League's Take New York!

Well, it wasn't easy, but we've done it .... attempting to tour New York City when your mode of transportation is a 40 foot motorhome IS a challenge. It won't surprise you that it wasn't easy to find a place to park the motorhome near the city, and, of course, logistics were a challenge as we knew there was no way we could think of driving it anywhere near Manhatten. So we left the beautiful Hudson River Valley last Tuesday, September 29th and headed the last 100 miles into the New York City area. First, the mileage report:

MILEAGE:

BUSTER: Rhinebeck, New York to Andover, New Jersey: 144 miles

Bella: (lots of driving on the tri-state (NY, NJ, CT) interstates: 441 miles

Weekly total: 585 miles

Total for League's Excellent Adventure: 9,537 miles

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28: We had actually planned to leave the Hudson Valley on Monday, the 28th, after spending most of Sunday doing laundry and "household" chores. Also, now that football season has started, we like to honor the tradition of trying to get a couple hours of gridiron watching in when we can. We don't have satellite TV, but perhaps half of our campgrounds have a cable connection. So it was a typical Sunday afternoon.

Then Monday, we focused on lessons a bit: Gary worked with Liz on math, and then they pursued their joint interest in "science": launching of air rockets.

I had been in contact with Dr. Donna Coletti, a medical school friend of Deb Rhodes, because of a little health problem I had in August. Donna has a medical gynecology practice in Greenwich, CT, and I wanted to check in with her when we went that way. UNBELIEVABLY, she was actually attending an integrative health meeting at The Omega Center where John of God, a healer from Brazil, had been invited to speak. The Omega Center is less than TWO MILES from Interlake Camping Resort were we had camped in Rhinebeck, and Donna drove right by our campsite on her way to The Omega Center that Monday. Talk about coincidences! I considered attending John of God, but couldn't quite allocate the $180 to pursue it out of our travel budget. When I got to talk to Donna later she said it really was very interesting and spiritual and I hope I didn't miss a real opportunity for enlightenment by choosing not to stay and experience John of God.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29th, came and we tried to get a reasonable start on our way to New York City. Our destination was New Jersey, out Interstate 80 past Morristown to Stanhope and up 206 to Andover and Panther Lake Camping Resort. This seemed to be the closest and best choice to New York City and also to Greenwich for my planned visit with Dr. Coletti. We wanted to see a little bit more of the Hudson, so we crossed over from the east bank to the west bank at Kingston, NY, and made our way down 9W to West Point. We found ourselves at the somewhat unusual situation for us of wanting to go to something (the West Point Visitor Center) in a small town with our whole rig in tow. We ended up parking Buster with the tour buses and unhooking so Bella could go in the regular parking lot. We timed it right, and were able to join a tour within about 10 minutes of arriving. Private vehicles are not allowed on the West Point campus, and we passed the security check point in a bus. We had an entertaining and informative guide and were able to sit in the bleechers across from Washington Hall and see the cadets in formation entering the hall for lunch. I put a big picture in here so you can see the tiny cadets behind General Washington's statue

Our guide had a number of interesting anecdotes including one about General George Patton. Patton was a West Point classmate of Omar Bradley, and a number of other recognizable military names .... over 40% of their graduating class went on to achieve the rank of General or higher. I think it had something to do with opportunity, i.e. read wartime! But it took Patton five years to graduate from his class .... he opined that he could never find the library. Well, his statue was placed facing the library (ostensibly so he could SEE it!), and now within the last few weeks has been replaced in front of West Point's new library. See the statue of Patton in the lower right corner of the picture below.

There were gorgeous views of the Hudson from the cliffs at West Point which has been a military fortress for years (maybe the oldest in the country) guarding invaders from coming to the interior up the Hudson. The Hudson in this region is called the Highlands and is actually considered a fjord as it is an ocean inlet (salt water in center of river with fresh on the sides!) that is deep and narrow with high bluffs. It is beautiful and, of course, inspired the Hudson River school of painting.

We made our way over to the Cadel Chapel which was inspiringly beautiful.

The stained glass in the Cadet chapel was simply breathtaking, but I didn't get a good focused picture of the front glass pictured at the bottom of this grouping. But you may just be able to make out the writing on yellow background on the panel near the bottom: Duty, Honor, Country. This theme is palpable at West Point. It was moving and made us proud and thankful, once again, to live in this country with freedom as our core value.

