the pond for a while, hoping with morbid hope to see one devoured. (There were butterfly wings floating on the water, so I am pretty sure this was not a lie).
Afterwards we drove back to Bolton and I laid in the hammock in Chris and Stacy's living room for a while, before we went to dinner at Red Ginger in Stow. We came back afterwards and they decided it would be funny to watch me play Frog Fractions, since I never had. It was... an entertaining experience to play through. It has very little to do with frogs or fractions, but I will say no more, as it is the kind of thing that must be played to be understood.
Looking over Chris's collection of games, he described Miasmata to me, and I decided that sounded like a game I had to play. And it kind of is. I described it as "an Elder Scrolls game, if it was all about alchemy." Basically you are dying of a plague and you have to wander this island and find plants to synthesize a cure before you die. All the while you are, of course, getting sicker and sicker.
So I played that for about an hour, and soon realized that while I loved collecting plants, I am not so good at this whole "triangulation" and "finding my way around" thing. So.
I still think I'll be adding it to my Steam wishlist and picking it up sometime!