Springsoon

One of my all time favorite New England weather forcaster schticks is when they all sit around whining that it is March but it still feels like winter... News Flash, Fox News -- Breaking Alert Story! It IS still winter. Check your calendars and call me in April if there is still snow on the ground, and then we can grouse and complain all you like.

Really now, people. That's all I have to say on the subject.

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Yesterday we decided to go out into the wilds of Central Massachusetts and go hiking at a waterfall we'd been to in the past. Doane's Falls is a Trustees of Reservations property in Royalston, MA and is part of the Tully Lake Recreation area of the North Quabbin. We were there in the summer a few years back, and thought with a lot of the recent thawing the waterfal would be sufficiently spectacular.

We were tricked. There is a veil of ice around the waterfall still, and there are holes in the ice where you can see the insane rushing of the water, but unfortunately you couldn't see much more.

A short hike down to the first or second viewing ledge proved to be too slick for our liking, what with Captain No Fear on our team, so we decided to turn back up the hill. We drove like mad all through the twisty turny roads in our beast truck, and really got to see a lot of mad pretty nature. But didn't get to hike as much as we wanted.

We decided to look for food, and drove through all kinds of towns (our favorite being Athol. From a speech therapist point of view, Doug cannot say the town name without laughing... "I could never live here and keep a straight face," he said giggling wildly). We ended up in Fitchburg, thinking we'd go to a Tex Mex Barbecue joint we'd been to before on Rte 2A, but it was out of business and is now a Chinese Buffet. Bleurgh. We ended up at a Texas Longhorn Steakhouse where we had our fill of good food and margaritas, and all made it home happy and comfy, no one fell off a cliff and no one got pulled out of the restaurant for being too loud or horribly behaved. All told, a good day.

I would love to live in Ashburnham, Ashby, Pepperell, one of those out there but still kinda close enough to Fitchburg and Worcester kinda towns. I kept saying "I love this town, I love this place" and Doug would answer "I love our town." Meaning I'm in no mood to pack and move so get those migratory ideas right out of your head.

Too bad for me, eh?