Heading up to the foliage

We are driving out of New York today – but first we need to pick up the rental car at a location in midtown. From here we have to make it out of the city pretty much as quick as possible. I am wondering just how quick this will be. When we drive out of the parking garage where we get the car there is a bit of traffic – but it isn’t too bad and we drive down towards the western side of Manhattan – here we reach the west side highway and start driving north. To my surprise the traffic on the highway is very light and we quickly reach the bridge taking us out of Manhattan and into the last of the five boroughs in Bronx – with the light traffic it doesn’t take long before we are out of new York altogether and can head up for the trees in New England.

We drive north towards Connecticut expecting to start seeing the leaves on the trees changing colours from green to a wide variety of different colours. But the leaves stay pretty green here in Connecticut. We head to Kent which supposedly should have some of the best foliage in all of New England – just not today where it is raining and it looks like we have come here a week or two too early. So we don’t spend much time around Kent and instead we continue the journey northward where the temperature should be lower and the leaves hopefully more colourful.

Waterfall in the park

Waterfall in the small park

The drive is scenic despite the lack of foliage and the rain and we stop at a little state park next to the road. It looks like a nice area but with the bad weather we don’t really want to head too far up in the hills so we just have a little look at the waterfall in the park and the first covered bridge we have spotted during the trip. It is a very small covered bridge just spanning a tiny creek in the small park. I am not sure this covered bridge is one of the old historical bridges – or somebody just thought it was a good idea to have a charming little bridge in at state park – I kind of suspect the later since the bridge seems a bit out of place.

Small covered bridge in the park

Side of the bridge

When we continue the journey we spot a larger covered bridge close to the main road and this one looks more like what I expected. It is a longer bridge spanning a small river we stop to take photos of the bridge and walk inside it just to go in to the historic bridge. From inside the bridge we get a good view of the river and we are protected pretty well from the elements outside.

As we drive along the road through the western part of Massachusetts we drive pass interesting old towns we stop in one of the larger one Great Barrington. The town got several older buildings which are quite impressive. I like the postal office which is a big building with columns out in front. It seems like the US postal services still got some money to maintain large postal offices in minor towns – not like in Denmark where the postal services is hard hit by a decline in the number of letters being send. In addition to the post office there are other interesting buildings and a fairly large church which is by far the tallest building in the small town.

We continue the journey north and pass another state border to reach Vermont – not long after we reach Vermont se see a little farm sale where they have a lot of pumpkins on display – I guess Halloween is coming up soon so people will go here to get there pumpkin in which ever seize you want. It has been a pretty long day so we decide to search for a place to stay somewhere not too far from the border.