Mon and Tues 6-15 and 6-16

Monday: The plan- after breakfast, drive 1 1/2 hours to Williamstown or a bit farther to our campground at Pownal VT, then dress out and ride up to Petersburg Pass, a climb I have done many times over the years, and which S did with me on a tandem 10 years ago.  The reality: it was windy, chilly and threatening rain all day, so we just went to the campground and relaxed. Rain started in the evening, but ended about bedtime. Our travel trailer was parked at Lake Taghanic State Park all week with no electric hookup, but because I'd converted all the interior lights to LED we still had plenty of electric juice when we left this morning. The refrigerator has been on propane power all along, but we only used half of one of our two tanks. It makes us feel better about our travels this summer, as we'll be in more areas where we'll have to rely on our own resources.

Tuesday: It was dry in the morning, but Weatherbug showed a small patch of rain approaching. We drove the few miles down to Williamstown and visited the Clark Art Institute. Their "Van Gogh and Nature" exhibit just opened last weekend, and it was a great experience. They have 70 of his paintings on display, some from their permanent collection but mostly on loan from the Netherlands and elsewhere. I was surprised to learn that his distinctive painting style of bright colors, swirling images, and bold rapid brush strokes only developed in the last three years of his life, during which he was furiously turning out paintings every couple of days. We also revisited the permanent galleries and saw many familiar great paintings we remembered from past visits. It started raining again as we left the Clark, so after lunch we visited the huge new college library (not the one they built in the 80's which was quickly obsolete because it wouldn't adequately accommodate handicapped people or new technology- they'll tear that one down.) The college has twice as many students as when I was there, but the library is probably 10 times bigger. No surprise: the endowment has grown from $30 million to $2.5 Billion in that same time. And for good measure, the yearly cost has gone from $3,000 to $60,000. Something is wrong there.  Anyway, it was still raining, so we drove around Williamstown to see what had changed and what hadn't, then back to camp. Maybe we'll get in that ride tomorrow.