I've been Benched

During our vacation to Cape Anne, Mass. last weekend we managed to go to a lot of pretty areas in between getting monsooned upon by Hurricane Danny, and despite the weather we had a great time.

We saw a number of attractive benches that might look good on Shelton's trails. Emma is sitting on a rustic bench at The Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Mass. The Garden is a private nature preserve with a variety of New England habitats that is really attractive (although I kept getting the urge to weedwack the brush back a bit). There are many rustic benches along their trail system. If you're up that way I recommend that you stop in to check it out.


Here's another version of the bench. This one was pretty comfy (most didn't have good back support). I bet Bob Wilkins or Jim Tate could whittle up 3 or 4 of these for us in no time.


And the benches were sturdy too. They could take a heavy weight (see above) without any trouble. This one was a few years old. Note how they put the legs on stones to minimize wetness & prevent rot.


And there was also an artistic stone bench that was built into a stone retaining wall along one of the walks overlooking a little pond. Terry & Emma had a good time on that one. You can do some attractive things with stonework.


This was on Rockport Point in Rockport Mass. They had 3 of these nice granite memorial benches overlooking the harbor and the ocean. We had looked at something like this from Swenson Granite in Newtown when we purchased the RecPath posts, but the Conservation Commission couldn't agree on a style they liked. Maybe it's time to reconsider. Rockport has a nice trail along the waterfront similar to The Cliff Walk at Bar Harbor in Maine. That trail & lookout was getting used heavily by residents and tourists & adds a lot to the character of the town.


Teresa liked this rough granite bench (also in Rockport) for Eklund Garden by the goldfish pond. All we need is a big flat rock to put on some old posts and a small derrick to place it. This whole area used a lot of granite everywhere in building due to all the glacial debris & local granite quarries. The granite looked really attactive & fit in with the local flavor of this area.


Downtown Rockport has it's own flavor. This statue of a child breaking in a wild frog in downtown wasn't allowed to go to waste by this little girl. Hopefully she got a permit from Mass. DEP to abuse that frog. A bench doesn't always have to look like a bench to be useful and fun. Maybe we could get someone to donate some attractive public art along the Shelton Lakes Recreation Path. Perhaps a bronze bench made out of Wiffle balls and bats.......?