How I Spent My Autumn Vacation, Part 5: On the Road to Vermont

Posted on November 20, 2018 by Maria Langer

I revisit my past (again) and reveal a bit more about me than most people know.

(Continued from Part 4: Killing Time in New Jersey)

Overnight, trains rumbled by the historic Port Jervis Erie Hotel where I may have been the only guest. It only woke me once or twice and each time I was able to get right back to sleep. So when I pulled myself to a vertical position around 6 AM, I felt refreshed and ready for the long drive ahead of me.

I showered, dressed, and pulled together the few things I’d taken out. Then Penny and I made our exit, heading out to stow my bags in the Maserati before taking her for a walk to do her business.

Breakfast First

Town was pretty much dead at that hour of a Monday morning. The restaurant on the lower level of the hotel was closed. All restaurants that might have provided breakfast and coffee were closed on Mondays. No problem. I used Google Maps to find a place to eat and get a dose of caffeine. It directed me to Stewie’s Restaurant in nearby Matamoras, PA. We headed out.

(It wasn’t until much later in the day that I realized I left Penny’s brown fleece blanket behind in the hotel. It was a shame because the $5 blanket perfectly matched the brown of the leather sofa in my bedroom. I usually kept it draped over the back of the sofa to protect the leather from the afternoon sun and give Penny a place to sit and look out the window.)

Stewie’s turned out to be a diner-type place, which was fine with me. There were a few locals there when I came in. I ordered a breakfast special and a glass of iced tea. I don’t drink diner coffee. It’s not because I’m a coffee snob as much as the fact that I simply can’t drink the swill that comes out of commercial coffee makers and sits on a burner for hours. (Okay, so maybe I am a coffee snob.)

While I sat there, I used my iPad and Google Maps to plan my drive. I’d go northeast on Route 209, which would take me near several places that loomed large in my childhood. A few side trips might be nice. I wasn’t in a hurry to get to my destination; I just needed to arrive before dark. I had the whole day ahead of me.

Revisiting My Past

When I was a kid in the early 1970s, before my parents split, we owned a 22-foot Prowler pull trailer. Bought originally for vacationing after my dad caught a very bad cold on a tent camping trip, my parents decided that it might make a good summer home when based at a full hookup campground in the Catskills. (My family lived in northeastern New Jersey at the time.) It wound up at a place called Rondout Valley Campground in Accord, NY.

Those were great times — some of the last great times of a mostly good childhood. We lived up there all summer and made friends with other families who also lived up there every summer. The Murrays were a good Catholic family from Brooklyn with four kids in an even smaller Prowler trailer and the Smalls were a Jewish (I think) family from somewhere in Westchester county (I think) with two kids packed into a tiny Shasta trailer. We’d spend our days fishing in the creek, exploring the woods, and riding on the running boards of the pickup that doubled as a garbage truck as it made its rounds around the campground. We made and said goodbye to new friends that came for a weekend or a week. At night, we’d either play flashlight tag in the huge field studded with a handful of tiny pine trees or we’d retreat to the Rec Hall where there was a jukebox, pool tables, and pinball machines. I can’t tell you how many times we listened and danced to The Hollies’ Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress) and Sly and the Family Stone’s Dance to the Music. One night a week, they’d play a movie in the open sided “Pavilion” — that’s where I saw The Graduate and I clearly remember Mrs. Murray pulling her kids out after the strip club scene. (Oops.)

Two things brought those days to an end. First, after two summers at Rondout Valley my parents found another campground slightly closer to home. It was brand new and cheaper and I think that’s what convinced us all — including the Murrays and Smalls — to make the move. I was excited because our new campsite would be in the woods, rather than on the edge of a big field. I have a clear memory of walking through the deserted campground on an autumn day, past what would be our new site with our big German shepherd.

But the thing that really shut down my childhood was my parents divorce. You see, while we were away and my dad was working, he was also playing. I remember the fights, I remember the screaming and cursing, and I remember the evening my dad came up to the attic room I shared with my sister to tell us he was leaving. I was sitting on the floor next to a low table he’d made for us, carefully pencilling in the irregularly shaped pavers around the courtyard swimming pool of a dream home I’d designed. (I was really into drawing floor plans back then and still like to do it.) I remember my tears hitting the pencil drawing, soaking into the paper, and creating tiny bumps.

Things got bad and then got worse and then got much better when my mom remarried and we moved to Long Island. All that took about three years, which is an eternity when you’re in your very early teens. The trailer got sold to my mother’s cousin (who married a Nazi — really, but that’s another story) and there were no more vacations for quite a while. My dad moved into an apartment with his girlfriend, who he’d later marry, and adopted her daughter from another relationship so I gained a half sister. For a while, I worked two kid jobs: a paper route and a summer job I qualified for because we were so poor. (I was one of a team of four poverty-stricken teens scraping rust off a chain link fence along a railroad track. You don’t know blisters until you’ve done this kind of work.) I got free lunch in junior high school; I’d pick up 65¢ in a small manila envelope in the school office every day and spend only what I had to on lunch in the cafeteria so I could save the change. I also became responsible for watching my brother, who was about five, and my sister, who is 16 months younger than me, while my mother went to work to put food on the table. She’d made the nearly fatal error of dropping out of high school in her senior year to get married and [six and a half months] later give birth to me. Her struggle to get a job without a high school diploma wasn’t lost on 14-year-old me. Actually, none of our struggle was lost on me and it helped make me the strong, independent, financially stable, cynical, and happily childless person I am today.

I don’t mean to play on your heart strings, dear reader. I’m just laying down the facts. Rondout Valley Campground is a sort of touchstone in my life — something I didn’t realize until today as I put down this summary as yet another lengthy backstory for a blog post.

