Yesterday, both of my kids were
available for an outing. We planned to
go to Hadley, Massachusetts to the Skinner State Park because I had heard that
on the top of Skinner Mountain there are excellent views of the Connecticut
River Valley. That sounded like a nice
photographic opportunity to me.
So Evan and I went to Northampton
to pick up Carrie and off we went. When
we got to the turn to go up the hill to the park, there was a Ranger waiting
out in the road. He told us that there
had been “an incident”, the park was closed and we should come back in an
hour. Of course, that got our
imaginations working. Was it a car
accident? A UFO landing? Carrie was sure someone had
been mauled by a bear. What else could
it be??
We took the Rangers word for it
and found an ice cream stand and enjoyed a soft serve, sat around and talked
and then we went back. There was a different
Ranger standing there at that point who said it would probably be another 30 to
45 minutes and to come back then. Well,
unfortunately, we couldn’t wait around all day and we decided to go up the
mountain on another day.
We headed back to Northampton,
dropped Carrie off and headed for home.
We were informed later that evening by Carrie that it wasn’t a car
accident or a bear mauling but a couple of metal thieves who got caught
stealing copper tubing and such out of a guy’s house. The homeowner caught the robbers in mid-thievery
and being caught, the robbers did what any reasonable robber would do. They ran over to the state park to mess up
our plans.
They eventually caught these guys
but it wasn’t until another couple of hours after we decided to call it a
day. Well, looking at the bright side, I
got to spend an absolutely beautiful day with my kids and got a nice soft serve
ice cream cone to boot. Skinner Mountain
will still be there next week.
