Brattleboro, Vermont 14-20 Aug 2014

 Vermont was our northernmost stop for 2014.  It is a beautiful state with many lovely, forested lanes,

covered bridges, 

 and lovely, clear, rocky streams.

Ted, the plant pathologist, couldn't resist this photo.  This is chicken-of-the-woods.  It was a summer food staple of early settlers.  Harvested at this stage and sautéed, it is said to taste like a cross between crab and lobster.

 Not far from the campground, that we called home for the week, was Plymouth Notch.  Calvin Coolidge, thirtieth president of the United States, was born in the small house attached to the back of  this store.

 Coolidge succeeded to the presidency upon the death of Warren Harding.  He was sworn into office in his parent's home down the street by his father, who was a Justice of the Peace.  Someone asked him what gave him the right to administer the oath of office.  He said no one told him he couldn't.  During his time in office, this hall, above the store, served as his office during his summer vacations to escape the heat and pestilence of Washington D.C.

 In addition to the strong maple syrup industry, Vermont is also a strong dairy state.  We found one of the best goat cheeses we've ever eaten there along with a very nice blueberry Windsordale. 

 If you ever come to Brattleboro, bring your appetite.  It's an excellent foodie town.  One of the places we patronized was the Top of the Hill Grill seen here.  This well patronized place had, of all things, excellent jambalaya along with several other southern influenced offerings.

 Not much further up the road was The Marina.  It turned out to be, one of our favorite places of the trip.  They served an excellent crab and lobster pastry, which we shared.  We're getting hungry just thinking about it.

 This was one of two whimsical floating sculpture in the slough just off The Marina's patio.  

The Hudson Valley 12 August 2014

We had visited the Hudson Valley in 2009, and had hit a few of the highlights in a blog entry.  Still, we missed so many things we wanted to see.  We traveled across the Mid-Hudson bridge toward Hyde Park to get to some of them.

We had previously been here to visit the FDR residence, but had come too late to get into the Vanderbilt estate.  The first thing you come to when you enter the estate is the visitor center, formerly the bachelor quarters.  If you had been a single male, and had visited this estate during its heyday, you would not have been allowed to stay the night at the main house. Instead, you would have been quartered here.  Not to worry, though, you would have had all the amenities, including servants, and a kitchen staff, to satisfy your midnight cravings. We have a feeling that appearances were more important that what really went on here.  

If you were a married or a single woman, you got to stay in the, far more imposing main mansion.  Power for this mansion was from a private hydroelectric dam across a nearby creek.

The main entry was appointed with very expensive furniture.

If you were a married man, this might have been where you stayed.  Remember, this was the Victorian Era, and men and women stayed in separate areas to preserve the appearance of "decency".  Sure glad that we live now!

Here is the back entrance to Vanderbilt's "humble country estate".  At 55.000 square feet, it was the smallest of the Vanderbilt estates, but remember, it was only their country house.  Not far away, there was a railroad terminal so the Vanderbilts could ride their own train back to their New York estate.

Here is the view from the back entrance.  Not bad, huh?

Further down the Hudson River is the United States Military Academy, West Point.  This is the superintendent's quarters.  In this photo, some of the incoming class.  The day before they had a fifteen mile hike with sixty pound packs files.

A statue of George Washington rides before the Cadet Mess.  Legend has it that Cadet Dwight Eisenhower was once punished by having to stand at attention behind the statue until Washington turned to dismiss him.  It seems he was quite the rebel.  That doesn't quite fit our present-day image of the former President.

There are services in all major religions.  This is the Catholic chapel.  In "militarese", there are no churches, synagogues, mosques; all are chapels.  There are also imposing Protestant and Jewish chapels.

These cannons, and many more, around the campus were captured by the U.S. Army in one war or another.

To the right is the point at which a chain was strung across the Hudson River to keep the British from sailing upstream during the Revolutionary War.  It was never breached despite Benedict Arnold's claim that a "well weighted ship" could break it.  

One of the things we always enjoy is finding fun little, local places to eat.  Alex's restaurant in Poughkeepsie was one of them.  Should you go there, be sure to have a chocolate shake.



We Love New York Even More, 10 August, 2014

 

First thing Sunday morning, after brunch at the Carnegie Deli, we headed for the World Trade Center.  Trade Center One is a truly impressive building.  Note that the corners at the top are rotated ninety degrees from the corners at the base.