Anyway, part of my drive that overcast Monday morning was along Route 209 that eventually brought me to Wurtsboro, which we’d pass on our way from home to the trailer. Wurtsboro was where we exited Route 17 after coming over some mountains and descending into a valley. It was memorable mostly because the airport there had gliders and we’d often see them flying overhead as we came down the hill. There were no gliders that morning; the ceilings were much too low for anything to fly and thermals that gliders rely on for flight were not possible.

Now I was tracing roads that I’d been on many, many times — more than 40 years before. I remembered numerous signs for a place called Ice Caves Mountain that I think we finally did visit once way back then and looked for them as I drove but came up empty. The place might be part of a state park now. I did pass Custer’s Last Stand, which is a soft-serve ice cream place that still exists (!), although I remember its name being Custard’s Last Stand.

Of course, there wasn’t much else familiar to me. Places change in 40 years. New York State is one of those weird old places that is constantly mixing old and new. There are homes there dating back to before the Revolutionary War near a brand new Starbuck’s or Dollar General. There are ratty old farm buildings tucked away in dense overgrown thickets, seemingly forgotten, near new condos or subdivisions.

I continued along 209 to Ellenville, which was “the big town” near the trailer. I turned right and drove through. It looked depressed and there seemed to be a lot of homeless-looking people around. But I also saw a bakery and, since real bakeries are a treat after so many years out west, I stopped and went in. Cohen’s Bakery, “Home of the Famous Raisin Pumpernickel,” had quite a selection of fresh baked goods. I bought a danish, despite the fact that I had Italian pastries in a cooler in the trunk, and hit the road again.

Google Maps had Rondout Valley RV Campground listed and I used it to home in on Accord and the campground. I admit that I didn’t find much along the way very familiar. I did remember the left hand turn just before the town of Accord. I passed the entrance to the campground, looking for familiar sights beyond: the Rec Hall and the waterfall where the creek that runs through the campground continues its journey east, merging with numerous small creeks along the way. The Rec Hall was gone and apparently had been for some time — there was nothing more than a grassy field in its place. But Mother Nature takes better care of what she builds and the waterfall was still there.

It might not look like much, but when you’re 12 years old, a “waterfall” like this is a big thing.

I circled back and pulled into the driveway for the campground. There was a gate with a little guard house, but the gate opened before I even had time to stop. (I guess I must have looked trustworthy in the Maserati.) There was a big building with an office and shop on the right — the old office had been on the left and was now a lounge. I pulled into a parking spot, put Penny on a leash, and walked up to the entrance. I left Penny out on the porch and went inside.

Soon I was chatting with a woman only a little younger than me about the campground. It had gone through a bunch of changes in the past 40+ years. For while, it was called Jellystone Campground — think Yogi Bear — and I dimly recall driving past with my wasband years and years ago on one of our trips in the Catskills. Now the place was part of a chain and associated with one those “RV resort” time share places. The gimmick is that you pay a fee to join and get “free” camping at member resorts. But I think this campground was also available to non-members. I didn’t ask. I didn’t have any plans to camp there with my camper nearly 3000 away.

After a trip down memory lane with her, she gave me a map and told me to drive through. I told her I’d rather walk since we’d been in the car for a few hours already. Then I went back outside to fetch Penny. Together, we crossed the one-lane bridge and walked into the campground.

The rickety bridge over the creek is the only way in and out of the campground. Once, during a summer flood, the campground had to be evacuated in the middle of the night because they thought they might lose the bridge.

As I walked along the road, I found myself walking the same way as a man about my age. Of course, we got into a conversation. He was traveling with his wife in their fifth wheel from someplace in the south — I can’t remember where. We went our different ways at the intersection where my family’s trailer had been parked that first year. Behind us had been a big, empty field. Now that field had trees and roads and campsites that hadn’t existed. The place had really grown.

This is the corner where we’d camped all those years ago. (At least I think it was on the corner; it may have been one site to the right.) The trees were newly planted back then, the site was in full sun, and there was nothing but an old cow pasture behind the trailer.

I don’t need to revisit all my memories of this place. What you got above was enough. Let’s just say that a lot of the place was the same but a lot was different. There was a playground I didn’t remember. The Pavilion is now enclosed and has a snack bar. There was a new pool in the big field where we used to play flashlight tag. All the trees that had been around our campsites where huge, giving campers the shade I wished we’d had 40+ years before.

The Pavilion, which had been built when we were there, is now enclosed.

As I stood on the corner in front of what had been my summer home back in 1972, I suddenly got tired of my trip down memory lane. Although I’d originally wanted to walk through the wooded area of the campground that had been limited to tent campers back then, I found myself just wanting to get back in the car and continue my drive. This had been one stop on what I’d begun thinking of as my farewell tour of the New York area. I think I suddenly realized that I’d said goodbye a long time ago. I didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to see the place as it was today. I wanted to keep my memories pure.

So I turned around and walked back to the car.

Woodstock

It was still early in the day and I had plenty of time to get to my destination in Vermont, so I took a detour up to Woodstock, NY. I had a vague idea of trying to get a local shop to take a few pieces of the jewelry I make on consignment, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m rather shy about trying to work deals like that. In any case, Woodstock was one of the places I used to come with my wasband and friends back in the day and it was definitely appropriate for my farewell tour.

I took back roads, following the guidance of Google Maps. I wound through farmland, most of which looked neglected. There were more decrepit old farm buildings and some silos, which I rarely see out west, and lots of weeds and brambles covering stuff up. There were also lots of creeks and plenty of trees just starting to turn into their autumn colors. It was a pleasant drive with few other cars on the road.

Eventually, I reached the bridge over the huge Ashokan reservoir, crossed it, and turned east on Route 28. Another turn onto 375 took me into the outskirts of Woodstock.

There was road construction in town. They’d torn up one of the lanes of the road and were using pilot cars to shuttle traffic through a stretch of about a half mile. They had us drive on the compressed gravel side, past pavers working on the other side. I drove carefully, mindful of raised manhole covers and the like. The Maserati rides very low and I had already been warned about potholes.

