I followed the course of the Connecticut river as it wanders its way South through New Hampshire and Vermont. The snow gradually disappeared from the ground, melting into muddy fields, or congealing into blue ice under the protective shadows of young birches. Part of I91 cuts through hills of blue slate - I've always been tempted to grab a piece or two, but the sheer quantity of fractured stone lying near the highway shows its poor quality. 91 passes into Massachusetts around Greenfield, but you wouldn't know it from the landscape. It's a mix of rural fields, grazing dairy cows and second growth forrest for hundreds of miles. The Yankee Candle Company's mega factory and store are the first real hint of industry and larger population centers. On warmer days you can smell the cloying smell of mixing chemicals from the highway. Speaking of weird smell mixes, there is a dairy to the South in North Hampton that serves delicious fresh ice cream. If you stop by, do it on a day when the wind is blowing away from the cows. The college towns of Amherst North Hampton, Holyoke blur into the suburban, and then very, decayingly urban Springfield. Continuing on 91 would bring me all the way to New Haven, and from there New York. But that was not to be today. I turned my little blue lawnmower of a Prius West onto the Mass Pike and floored it to the Berkshires. The little town of Stockbridge sits close to the geographic center of Berkshire county, surrounded by gently rolling hills (than only on the East Coast could be called mountains) and deciduous forest that turns flame red and gold in the early Fall. Norman Rockwell made his home and studio here for twenty five years and brought the small town some amount of fame through paintings like, "Main Street, Stockbridge at Christmas." The strip of brick and clapboard buildings that appear in the painting are still there, though now they contain stores and restaurants that cater to tourists. The town has a perfectly preserved, almost movie set like feel to it; from the restored mansions that line the main road to the clipped stretches of town green, New England churches and shady but trim graveyards.