Following General Knox

Route 23 from Woronoco (a village of Russell, west of Springfield) to Great Barrington. 30 miles.

How can you not like a road on which a sign immediately announces "Free Manure?" Route 23 is also known as Knox Trail, because it was the path that General Henry Knox, toting captured British cannon, took from Fort Ticonderoga through the mountains to Boston during the winter of 1775-76. Presumably you'll have more horsepower than he did.

We traveled east to west, quickly curving and climbing more than 1,000 feet in elevation from Woronoco to the one-blinking-traffic-light town of Blandford. In a word: downshifting. The road weaves its way mostly through rolling woodlands, occasionally slicing through a small farm. There's a nice long post-Blandford descent, a pair of dueling country stores in East Otis (Katie's vs. Hall's), and a quick zigzag in Otis. We were tempted to stop at a house offering "Bunnies 4 Sale," but where, without a back seat, would we put our purchases?

Next we zipped through Monterey, a borough of some 850 souls that looks downright prosperous by hilltown standards, and quickly made our way eight miles to Great Barrington, dropping 500 vertical feet along the way. Hitting the traffic of Route 7 was culture shock, but we managed to recover at the Barrington Brewery.

Published in the Boston Globe Calendar's 1999 Wandering New England issue.