Town wasn’t anything like I remembered. It had more shops and, try as I might, I could not identify the house a friend’s sister had bought and used as a photo gallery years before. (She’s long gone from the area now, supposedly living near Tucson, AZ.) I drove through town, turned around, and drove back. I parked, put Penny on a leash, and got out for a walk.

A young guy immediately tried to hit me up for a dollar. I said I was sorry but I didn’t have anything for him and I kept walking. Panhandlers in Woodstock? Really?

I went into a few shops, always asking permission to take Penny in. I got into a good conversation with a woman in one shop that I really thought would be a good match for my jewelry, but never got up the nerve to talk to her about it. That was probably a good thing, since she turned to talk about retirement and not being able to afford health care and having to keep the business open just to get by. Maybe not such a good match after all.

I left Penny outside when I went into a bookstore. I spent some time browsing and, as I always do when I go into a local bookstore, I bought a book.

We continued down almost to where the construction began, crossed the street, and walked back. I realized that my trip to Woodstock wasn’t doing anything for me. I found myself eager to continue on my way. So we went back to the car, climbed in, and headed back out of town.

The only other place I was hoping to visit was Smoke House of the Catskills, which still exists. I remember stopping there with my wasband a few times on our way home from visiting friends in Elka Park. But just my luck: it was closed.

The Long Drive

I hopped on the New York Thruway and headed north. I really prefer staying off highways on a road trip, but I had a lot of miles to cover before dark and there wasn’t much else I needed to revisit.

So I took the Thruway north, through Albany. It brought to mind the day 1985 or 1986 when my future wasband and I were part of a convoy of brand new cars heading to Montreal for a Mets game. We were in a Nissan Maxima and our companions drove a Nissan 300ZX, a Mazda RX7, and some other sporty Japanese thing. We were flying at 95 miles per hour most of the way and made it from New York City to Albany in less than 2 hours.

I never thought of the Thruway as Memory Lane, but I guess it can be.

I got off at Troy, dealt with traffic, and finally escaped onto Route 7. Although the day had gotten brighter for a while and even a little sunny, it was overcast again and would stay that way for the rest of the drive. It made things kind of dreary and unremarkable, so even though I was off the highway, I didn’t really enjoy the drive as much as I should have.

Before I hit the Vermont border, I stopped for lunch at a place called Man of Kent Tavern. I’d been passing a bunch of what seemed like British themed restaurants and figured I’d give one a try. The place was absolutely packed, but I got a table near the bar and had the most amazing hearty beef stew — perfect for a damp, overcast day of driving.

Once in Vermont, I continued north on Route 7 into the Green Mountain National Forest. My destination was a friend’s house in East Wallingford, at the northeast corner of the forest. I let Google Maps guide me. Things were fine until I reached the last turn to my friend’s house and Google put me on an unpaved road.

Google had done this once before to me, putting me on an extremely rugged road in Colorado when I was driving south with my camper and boat in tow last autumn. Not knowing how bad the road was up ahead, I’d turned around and found another route, adding about an hour to the total time of my drive that day. Although I didn’t have a boat in tow this time, I also wasn’t in a high clearance 4WD pickup. I’d promised my brother I’d be careful in his car and driving three miles on gravel wasn’t something I wanted to do.

But the road was smooth enough, with a fine, nicely graded gravel surface. I continued up the hill, driving very slowly. The road wound into a thick forest with few homes along the way. There was an old cemetery about a mile and half in that I would have stopped to explore if I wasn’t so road weary. (I’d get to it later in the week.) Then there were more houses and lots of clearings and finally my friend’s 160-year-old farm house, sitting at an intersection.

I pulled into the driveway, parked beside some other cars there, and got out, feeling good to be done driving for the day.

(Continued in Part 6: In Vermont.)

How I Spent My Autumn Vacation, Part 4: Killing Time in New Jersey

Posted on November 5, 2018 by Maria Langer

A day trip to the shore, a hike among abandoned buildings, a rock show, and more.

(Continued from Part 3: In Washington DC)

My brother had to work on Saturday. He does that sometimes just to catch up when there’s no one in the office. I have vague memories of working in an office environment every day and know how distracting it can be. Meetings, phone calls, co-workers coming in to chat, long lunch breaks. I honestly don’t know how people in an office can get much done.

He took his truck to work and left me the keys for the Maserati. He was gone when I woke up around 5 AM. I washed up, got dressed, grabbed Penny and my camera, and headed out. My destination was Sandy Hook on the north end of the Jersey Shore. (And no, this Sandy Hook isn’t the one famous for the tragic school shooting. That’s in Connecticut.)

Breakfast at Dunkin Donuts

But first, breakfast. My brother had been telling me about these breakfast wraps he gets at Dunkin Donuts. We don’t have Dunkin Donuts in Washington state — at least I haven’t seen any — and since I used to like their coffee, I used Google to find one on the way. The one I went to was in a small strip mall not far from the Garden State Parkway. I went in, stood on a fast-moving line, and ordered a coffee with one of those wraps.

“How do you want the coffee?” the no-nonsense woman behind the counter asked me.

I had completely forgotten that they add milk and sugar to your coffee behind the counter in a lot of places in the New York City area. I looked around quickly; there was no milk or sugar out for me to add myself. This was a dilemma for me. My morning coffee is important to me and I like it a certain way. I knew they’d screw it up. I looked up at the woman and could see that my hesitation was trying her patience. This was the Metro area and I was slowing things down.

“A small amount of sugar and milk,” I told her.

I paid and got my coffee. They called me up to get my breakfast wrap a moment later. I sat at a hightop table to eat my breakfast. Although they’d done okay with the quantity of milk and sugar, the coffee was terribly weak. I forced myself to drink it, knowing I’d have a headache from caffeine withdrawal in two hours if I didn’t. The breakfast wrap was tasty but tiny. I could have eaten three of them.

A Visit to Sandy Hook

As I walked back to the car, a woman getting out of the car next to me said, “I love your car! I’m trying to get my husband to buy me one of those.”

I thought to myself: A Maserati? She must have a very generous husband. Out loud, I said, “It’s my brother’s. He’s loaning it to me.”

“You have a great brother!” she replied, laughing.

The Garden State Parkway

I need to talk briefly about the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. (You might know it as part of an old Joe Piscopo joke on Saturday Night Live: “I’m from Joisey? You from Joisey? What exit?”) It stretches from the New York State border in the north to Cape May at the southern tip of the state. I drove part of it every day in my last office job. What I didn’t realize then and know now is that it’s basically a racetrack.

You see, even though the speed limit is posted 55 or 60 in various places and I cruised at around 70 to 75, people were passing me. Not just a few people, either. Most of the other drivers. Apparently, the speed limit signs are suggestions and most people are in a big hurry. I didn’t realize this when I was one of those drivers.

The good thing about the situation is that the New Jersey drivers ignoring the speed limit signs are mostly great drivers. They probably drive a lot of miles and they likely have a lot of experience with the terrible drivers putting on the road with them. Driving on the Parkway reminded me of my commuting days when I felt as if I were in a sport boat speeding down a river and the slower cars were boulders in rapids that I had to avoid hitting. I was an expert at weaving between them without making a single one of them hit their brakes. (It’s a matter of looking far enough ahead and seeing the big picture of the flow.) It had been a very long time since I drove like that, but it came back quickly — as long as the pavement was dry. Later in my trip, after it rained, I took it easy, not wanting to test the new tires my brother had put on the car when I went to Washington. The car was perfect for the aggressive driving style popular in the New York City Metro area and, when I dialed in, I really enjoyed it.

I gave Penny some of the bacon and egg I’d saved from my breakfast wrap, and headed out of the parking lot. A short while later, we were driving south on the Garden State Parkway, headed for the Jersey Shore.

The drive way uneventful. The Parkway doesn’t pass through any really scenic places along the way. My brother had an E-ZPass on the car — yes, not only did he loan me his car, but he also paid my tolls — so I didn’t have to stop any any of those super annoying tollbooths along the way. I got off at the exit for Keyport and followed route 36 through some of the northern shore towns I’d never visited in all the years I’d lived in New Jersey: Hazlet, Keansburg, Atlantic Highlands, Highlands. Then the road climbed over a high bridge over a waterway. At the top, my first look in many years of the sparkling blue Atlantic Ocean took my breath away.

Even though I’d never lived on the Jersey Shore, I felt as if I’d come home.

I followed signs to Sandy Hook, which put me on a northbound road. There was a fee booth — Sandy Hook is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, after all — but it was unoccupied and there way no fee. Back east, “the season” ends on Labor Day in so many places.

I pulled into the first beach access parking lot and got out. Signs reminded me that dogs had to be on a leash so I dutifully hooked up Penny’s and walked her out on path to a wooden observation deck and then down onto a sandy path that cut through the dunes. Out on the beach, a handful of people were walking or jogging or fishing or flying enormous kites.

The scene at the beach at Sandy Hook that fine September day.

Penny strained at her leash; she loves the beach and doesn’t like being on a leash when she wants to run. I didn’t want to get cited for letting her off-leash, so I waited until we were almost all the way down to the water to let her go. She ran south along the water’s edge, chasing seagulls, while I walked behind her. It was too cool to take off my shoes and socks, but warm enough to really feel comfortable. Although I’m not much of a swimmer and I hate sunbathing, I really do like the seashore.

Sandy Hook has a strategic location on the approach to New York City — which is why there are so many battlement remains and an active Coast Guard base there.

I let Penny run away, then called her back, then let her run away again. I wanted to tire her out a bit. This would likely be the only opportunity all day for her to be off leash. I think that’s the worst thing about traveling with her. She isn’t used to being on a leash and, when we’re in an open place like that, she doesn’t understand why she has to be on one. I don’t, either. If she doesn’t bother people or animals or destroy anything and I pick up after her when she poops, what difference does it make if she’s on a leash or off it? We were two specks on a miles long stretch of sand with only maybe a dozen people nearby. What was the big deal?

I put her back on the leash and walked back to the car. We continued on the road, looking for some sort of visitor center where I could plan my visit a little better. We wound up at the Sandy Hook Lighthouse a few miles away.

The lighthouse at Sandy Hook.

There was a visitor center there and I went in for a look. There were a few typical light house displays, but also a neat map that showed the locations of all the light houses that had been in the area over time. You could dial up a year and lights would indicate which lighthouses existed at the time and were functioning. Sandy Hook is at the south end of the entrance to New York’s Lower Bay and apparently it’s a crucial point for navigation, with lots of shallow water and obstacles in the mouth of the bay.

I went into the gift shop where a ranger sat at the counter. We talked a bit about off-season travel and the popularity of the area for birders. Then I went outside where I’d left Penny tied to a tree. There was a group of boy scouts in their teens, along with a few adults and a ranger at the base of the light house. I managed to wrangle myself a trip to the top of the lighthouse with the group. They were just waiting for the previous group to come down.

I went up last on the climb up a narrow spiral staircase to the top of the lighthouse, right behind a guy of about 16 years old who had to weigh at least 250 pounds. At the top landing was a ladder that we’d have to climb though a hatch. The big kid let me go first, which I appreciated; I honestly didn’t know if he’d fit through the hatch. Upstairs, the space around the fresnel lens was tightly packed with people. It got a little tighter when the big kid joined us.

A look down the spiral staircase from near the top (left) and the ladder to get up to the top of the lighthouse (right).

