Natural Bridge State Park

On a beautiful mid-October day, my friend Laura and I set out to find the Natural Bridge State Park somewhere off Route 8 in North Adams. We had a hard time. Our GPS could find neither the street nor the park, so we just winged it and drove to where we thought the park might be. Luckily, there were signs, and we found it with little difficulty. Unfortunately, we arrived 15 minutes before the park closed, so we had only those 15 minutes to figure out where this "natural bridge" was.

I'm not sure we ever found out? At one point, we asked someone where it was, and she implied that we were standing on it, so...hmmm. I'm just going to say (until we make the trip again in the spring) that the park consists of big hunks of rock (very scientific) that continue to be carved by the flow of water. There are all sorts of deep valleys in the rock that you pass over on narrow fenced stairways, and you can see the water flowing below. I'm assuming that this water sculpted what is now the "bridge"?

Ugh, I'm sure Laura would agree that we would have learned more if we weren't so afraid of getting locked in the park overnight! Anyway, here are a few pictures of the park:

The path upon which we ran through the park:


The water carved a valley beneath us:


We think this white rock is the "bridge" — it extended around to the part upon which we were standing. Very bridge-like!


There were areas for picnicking and leaf-peeping, too:


This was pretty much the last perfectly autumnal Berkshire day of 2008: