Day 1: Hall of Fames and Caves

Today the movers came and moved all our stuff into moving vans. It was quite moving. Then we cleaned the apartment. Our primary goal was that when answering reference checks, the first word that comes to mind is NOT "duct tape" (don't ask).

We got started about halfway through the day, heading through Springfield, MA mostly via the pike (I-90). We stopped at the basketball hall of fame in Springfield, MA on a whim after Alex discovered that there is something to do in Springfield. It was expensive for the hour we gave it ($20/person), but there were several neat interactive exhibits, including one where you can play basketball on a computer with your image projected into the court using a green screen; Alex's big takeaway from the stop was that "we went through the Hall of Fame at just the right pace" for her. (About 45 minutes.) If you're a basketball fan, it's worth it;
otherwise, maybe not.

Below: Some dude was really awesome at basketball and for some reason this caused somebody to give him a phone with a commemorative plaque on it and somehow this is a museum exhibit.

You know what they say about famous basketball players with big feet?  They wear big shoes that get bronzed and put in the basketball hall of fame.

We drove through the Berkshires on scenic US-20 W, which was indeed scenic, with a river running parallel most of the way. (We started off the day trying to drive US-20 W out of Boston but it turns out to be incredibly slow going through all the random little towns in the outskirts of Boston.)

Next stop was Howe's Cavern, a cave discovered about 150 years ago. Part of the fun is discovering that it's been completely commercialized, including brick pathway. But the original tours in the cave were 8-10 hours due to the difficulty of passing through the cave, so it's probably for the best. It is difficult to overstate how awesome the caves are.  First, there is an animatronic Lester Howe explaining how he found the caves, accompanied by a ridiculous Monty Python-style animation of his cow wandering over the to the cave site.  Then when you think things could not get more amazing, you actually go into the caves.  They are super dramatically lit in different colors, and there is a bona fide underground river rushing through all of it (in fact, the river is what carved out the cave system to begin with) and tons of limestone formations that look all wavy and foldy like some kind of sea creature, a ray or something like that.  Everything in the system has great grandiose classical 19th century names, like the Chinese Pagoda or Titan's Temple or the Lake of Venus.  The only thing that could possibly make this place better is the planned animatronic dinosaur park (yes!) which is still in the very early stages.

We then headed over to Cooperstown, NY, where will plan to see the baseball Hall of Fame tomorrow morning. We stopped at the Gateway Inn & Suites at Cooperstown after a very long, slow drive from Howe Cavern...lots of dark country roads and it didn't help that it was snowing.  Cooperstown is in the middle of nowhere!  (Pictured below: north nowhere, on the way to Cooperstown)

The Gateway Inn & Suite is a very nice place--humble but friendly. The owner was surprised to see us pull in, and we were surprised by what we found (not a motel, but almost a house). We even got to take home one of his watercolors. Definitely the place to stay if you're in Cooperstown (which you probably won't be).