The Berkshires is a great place for outdoorsy stuff, like hiking, birding, etc. I took the photo below at Mohawk Park, it’s a monument entitled “Hail to the Sunrise.”
The Berkshire Museum is one of my favorite things to do in town. It felt like an all-in-one experience, with art, local history, live reptiles, and an aquarium. The touch tanks were a big hit with the kids, while the parents got a moment to sit down and relax.
“Dad joke” alert — while the museum’s educator talked about hermit crabs, one of the dad’s announced, loudly, “here is a hermit human,” while pointing to another dad fast asleep on the bench. Everyone laughed except his own kid, who whined, “DDaaaaaaddd.” I guess that kid had enough dad jokes for the day. On our way out, the educator told us about the piranha feeding planned for the next day, so we decided to return.
When we arrived the next day, we found a hermit crab feasting on a sea star. Backtracking a moment, we learned the prior day that sometimes hermit crabs take a little bite out of sea stars, but that’s okay, since they can regenerate. We saw it happen a few times, and some jokes were made about nibbling on cookies, since a few of the sea stars were specifically “cookie sea stars.”
But, this time, I guess the hermit crab ate too quickly for the sea star to regenerate. When we first got there, the sea star still wiggled a little bit, but soon it went kind of lifeless.
The kids got really sad, of course, and asked about whether we could save the sea star. At that point, we all gave the “circle of life” speech, which they thankfully accepted. They didn’t seem too traumatized, and everyone moved on to the main event — the piranha feeding, which, by the way, was nothing like in the movies. Also, shout out to the museum educators, they were fantastic.
Everyone worked up an appetite, and there was a lot of great food nearby. This was from the Berkshire Palate a few blocks away; we ordered charcuterie, pizza, and hummus to start.
After several rounds of food, we spent the rest of the day playing board games.
Soon our weekend away ended, and we hopped on the train back home. For those of you traveling without a car, the Berkshires is a train ride away from Manhattan via the Berkshire Flyer during summer.
Notes of Currant 