Each of the Twin Towers is now marked by one of these fountains.  The names of each of the people who died in the building that was above the fountains are etched into the marble slabs surrounding each one.  One of Ted's co-workers lost her husband here.

Engine Company 10, the first responder, is now a monument to those who died when the tower collapsed.

From there, it is only a few blocks to Trinity Church.  This was the best photograph possible since much of the building was covered by scaffolds and shrouds.

It is, of course, still a house of worship, indeed a beautiful one.

In the graveyard. on one side of the church is the tomb of Alexander Hamilton.  Albert Gallatin is interred on the other side.  Probably fitting.

 Robert Fulton lies next to Hamilton.

We walked a few blocks further to the Fed,

just around the corner from the NYSE.  We both hoped for continued bull markets.

We then moved on to Soho and then back to our hotel to rest our aching feet for a while,

When hunger overcame our pain, we walked to the Stardust Diner for dinner.  Mediocre food, but the servers are Broadway wannabes.  Last year 16 of their number got a gig in a show. 

Then a short walk just a few blocks toward Times Square, 

and a walk in the other direction to Central Park.  Back to the hotel to get ready to ride out the Hudson Valley to our coach Monday morning.

We've already started planning where we want to go and what we want to see the next time we go to the Big Apple. (Next year?)



We Love New York, 9 August 2014

We love New York, so one of our objectives on this leg of our trip was to spend a couple of days there.  We had both been here several times before, but it had been too long.  We took an Amtrak train from Poughkeepsie, only a few miles from our RV Park in to Penn Station.

The E train brought us from Penn Station to Broadway only a few blocks from Central Park, and a block from our hotel, the Mariott Courtyard to the right of this photo.  Thank you Erin!!

Our first stop was the New York Museum of Modern Art. Just off the fifth floor escalator, this couple seems to have found their own quiet spot in the middle of the crowded Museum.

The building, itself provided many photographic opportunities.  Ted liked the image of these, largely unused stairs between the fourth and fifth floors.

This crowd is gathered tightly around Van Gogh's "Starry Night" to take photographs, largely ignoring the wonderful works of Boudin, Gaugin, Cezanne, and many others surrounding them.  We wondered why they felt they needed photograph the paintings, easily available online, instead of just enjoying the pleasure of seeing them first hand.

From MOMA, it was a short walk to Rockefeller Center.

It is impossible to look in any direction without seeing some iconic image such as Atlas here.

No visit to New York can possibly complete without a visit to the Top of the Rock.  Here, the Empire State Building dominates the foreground while the Trade Center One rises in the background.

In the other direction, we looked down at Times Square.

This lovely lady was just off to the side.

From Rockefeller Center, we went looking for lunch.  It was Friday evening, and many of the places we wanted to eat, like the Carnegie Deli, were packed.

A bit further, the Stardust Diner was no better, so we walked back toward the hotel and dined on a hamburger at the Steak-n-Shake next door to the CBS theater before repairing to our comfortable room and planning our next day's adventure. 

Poconos, PA 30 July-7 August 2014

From Harper's Ferry we moved to East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.  It is located in the Poconos near the Delaware Water Gap and across the Border from Newton, NJ, where Penny hoped to find traces of some of her ancestors who had lived there a couple of centuries earlier.  The drive was beautiful.  We passed pretty hills, clear and rushing streams, and lovely, wide valleys.

There was a lot of road work along the way.  This huge beam, probably intended for a new bridge, was not the only one we passed.

 Along the way, we were passed by several of these van's.  As it turns out, we arrived just prior to the NASCAR race at Pocono.  The track was about thirty miles from our campground.

We discovered that some campgrounds in the NE charge for early arrival, so we stopped at a rest area for a couple of hours to avoid this.  There was a population of Gypsy Moth beginning to build here.  Since it is a pest prone to large and destructive outbreaks, Ted, the entomologist, reported it to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.  They replied and hoped he would volunteer to search for more.  

 Our park was hilly, and covered with a nice mixed stand of oaks, hickories, and maples.  We parked between two large boulders.  A few years earlier, we might have been quite intimidated  trying to get into our space.   Now, after eight years of experience under out belt, no problem.

 At our first opportunity, we traveled to Newton, New Jersey.  The town was full of interesting old buildings, like this one, but not much information for Penny.

I don't believe that we've been to a town of any size at all that did not have a monument to one or more Union regiments.  Newton was no exception.

Note:  The Delaware Water Gap was lovely, I suppose, but having lived in the Columbia Gorge, we are a bit jaded.  We weren't even moved to take any photos.