The views in every direction were amazing. It was a relatively clear day and we could see Manhattan’s skyscrapers to the north, as well as the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, New Jersey, and the shoreline to the east, west, and south.

You can see the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge on the left and the downtown Manhattan skyline on the right through the haze on the horizon in this photo. In the foreground, you can see the ruins of the various batteries built and abandoned over time.

We didn’t stay long. I was one of the first back through the hatch — mostly because it was so tight up there that no one could easily get around me — but the last down the stairs. Afterwards, I fetched Penny from her tree and we took a walk among some nearby ruins. I love photographing old, disused things and this place was full of them. Unfortunately, so many areas were blocked off — as is common in the eastern part of the country. (Out west, they let you go pretty much anywhere you want but in the east, they’re constantly fencing things off to supposedly prevent people from getting hurt.)

I like taking photos of old things, especially if they’re rusty. Why knows why?

Eventually, we went back to the car and drove to the end of the peninsula. There was apparently some sort of major Boy Scout camping event going on — tents with flags for various troops filled one of the parking lots. We walked out to an observation deck that looked out over some marshy lands, a beach, and the ocean and lower bay beyond. There were two rangers on the deck and several men with binoculars and spotting scopes. They were looking for birds. One of them claimed to have Shoreham Power Plant focused in his spotting scope and I accepted his invitation to take a look. Back in 1977, my family moved to Long Island so my stepdad could work on the construction of the Shoreham nuclear plant. I saw the smokestacks in the spotting scope, but I’m not convinced that was Shoreham, which was on the north shore of Long Island at least 100 miles away.

The view from the observation platform which was about one story above the dunes.

We hung out for a while, listening to the guys talk and get excited when they saw a bird. Huge tankers passed remarkably close to the beach; later, when I looked at a nautical chart of the area, I saw that the channel was right there with lots of shallow water between it and lower Manhattan in the distance. One of the men seemed knowledgable about marine navigation in the area and I asked him a few questions about the easiest way to get from the ocean into New York Harbor: a channel under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge or up the west side of Staten Island. He didn’t know. I hope to find out for myself one day.

We walked back toward the car and then beyond it to the remains of a big 9-Gun Battery from World War II. I’d seen lots of old batteries like this on the west coast — most recently on a trip out to the coast of Washington that I never blogged about — but this was my first in the New York area. It was a huge poured concrete structure with lots of rusting metal doors and rails and you can bet I took lots of photos of various parts of it — even though a fence kept me from getting close. I guess they wouldn’t want tourists climbing all over the ruins (like they can out west).

Here’s a very small part of the 9 Gun Battery at Sandy Hook.

Lunch at Sea Bright

After our walk, we went back to the car. I drove past some of the old housing on the west side of the peninsula in an area called Fort Hancock. Then we drove south off Sandy Hook in search of lunch. The weather was perfect and I was hoping to find a place with outdoor dining where I could take Penny. After pulling into a place with valet parking and deciding I didn’t want to turn over my brother’s car to a valet — remember that scene in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off? — I eventually found a parking spot at Tommy’s Tavern + Tap, a sports bar with a big family outdoor dining area. I carried Penny through, ordered a Bloody Mary and a clam pizza (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it), and settled down to enjoy my meal.

Penny waits for pizza. She ate nearly a whole slice.

One highlight: two women with a kid in a stroller and another kid about 4 years old walked by. The 4-year-old wanted to pet Penny but didn’t ask me or her mother if she could. The mother didn’t ask me, either. Maybe they were waiting for me to offer? I’m not going to offer to let a small kid touch my dog — what if she has allergies or scares Penny into yapping at her? It’s their job to ask me. But they kept walking by and then the kid started screaming because she couldn’t pet the dog. She kept at it for about 10 minutes. It was seriously annoying to everyone on that patio.

Meanwhile, Penny waited patiently until I shared my pizza with her.

We strolled down one side of the street in Sea Bright, looking into shop windows. Several stores had closed down. Remember, the season was over; I’m willing to bet that many businesses on the Jersey Shore get short term leases and close right after Labor Day. We crossed over and followed a path to a big board walk on a new embankment along the ocean. It looked brand new. I suspect the area had been pretty badly ravaged by Superstorm Sandy; there were a few homes under reconstruction on the land side of the walkway. There weren’t many people on the beach and I honestly didn’t feel like taking another walk there with Penny straining at the leash the whole way. So when we were abeam the restaurant, we followed a path off the boardwalk and returned to the car.

Back to Base

I made a few stops on the way back to my brother’s place.

First, an auto parts store. I wanted to get a cell phone holder for his car. He’s got a magnetic thing in there that works with his phone case. I wanted something that would stand the phone up. I wound up with one of those cell phone holders that sits in a cup holder. It worked a lot better than I expected it to. I was going to leave it for him but wound up taking it home and will likely use it in my truck since my new phone doesn’t fit quite as well as the suction cup mount I have.

Next, a Maserati dealer, to try to get the battery replaced in the key fob. There’s a long story about the key fob but it really isn’t worth telling. Let’s just say that the trip to the dealer was a huge waste of time.

Finally, Wegman’s. That’s a chain of premium grocery stores. Think of Whole Foods but without the attitude. (Although now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, the attitude might be gone; I don’t know.) I had the idea of buying something for dinner. But when I got my brother on the phone, he wanted to go out for Mexican. So I satisfied myself with buying some car snacks for the next day and headed back to his place.

We went to a Mexican restaurant that he likes and had a good meal. Then we hung out at his place until it was time for bed.

Heading Out on My Road Trip

In the morning, I got up at the same crazy early hour as my brother. He was going to a match in Pennsylvania that day — did I mention that he’s a competitive shooter? — and needed an early start. We chatted for a while before he left. Then he headed out and I prepped for my big road trip to Vermont.

