You can’t expect a place people call “the concrete jungle” to bring it when it comes to fall foliage. For once, New York is behind the trend, with Central Park not revealing its most brilliant colors until November. With the warm weather we’ve been having, one might forget it’s fall. That is, until you step into a pub or Starbucks and hear everyone and their date clamoring for pumpkin ales and PSLs.

It was the perfect weekend for a girls’ getaway with my besties, Miranda and Elaine (can you guess what iconic NYC shows I got their pseudonyms from?). Friday afternoon we grabbed a Greyhound bus and headed north to Northampton, Massachusetts. Western Mass is perhaps best known for its brilliant foliage displays. It didn’t take much to charm me from the start, I oo-ed and aw-ed out the bus window the entire six-hour ride. The sides of the highway were dotted with a deciduous mix of green, orange, yellow, and red! Bus rides can be down right miserable, and even though our bus was an hour delayed, all I could think was, “This is beautiful!”

That was just the beginning. Northampton is a delightful New England town. Colorful in culture and bucolic. There’s nothing gritty about this place but there’s plenty that’s gay. Just check out their crosswalks!

As you might remember from other adventures, Miranda, Elaine, and I all grew up together in San Francisco. (West coast represent!) Though California girls at heart, we’ve all been east coast long enough to see many autumns. BUT we’d never played in the leaves together. On a walk to main street, we spotted the perfect tree. Maybe it was in front of a community center? Could easily have been someone’s front yard, actually. We didn’t take the time to look! We were too excited by the leaves.

I’m talking jumping up and down and throw armfuls of leaves into the air excited!

We fucking frolicked. Almost lost Miranda’s camera and Elaine’s silver ring amongst the leaves, that’s how baller our leaf party was!

THE TREES ARE JUST SO PRETTY!

And my friends are too!

It was the perfect fall weekend, complete with chats by the fire-place, pumpkins, apple cider, apple cider donuts, butternut squash, and matching flannel. It was the perfect girls’ weekend complete with sleep overs, matching pajamas, brunch, beaucoup bottles of champagne, Jane Austen, and an inordinate amount of giggling

Embraced clichés for the best! But didn’t drink a single pumpkin spiced latte!

All the fall clichés we could cram into two days. Including my favorite quintessential fall adventure- APPLE PICKING! Stay tuned for Apple Picking Outside the Big Apple tomorrow!