Following lunch in town at a little tavern where the cadets "relax", we headed down Interstate 87 to Interstate 80, and west to Stanhope and on to Andover where we would park for 4 days while we used Bella to negotiate in and around NYC.

WEDNESDAY, September 30.

Liz had said that the most important thing she wanted to see in New York City was the Statue of Liberty, so we put that on the top of our list. Alice League had suggested we avoid going into NYC and Battery Park as the departure point to the island, and her suggestion to go through Liberty Park in Jersey City, NJ, was a good one. We parked easily, had no line (also in the off-season), and quickly were able to take the ferry to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. I've been to NYC 5 or 6 times (all very brief visits), and Gary has been 3 or 4, but I had never been to Ellis Island OR the Statue of Liberty. It was a GREAT day. I'm not sure when the visitor center at Ellis Island was redone, but it is now a wonderful experience. The Great Hall with tiled floor, walls and domed ceiling has been redone and it is here over 12 million of our friends and relatives entered this country largely from eastern and western Europe.

First we watched a movie, and got a good idea of the procedure and process most folks went through as they disembarked from steamships. Those in steerage were brought to Ellis Island for processing. They were given a "six second" check-up, looking for obvious skin ailment, trachoma (of the eye), and other physical and mental problems. If something was observed, a mark was placed on their coat/garment. Here is a display of the different marks that could be placed:

(Sorry it's so dark!) We read the story of one girl whose was seen to have a "wart" on the back of her hand. Because of this, she was separated from the rest of her family. Apparently seeing the minimal nature of the problem and the distress at the separation, one of the Ellis Island officials suggested she turn her coat inside out so the mark wouldn't be seen, and she was able to leave Ellis Island with the rest of her family. This brings to mind one of the recurring themes we learned there: the immigrants couldn't believe that there were uniformed officials there to help them. In almost all of the countries they came from a uniformed person was someone to be feared and dreaded. They could almost reliably bring terror or pain. Here, people in uniforms were trying to help them. It was part of the feeling described in the movie that was the most gripping to me: the very rapid transformation of a person moving through Ellis Island, coming from an oppressed, distressed, down-trodden, underdog situation, and on leaving Ellis Island, having the complete sense of FREEDOM .... to go where they wanted, to say what they wanted, to be whom they wanted. Of course, this was what motivated the courageous to endure the unbelievable hardships of making the journey. But what a glorious end of the rainbow! As one man was quoted as saying in the movie: "It was like a human being had been completely reborn ... it was a miracle!" It was really something to imagine a family exiting that building ... having been through the long journey, cramped, hungry, dirty, stinky, and all the unknowns on arriving, going from station to station in that huge building, feeling confused and anxious, not understanding the foreign language spoken to them, and then finally -- for most -- exiting a free person, able to go and do whatever you had enough money to do, knowing that if you worked hard, you could do anything. Unbelieveable .... this experiment in liberty is a miracle for mankind!

The visit to Miss Liberty was equally inspirational. Many of you know the original torch has been removed and replaced with one that is perpetually lighted. The old torch is on display:

So you can no longer go up into the torch, but you can go to the crown. Unfortunately, when we arrived at Liberty Park at 9:15 am, there were no more crown tickets available for the day. So we could only go up to the pedestal. That was enough for me anyway (156 steps up AND DOWN on my new knees. The crown would have been an additional 170+ each way. Liz WAS disappointed, though). The audio tour at the Statue was also very good and we had a nice stroll around the base where the very top picture was taken by a collegial fellow tourist (I don't think I did as good a job on her picture that I took!).