But I wasn’t going straight to Vermont. Instead, I planned to spend the day in northwestern New Jersey. I figured I’d start with a hike at Watchung State Park, then hit a rock show in Franklin, and spend the night somewhere near Port Jervis where New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania meet.

I planned to bring all of my luggage. I had no idea what the conditions would be where I was going and I didn’t want to run out of clothes. I also wanted to spend some time organizing my luggage and shipping back some heavy things I bought before I headed home. Besides, did my brother really need my giant suitcase on his floor any longer?

It took three trips to get everything out to his car. Then, with Penny on her blanket on the seat beside me, I asked Google Maps to guide me to a coffee shop in Westfield and took off.

Watchung Reservation

I had coffee and an egg sandwich at Rock ‘n’ Joe. Although it was a bit chilly, I ate it at a high top table outside with Penny at my feet. Westfield was a completely different town at the same time of day I’d been there the previous week.

I let Google Maps guide me to the Watchung Reservation, a large park with miles of wooded trails. My brother had suggested it as a destination; he and his ex-wife used to take their dogs there. I wanted Penny to get some quality off-leash time and I wanted to go for a nice walk in the woods. But I didn’t know where to start my visit. I figured I’d wing it, as I so often do.

In the end, I let signs guide me. Once I got into the lush, green park, I started seeing signs pointing to various areas within the park. One of them directed to a “Deserted Village.” Since I’m always up for a walk through a ghost town, that’s where I headed.

I parked among about 20 other cars in a parking lot, but rather than head down the paved road to the deserted village, Penny and I struck off on a nice trail into the woods. I let her off her leash almost immediately and she ran off in front of me as she usually does, stopping occasionally at the base of a tree when she saw a squirrel up above. We don’t have squirrels where I live — not many trees and plenty of predators like eagles and owls — so it’s always a treat for Penny to go for a hike in the woods where squirrels are plentiful. I’ve been with her at campsites in the north cascades where she’s parked herself at the base of a fir tree for a half hour or more just waiting for a squirrel to come down.

I used an app on my phone to keep track of my path so I wouldn’t get lost. The trail had side paths and I chose them almost randomly with a goal of not straying too far from the parking area and getting closer to the deserted village. One trail I took was narrow and wound down a little hill before heading back toward where I imagined the deserted village might be. I only passed one other hiker: a woman walking alone in the opposite direction. We greeted each other and kept walking.

The sole remaining original gravestone in this tiny burial ground.

Eventually, I wound up at a tiny cemetery. There was just one old gravestone still standing — it marked the grave of a man who’d died in 1776. I don’t know if I mentioned this elsewhere in this series of posts, but there are plenty of Revolutionary War error buildings and other sites. This was one of them. There were five headstones there, four of which were installed in the 1960s to replace missing ones.

Across a stream and up an embankment I could see some buildings, so that’s where we headed, crossing a bridge and climbing a path. I put Penny back on her leash, not wanting to get into trouble with any park rangers. We wound up on the Main Street of what was left of Feltville, which had been built starting in 1844 as a mill town, and Glenside Park, which had converted that mill town into a summer resort in 1882. There were a lot of old buildings, many of which were boarded up. There were also a lot of foundations, including that of the mill, which had been torn down in 1930.

We followed the roads and paths all over town to take in the various sights. There weren’t many people around on that pleasant Saturday morning; maybe because it was still early? Back down at the creek, I let Penny back off her leash while explored the mill site and a dam site. I took some pictures.

One of the buildings still in use a the Deserted Village. I was still getting use to my iPhone’s wide angle camera and didn’t expect this kind of distortion; I know now that putting it in 2x mode will prevent weird angles like this.

The dam site along the creek. You can just make out the berms on either side. This dam held back a small lake that channeled water to the mill downstream.

The obligatory mushroom photo(s). I played a little with the iPhone’s improved Portrait Mode in the photo on right. See how the background is out of focus? I think the mushrooms are a little out of focus because I was too close to them.

We were there about two hours and I only walked about 2 miles. But I was done and ready to move on. So I put Penny back on her leash and followed the paved road back up to the parking lot.

The Rock Show

I make jewelry out of gemstones. It’s a hobby gone wild that began with a lapidary in Quartzsite, AZ gifting me a small piece of bacon agate in January. I’ve since learned to use sterling silver and copper wire to create pendants and have branched off to making bracelets and earrings and even polishing my own stones. I now sell my jewelry online and at various venues in Washington and beyond.

The question I get most often from people who see my work and my sizable collection of gemstone cabochons — I have about 200 of these polished stones — is “Where do you get your stones?” My response, which tells only part of the tale without actually lying, is “I go to rock shows.” So when a chat with a gemstone dealer in Westfield the previous Saturday morning included him telling me about a rock show in Franklin, NJ that weekend, I put it on my list of things to do.

Franklinite in a sterling silver pendant.

Franklin, by the way, is where you can find Franklinite, a minor ore of zinc, manganese, and iron that was discovered at two mines in the Franklin area. I have a Franklinite cabochon that I used in a piece of jewelry (which is still available as I type this). The Franklin Mineral Museum has been hosting the Franklin-Sterling Gem & Mineral Show for 62 years. It was held in the Littell Community Center in Franklin, NJ. I learned what I needed to know to find it by working Google after talking to that rock dealer in Westfield. (Seriously: how did we survive before Google?)

Google Maps guided me there. I paid a $7 fee, got a wrist band, and drove into the parking lot. Since part of the show was outdoors, I put Penny on her leash and we walked from one outdoor vendor booth to the next. There were a lot of rocks, but not much of what I was looking for: affordable, interesting cabochons and slabs that I could cut and polish into cabochons at home. I bought a few small, cheap pieces: a pair of matched ammonites that I’ll make into separate pendants, a few polished agate slices, and some heart-shaped beads for earrings. Then I put Penny in the car and went inside.

