My friend Carol was my co-pilot and her skills as such leave much to be desired. I will admit the directions were also a bit confusing. I got one set of directions from Mapquest and the other set from the gallery's website. We opted to go with the directions from the website because haven't we all been burned by Mapquest at some time or other? As it turned out Carol doesn't give you the direction to turn anywhere until there is a split second to make the decision to follow her direction or not. She did not pick the right turn/exits for at least the first 4 attempts. So we had a very scenic ride through West Springfield (seeing the same area at least 3 times!) and many repeat performances at more than one rotary (don't you just hate rotaries anyway?) before we finally found our way to the gallery. Turns out that our ride that should have been 18mins according to Mapquest turned out to be at least twice that long.....using Carol's 'internal' GPS (extremely faulty I must say) and the process of elimination with the exits off the rotary. We also got quite familiar with an odd girl standing near one of the rotaries trying to get a ride. I couldn't make up my mind if she was dressed for Halloween a little early or an escapee from the circus with that get up she had on. I can't imagine anyone would want to give her a ride dressed like that but it worked in our favor as we used her as a point of reference on our many rides around that rotary. Here's that girl again! I remember this spot...she's still there! I wonder if she dresses like that all the time? Oh my God, we have to start waving at her now just to be polite! She probably was wondering why we didn't just pick her up instead of stalking her.
The gallery was being run this day by a sweet older woman named Mickey Encalade. That's 'Encalade'...not 'Escalade'. She was not a car...but she was an artist. Mickey was very uncertain if it would be ok for me to take pictures of the art work while I was there. I found this to be an odd attitude to have considering artists are usually looking for free publicity aren't they? I explained to her that the photos would be going into a blog I write and judging by the blank look she gave me I'm guessing she didn't know what a blog was. I decided to let her show me her artwork first and ask again later. She was willing to let me photograph her stuff at least but didn't want to make a decision for the rest of the artists. I figured that was reasonable.
She showed us all around the gallery, giving personal tidbits on any artist she knew personally. There was some really beautiful work there and we had the gallery to ourselves with Mickey so we soon got comfortable with each other. There was a variety of artistic endeavors on display...some I loved...some not so much. Some was inspired and some was just plain odd as hell. I like odd stuff for the most part...I like how someones mind works to come up with it in the first place. It was a good idea to go there even if we did take the most indirect route imaginable.
By the end of our visit you would have thought we'd all known each other our whole lives. Mickey told us several times we were funny and she obviously was having a good time. I did decide to purchase a box of note cards with a beautiful wooded scene on it. (it was just about the only thing I could afford actually) They were from a local artist, Donna Shaw. (who is the sister of the girl I went to school with) I've seen her work on her FB page and that's where I found the reference to Gallery 131 as well. Mickey told me the gallery is very new...having just opened in September. I'm guessing it's not well known yet. That works in my favor because I'd rather not have a bunch of people to wade through anyway.
As it turned out Mickey had warmed up to us to the point where the picture taking wasn't such a big deal anymore. She also justified it by saying 'she didn't see anything'...and then proceeded to ask me what kind of camera I was using and wanting to take a look at it. (she was so cute!) So while Carol had her show her some of the jewelery and hair pieces I went from room to room and took pictures to my hearts content.
Before leaving Mickey had confided that she had left her pocketbook on the front seat in her car which was parked on the street. After some discussion about it we convinced Mickey it would be a good idea to go get her pocketbook. She felt that because she could see her car from the gallery it wasn't a big deal. I suggested to her that really that just meant that she'd be watching as someone smashed her window and took it...not being able to stop them and she'd still be out the pocketbook and a solid window in her car. We kept an eye on Mickey and didn't pull away until she had made it back with her pocketbook in tow. She was such a nice lady and we'd hate to see anything happen to her.
The trip home didn't seem as long as the original ride was however we still didn't really know where we were going. This time we turned off Carol's internal GPS ( I just stopped listening to her actually) and just read the signs..taking the most logical exits to find our way back to the highway and it worked. But our day wasn't over yet. We decided to go apple picking at the Easy Pickings Orchard in Enfield . A quick stop at my house for a potty break and we ended up with another passenger for apple picking too. Kaylee wanted to go, so off we went.
I was originally looking for Gayla apples because they are sweeter and I just love them. When we got there it was to find that they had already gone by but there were a few other types that we were told we also sweet. Carol was looking for apples suitable for making pies and turnovers. I was looking for eating apples because I don't like pie. We ended up with a type of apple called Kinsea which neither one of us were familiar with but oh they are good! I justified eating one while picking so I'd know what I was buying. I ended up eating three of them! Kaylee did nothing but eat apples the whole time we were there then complained a bit that her stomach felt funny...probably apple overload. She never did any picking, just kept eating. Eventually I took her bag and filled it myself. I couldn't carry anymore and Carol was ready too so we took a few pictures and headed out to pay for our apples.
Before we paid, Kaylee said she wanted a couple of tiny white pumpkins...to keep her big pumpkin company (of course!) so I bought those for her and added a few gourds also. I love gourds...it's that preoccupation of mine with odd things coming into play again. Carol bought a couple of little pumpkins too. One for herself and one for Teddy (her dog). Teddy likes to eat them. Teddy likes to eat a lot of things. He ate some of my tomatoes right off the plant last year! I didn't know Teddy had graduated to pumpkins. I can only assume that he's never met a watermelon yet. :)
We headed home with our treasure and memories of fun in the orchard and at the gallery. I can't wait until next year when the blueberries are ripe again. I've eaten pounds of those berries this year and never put them in pies; pancakes; muffins or anything. I eat my berries naked by the fistful! And now that I think of it the last couple of times I took Kaylee with me berry picking all she did was eat them too. Her container was always empty! Seems like we have a pattern developing here doesn't it?
Just a few pictures from each of the segments of our day.