We had about an hour's drive back to the campground, hit some traffic, and then I saw a mall with Neiman Marcus, etc, and we stopped at The Mall at Short Hills (New Jersey). It had a lot of high end stores, and we had a little fun. It has been so long since we've been to anything like that it seemed like a totally new and somewhat foreign experience (this was a little sad for me to realize, but Gary was thrilled with my reaction ... it meant the minor shopoholic is largely on the wagon!) But we did a little damage to the Visa card, and Liz got (it was Gary's selection) a perky hat which has subsequently received compliments all over New York City. (see pic below at FAO Schwartz!)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1

We got a real taste of tri-state (New Jersey, New York and Connecticut) driving this day when we went from mid-New Jersey, bypassing New York City, north and around over to Greenwich, CT. Donna Coletti had arranged a couple of tests for me, and we negotiated our way to the imaging center. Then an office visit and some blood work, and I am happy to say .... ALL IS WELL! This is a relief. It was so great that Deb Rhodes had this wonderful friend who specializes in just what I needed. Donna is obviously a very talented and compassionate physician, and I was so grateful for her kind expertise.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2

We were happy to get up and advance our adventure to the Big Apple knowing we didn't have any worrisome health concerns. We decided to take the train from New Jersey into the City ... we wanted to do it like real New Yorkers, and also didn't want to consider taking even the car in and parking it. So we did a little online research, got the train schedule for Denville, NJ, (west of Morristown) and also learned we could leave our car there overnight for $3 DOLLARS A DAY (this must be the parking deal of the year!). We made the 9:02 into New York City and arrived at Penn Station at about 10:15. We took a brief taxi to ride to our hotel, a Marriott we had booked with points at a great location at 40th and 5th. We found breakfast at Burger Heaven, and then began a pretty nice stroll down 5th Avenue. Rain was forecast, but it held off (until that night!) and we had a great walk. We stopped at Tiffany's and I was able to find out that a beautiful "gold ball studded with diamonds" earring Gary had given me that I had lost one of was still around (40 pairs in the system) and that I could purchase just the one! Yeah! Then we walked through Saks and on down the avenue to our "ultimate" destination ... F.A.O. Schwartz. I'm not sure Liz would have known about this, but her good friend Shea Hansen from home in Rochester told her this was not be missed on a trip to NYC. It is a treat .... from the piano you can play with your feet, to the gorgeous dolls, to the unbelievable Lego creations it is a toy wonderland. She had a blast, and ended up with a F.A.O. Madame Alexander doll that she designed herself (hair color, eyes, skin), with changeable wigs. She got a red, saucy flip and a light brown classic pony.

(note the HAT!)

We saw The Plaza, and then Liz picked our horse and carriage for our Central Park Ride:

Of course there are interesting vendors all around Central Park, and we were enchanted by a very talented letter artist who created a beautiful Elizabeth:

After a little rest at the hotel, we had a delicious dinner (surprisingly AT our hotel), and were able to walk the few (probably 6) blocks to Times Square and the New Amsterdam Theatre where we saw Mary Poppins. We had a little trouble deciding what to see: I wanted to see Jersey Boys, but felt the language, etc., might not be for a 9 year old. Liz thought Mary Poppins was going to be too babyish for her, but the thrill of the live orchestra and fabulous vocalists and staging was very entertaining. We all enjoyed it a lot. And it was sooo New York to come out of the theatre at 10:30, seeing just as many people on the streets as when we went in at 8 pm, and really felt safe the three of us walking back to our hotel even if it was in the rain and we'd neglected to bring our umbrellas with us to the theatre even though we hauled them with us everywhere else!



SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3

We relished a little sleep in, then showered (really enjoyed that hotel shower ... the force of water in the motorhome is one of Buster's deficits!), and then made our way to Rockefeller Center. We had a deli-type breakfast and really enjoyed seeing 30 Rock and learning about John D. Rockefeller's depression-era contribution of building this sky scraper at the height of hard times. The elevator ride to the Top of the Rock (69 floors) was great ... there is plexiglass on the ceiling of the elevator and a series of blue lights lines the elevator shaft ... it felt like you were moving through something in Mission: Impossible! The view, of course, was stupendous even though we didn't have the clearest of days. We told Liz she would have a better view of the Empire State Building away from it, and indeed she did.

We poked around in the mist and walked through Grand Central Station (seeing a bride and her wedding party there!), and then took our train back to Denville and our parked car. We didn't see everything, but we felt we got a good sampling of New York City.

On SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, we slept in, did some reading and clean up, and in the afternoon made our way to Pennsylvania staying near Allentown .... one of our designated mail stops. We'll post a short blog about Pennsylvania in a few days, and then devote a chapter to our visit to our nation's capitol. We're on our way to Washington, D.C.

Julie, Gary and Liz