(I should note here that when Penny is in the car, I can’t lock it; the alarm system in the Maserati is so freaking sensitive that a 7-pound dog moving around in there sets off the alarm and there doesn’t seem to be a way to lock the doors without turning on the alarm. So any time I left Penny in the car, the doors were unlocked. That’s normal for back home when I’m driving a 19-year old Jeep but not normal in the NYC metro area when I’m driving an exotic sedan.)

Inside was more of the same, although most of what was there was nicer. There was one booth with some incredible cabochons, but they were very expensive. My artist friend Janet says I need to buy good stones to sell my jewelry, but I know my local market. I can’t spend $50 on a stone when most of my local market balks at paying more than $49 for a pendant. The only pendants I can sell for more are the ones with popular, well-known stones like malachite and turquoise, and even then it’s tough to get more than $69. I’m hoping that if I sell at shows in Arizona this winter I can find a market with deeper pockets.

I did find some large cabochon beads with holes right down the middle. I’ve been using these to make “budget pendants” and, for a while, they were selling really well. I also found some small, inexpensive rose quartz cabochons. I chatted for a while with a dealer who goes to Quartzsite and Tucson every year; I’m wondering if I’ll find him down there in January.

Back outside, I made a conscious effort to find the rock dealer I’d spoken to in Westfield. I’d walked right past his booth on my first pass. We chatted for a while and he remembered me kind of vaguely. I noticed that he had a nice big labradorite slab with really nice blue highlights. He made me a deal on it and, although it’s a bit more than I wanted to spend, I know I’ll get at least a dozen cabochons out of it so it will definitely pay for itself with dividends. There’s even a chance that I might sell part of it for what I paid for the whole thing — I’m thinking about selling some of the slabs I’ve accumulated lately.

I should mention here that I do sell the cabochons that I buy. Although I began by showing them off at my day table as a way to interest customers in custom pendants — buy a stone and pay an extra $30 to have it made into a pendant in two hours — I’ve been selling quite a few stones to other jewelry makers and people who just like stones. The other day, in fact, a woman bought five stones, spending over $100. Although I make more money when I sell the stone in a pendant, I have a markup on the stones and selling them loose is a lot quicker and easier than making a pendant so I’m not complaining.

In all, I spent about an hour and $50 at the show, not including that $7 entrance fee. It was a nice little show, with “little” being the important word. When I go to Arizona in the winter, I see a thousand times more gems and minerals at just one of the venues. Prices are much better, too. I’m spoiled.

High Point

From there, we headed out towards Port Jervis. I had it in my head that I wanted to see High Point, so that’s what I asked Google Maps to guide me to.

Along the way, I stopped at a funky little restaurant in Sussex, NJ called the Sussex Inn Restaurant. It was on the lower level of a hotel. I sat in a booth and had a calzone (of all things). In one of the booths behind me was a very loud (and apparently old) British couple talking about the war — yes, World War II — and another equally loud Trump supporter. The calzone was huge and I wound up taking it with me but later throwing it away.

A wide angle view up the High Point Monument from its base.

On the way out of the park, I stopped for a more artistic shot of the Monument. I really am a sucker for reflections.

At High Point State Park, I followed the signs to get into the park. High Point gets its name because it’s the highest point in the State of New Jersey — a whopping 1600 feet above sea level. The entrance fee booth was closed — remember, it was after Labor Day — but there were plenty of people in the park. I followed the road up to the High Point Monument, a 220-foot tall obelisk built in 1928-1930 to honor veterans. I parked, put Penny on a leash, and got out for a walk. We went to the base of the monument, stepped inside but didn’t climb to the top, and took a hike in the woods. I got some nice views, especially out to the west where the Delaware River separated New Jersey from neighboring Pennsylvania.

A Night in Port Jervis

We didn’t stay long. After our hike, I worked Google Maps a bit to find a place to spend the night. Traveling with Penny is a bit of a challenge sometimes; many places don’t allow dogs. I found the Erie Hotel and Restaurant in Port Jervis and gave them a call. Apparently, the only phone was at the bar and it took a while for the bartender to find a manager who would say whether dogs were allowed. I finally got the green light and a rate and told them I’d be there within an hour.

It took considerably less than an hour to get there. Along the way, I stopped for gas and some dog food. I had a cooler with me — I’d bought some Italian pastries for my friends in Westfield that morning — so I bought some orange juice and yogurt, too. I was hoping to get some dry ice, but the supermarket didn’t sell it.

The hotel was one of those old railroad hotels built in 1890. Restored in 1994 after a fire, it still had the small rooms it might have had when built, although each room also had a bathroom which I doubt it had when first built. It was comfortable and quiet and cheap enough. I had a light dinner and a cold hard cider in the restaurant downstairs, which seemed to allow gambling via a keno-like game. After dinner, I fetched a bucket of ice and put it into the cooler to keep those pastries and other items cold. Then I took a quick walk up and down the main street in town — which was pretty dead on a Sunday night — and went up to my room with Penny.

We were asleep before 10.

(Continued in Part 5: On the Road to Vermont)

How I Spent My Autumn Vacation, Part 3: In Washington DC

Posted on October 31, 2018 by Maria Langer

I take in a few amazing museums.

(Continued from Part 2: The Farewell Tour)

Third Trip is the Charm

This was my third trip as a tourist to Washington DC and only my fifth trip ever. (Two trips were for work and I didn’t really get to see anything.) The first trip was when I was around 10 years old; it was a family vacation. I still remember parts of it: visiting the Mint and seeing stacks of uncut money and my dad surrendering his service weapon (he was a cop) at the White House after they searched my little purse. I also remember running into my third grade teacher on a street corner. (How weird is that?). The second visit was many years later with my future wasband and, oddly, I don’t remember much of that at all. This would be my first solo trip and my first opportunity to make all the decisions about where to go and what to do.

