The leafy amble from New York State, up and over the ridge of the Taconics, brings you through a beautiful region dense with visitor appeal, including the Shaker communities along US-20 and the industrial and literary sites of the Berkshires, not to mention Williamstown, a New England poster town if ever there was one.
Across Massachusetts, we follow the very scenic Route 2, also known as the “Mohawk Trail,” across the state’s northern tier, rather than US-20, which runs more or less underneath the Massachusetts Turnpike, I-90. Passing across some of the least-populous and most deeply forested acres in the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts, you can easily imagine you’re in Vermont rather than the so-called Bay State. Picking its way over the flattened summits of the Hoosac Range foothills to the Green Mountains in the north, Route 2 follows rock-strewn trout streams flecked with whitewater and shaded by boreal forests of hemlock, yellow birch, and red spruce—including some of the state’s only remaining stands of old growth. Midway across Massachusetts, Route 2 bridges the Connecticut River above Turners Falls, lopes through the trees, and emerges at historic Lexington and Concord, at Boston’s back door.
