Mount Sugarloaf - Deerfield, Massachusetts

You are standing on the back of a dead giant man-eating beaver.  According to Native American legend.  Maybe so.  This is the view from Mount Sugarloaf in South Deerfield, Massachusetts.  It's only just over 650 feet high, but it's placement on a wide valley floor lends the view a strangely spectacular sense of drama.  Especially at peak foliage season.

We're looking south in the above photo; that's Mt. Tom in Holyoke on the horizon.  Here below is looking eastward.

Across the Connecticut River you can see Mt. Toby in Sunderland.  No dead giant man-eating beaver over there.  And the volanic energy that created it is long since dormant.  So, it's safe to bring a lunch and go for a hike.  Our only sense of urgency comes from missing what's left of the fleeting peak season.

America's Stonehenge - Salem, New Hampshire

It is a mystery, still being discovered. “America’s Stonehenge” in Salem, New Hampshire is a site of caves and rock formations, and stone placements that appear to be an astronomically aligned calendar marking, and predicting, lunar and solar events. It is at least 4,000 years old, and is reckoned to probably be the oldest man-made structure in the United States.

We do not know who set these stone formations, but a variety of artifacts from a variety of eras in mankind’s timeline in North America are found here.

Stone tools, pottery, stone and bone pendants, artifacts from ancient Native Americans, and from the Colonial period. This site was also used, because of its caves and its isolation, as a hiding place on the Underground Railroad in the 19th century.

There are over 350 such megalithic sites in New England, and we are learning more about them. Prior to archeological study in the 20th century, they were only hidden spots, or known about through local legend and tales, and gossip. Strange things seen there, strange things imagined. We’ve passed through the era of myth and legend into the age of discovery, and this brings with it newfound awe and wonder for a people who lived here long ago.

The property on which this megalithic site sits is a private outdoor museum, and open to the public year-round. Have a look here at the website for more information.

Valley of the Dinosaurs (or the Pioneer Valley)

In 1939, Carlton Nash of Granby, Massachusetts opened Nash Dinosaur Land on a small unearthed quarry of dinosaur tracks. Coincidentally, in that same year I believe, the Connecticut River Valley in western Massachusetts and northern Connecticut was christened The Pioneer Valley as part of an effort to promote the history and culture of this area as a tourist destination.

There has been some discussion in the last year or so to change The Pioneer Valley to The Valley of the Dinosaurs. Not without good reason.

This swath of land that opens a wide vista in the river valley from northern Connecticut up through western Mass. is the result of the scraping down of the land when the last glaciers pulled back. It left behind some of the richest farming land in the world, and some of the oldest land as well, possibly 200 million years old.

It was once the site of the pre-historic Lake Hitchcock, named for Edward Hitchcock, a renowned scientist in the early 1800s who studied astronomy as well as geology, and was one of the first to examine the dino footprints found hereabouts with something more than tolerating a nuisance, which is how the 19th century farmers thought of them.

It’s said that the first to discover, or at least the first to publicly take note of these tracks, found up and down the Valley, was a South Hadley farm boy named Pliny Moody, who plowed up a slab of footprints in 1802. Nobody knew about dinosaurs then, but they did suspect these footprints might be terribly old. Some suggested the thin, bird-like toe imprint might have been left by Noah’s raven at the time of the Flood.

Even a couple generations later, when Edward Hitchcock was giving dinosaur footprints more credence, he thought they only might have been made by ancient birds. The idea of really, really ancient reptiles long before the advent of man was still not imagined by men of science.

Fast forward to the 1930s when young Carlton Nash found strange tracks near the old Moody farm, but he knew what they were. By this time science had come of age with respect to the study of dinosaurs, and when the boy Carlton came of age, he bought the land and made himself both a roadside attraction and a mission in life.

But, there are lots of spots here and there up and down the Valley where dino tracks can be found, from rest areas off Route 5, to the very interesting Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, which opened in 1968. This park's 200-million-year-old sandstone trackway is a Registered Natural Landmark.

And you can make your own plaster cast of some big dino foot prints.

So, if you find yourself wandering the Valley (Pioneer Valley or Valley of the Dinosaurs), step lightly. Watch for those footprints.

For more on the Dinosaur State Park, have a look at this website.   Photos in public domain from ImageMuseum website.

Sea Monster Champ - Lake Champlain

The above photo shows the mysterious sea monster living in Lake Champlain, commonly called “Champ.” Don’t see him? Don’t feel bad. Few people have. But he’s there. To the left. Or, maybe it’s the right. Maybe it wasn’t that day at all.

Lake Champlain, discovered by French explorer Samuel del Champlain in 1609, is sometimes called New England’s west coast. It’s a 109-mile long freshwater lake, 400 feet deep at its greatest depth, and reported, even since the 1600s, as being the home of a sea monster, long before “Nessie” in Loch Ness Scotland ever made a name for herself.

Modern-era sightings of Champ were made by passengers of ferry steamships in the 1870s, about the time of the first “Nessie” sighting in Loch Ness. Long-time “Champ” searcher and author Joseph W. Zarzynski has produced a sonar image of a creature or something with the help of Rochester Engineering Laboratories. It is hoped that one day technology will uncover this mystery of what may be a plesiosaur, living some 10,000 years beyond the age when we thought they bought the farm.



Here is the view from the ferry “Sprit of Ethan Allen” which cruises Lake Champlain, of another ferry on which passengers are also unsuccessfully seeking Champ. Oh, he’s around, though. You see him on T-shirts and souvenirs at the gift shops. One of these days, when Champ appears in the flesh, he’s going to be a millionaire with all that merchandising.

Want to go? Check out this website for one of the many cruises on lake with “Spirit of Ethan Allen III” that run through October.

Been there? Done that? Bought the Champ T-Shirt? Saw Champ? Let us know!