Day 3- The Mount, Great Barrington and Greylock

 Ready for another day of bookish delight!

We headed to Great Barrington to visit Fuel Coffee for breakfast.  I decided to try the Chaider.  It was all right but much more cider than chai. 

We spent a bit of time reading here. 

After which we walked around Berkshire Food Co-op for a little bit.  Since most of the shops we wanted to visit didn't open until ten or later we decided to head to The Mount for a while.  

The Mount was the home of Edith Warton. I was not really familiar with her, nor had a read any of her books. But the grounds were beautiful. We didn't want to pay to go into the house for the tour. We decided maybe we'd do that on our next trip. 😉 We visited the giftshop, there were so many bookish bits and bobbles to look at.  We both ended up coming away with more book themed tea.

There was a little free library and Laura scored a pristine copy of Stuart Little.

We headed back to Great Barrington to visit some shops and have lunch.  Yellow House Books turned out to be a treasure trove of used books.

I was beyond delighted to find two favorites from middle school and a book about Louisa May Alcott, which had a book plate inside from Orchard House!

We also loved that the shop keeper wrote all the titles we purchased on a yellow legal pad, before keying the prices into the old school cash register.

Lunch at Rubi's where we had the most delicious paninis.

After lunch we headed to Greylock.  The highest point in Massachusetts. It took us 20(ish) minutes to drive up the winding 9 mile mountain road to the top.

The monument itself was quite impressive, begun after WWI has a tribute to those who died fighting in the war. The view from the top was breathtaking.  89 twisty spiral stairs to the top.

Again I couldn't help but marvel at God's creation and feel profoundly thankful for America and the men and women who have sacrificed for our freedoms.

Sometime on the trip we started talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail- so we had to take our pictures by the Appalachian Trail signs. We have now officially hiked *part* of the Appalachian Trail! 

We stopped at Guido's Marketplace to grab a salad to eat with our leftover pizza for dinner on our way home. We got back to the hotel tired but blissfully happy.  We read a little bit before dinner. I finished The Bells of Traeger Hall- still processing how I feel about the ending.

Of course, more tea and reading! I started Can't help Falling for Cousin Book Club. We snapped a picture to send to Jenn (cousin and fellow book club member).

Monday, we had a few stops before heading for home.

First was No Six Depot - delight! Loved the atmosphere and the baristas were so kind and friendly. We both had chai lattes and pastries.

We had some time to kill before our last book shop stop opened so we headed to Stockbridge Coffee and Tea to read.

Our last stop was Shaker Mill Books. We could have spent so much longer in this store! So much to look at.

Laura and I both got different editions of Edith Warton's Ethan Frome, we found it interesting that we read the back of 3 or 4 different editions and they all put a slightly different spin on the story.  We shared this insight with the shopkeeper as we were checking out and she informed us she definitely had opinions on the book too. Hmmmm, intriguing. Made us want to read it all the more.

Headed home!

My bookish haul from the weekend!

It was a great time. Filled with delight and sharing time, laughter and books with my sister. Can't wait for our next adventure.