The next part of my trip started long before dawn. I was dead asleep when my brother woke me up at 3:30 AM. So was Penny, who reacted by jumping off the bed and barking her little brains out. Jolted to consciousness, I rushed from the bed to grab her so she wouldn’t wake my brother’s neighbors. That’s when I ran full speed into the footboard at the end of his bed. The bruise I got on my right thigh would haunt me for the next few days.

The Train Ride

A while later, he was dropping me and a small carryon bag off at Metropark Station in Iselin, NJ, which isn’t far from where he lives. I was catching a 5:12 AM Amtrak train to Washington DC. He was going to work and Penny would be starting five days as an apartment dweller.

It took me a few minutes to figure out where I had to go. I waited on the wrong side of the track for about three minutes, then got directions to the other platform. I walked down, through a tunnel under the tracks, and was honestly surprised that I didn’t smell urine. (New York has conditioned me to associate that smell with any tunnel near train tracks.) Then I was up on the other side, waiting with a handful of other people.

Iselin Station Before Dawn
Iselin station, before dawn on a Monday morning.

A few commuter trains came through and stopped to pick up some of the folks waiting. Other folks arrived. Then my train pulled up and the doors opened. I stepped inside, then followed another passenger back through three cars to the Business Class car. I chose one of the few seats facing forward with a table between it and a rear-facing seat and settled in.

I’d bought a Business Class ticket because I’d always upgraded my rail fare when traveling by train to Washington. Back in my early freelance days, one of my clients sent me there occasionally. Since I flew on airliners so often for them, I decided that on short trips I’d take the train from Newark. (I lived in Northern New Jersey at the time.) They’d buy the ticket and I’d spend an extra $50 for the “club car” update. That was a very pleasant experience, with La-Z-Boy style swiveling recliners, small tables between seats, and waiter service with food and drinks. I thought that Business Class would be the same thing. I was wrong. (Silly me.) It’s just slightly nicer seating at the back of the train that’s less crowded because fewer people pay for the upgrade.

Speed Info
In just six minutes, the train reached a speed of 124 miles per hour. Eek.

I didn’t realize the train was the Acela until we started zipping southwest bound along the tracks. I thought we were going fast, but I didn’t realize how fast until I fired up one of my hiking apps for the current speed: 124 mph. Shit. It reminded me of riding on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. It isn’t the drops that scare you — it’s the ricketiness of the old wooden tracks and the constant through that they could break and send you careening off into oblivion at any moment.

Nighttime faded into a dreary day with occasionally rain. After crossing New Jersey in about 15 minutes, we took a more southerly route, making a few stops along the way. More people got into the Business Class car. A man sat in the seat opposite mine and unpacked some work on the table. I killed time by writing in a journal I’d started for the trip. Later, I walked up to the very disappointing dining car and got the free drink I was entitled to — an orange juice; it was too early for alcohol — and a microwaved sausage sandwich. I ate back at my seat.

There was some confusion as we neared Washington DC. Apparently a commuter train had some mechanical issues and we were taking on passengers waiting for that. Announcements made it sound as if the other cars were really jammed with passengers. When a woman tried to sit in our car, the conductor told her she needed a Business Class ticket and made her move.

Then we were at Union Station in Washington DC. Because another train was at the platform in front of us, we had to climb down train stairs and make a very long walk on the extended platform to the station. It was drizzling and rather depressing. It was also only around 8:30 AM — a lot earlier than I would have arrived if had I left my brother’s house at 4:45 to catch a plane.

As I left the station, I noted a Verizon Wireless store that was still closed.

The AirBnB

I’d be staying at an AirBnB studio apartment on 11th Street SE for the next few days. Although the host wanted to charge me an extra $45 to check in early, she did agree that I could store my bag on the floor in the “living room” — which was the only room — when I arrived in town. So I caught a shared Lyft — which is really so much cheaper than Uber — and headed over there right from the station.

Row House
The house I stayed in in Washington DC during my visit.

The place was on a very nice tree-lined street, one of a row of attached houses with a few steps leading up to the front door. It wasn’t until I took this photo the next morning that a resident of the area told me that the homes were known as Philadelphia Row and had historic significance. (I’ll let you follow that link or Google for yourself to learn more.) All I cared about was stowing my bag so I wouldn’t have to carry it all day. I followed the access instructions, which required me to open two doors with two different key codes, peeked inside only long enough to make sure the place wasn’t a dump — it wasn’t; more on that later — and left my bag on the floor near the door. Then I locked up and headed out.

The Metro

I chose the Metro for transportation. It was supposed to be close to the AirBnB unit I was staying in. “Close,” however, is a relative term that depends on the person doing the walking and the weather she’s walking in. It was drizzling but warm. I’d donned my old motorcycle rain jacket, which fit over the fleece jacket I’d brought along on this trip, and was able to keep dry during the six-block walk. But the jacket had a rubber lining that made me sweat in the warm, humid weather. Ugh.

I descended underground at the Eastern Market Station. After figuring out how to buy a Metro pass and how much to put on it, I headed for the turnstiles. Soon I was on the platform, waiting for any train that would take me to Smithsonian Station.

It turned out to be a quick, pleasant ride. I got off at my station, climbed up to the surface, and blinked in the bright light of the gray day. It was still raining. I got my bearings and walked the rest of the way to my destination.

The Castle

I had decided to start my visit at the Smithsonian Castle, which is the original Smithsonian Institution Building on the Mall. Although it once housed the museum’s treasures, it’s now an information center with Smithsonian offices. What also makes it a good place to start an early visit of the area museums is that it opens at 9 AM; the other museums open at 10. It was still before 10 AM; hard to believe I’d started in New Jersey just a few hours before.

The Smithsonian Castle is a great place to start any museum trip to Washington DC.

Follow the Links

I could make this blog post about 20 times longer than it already is by providing details about everything I saw, but do you really want to read that? I hope not because I don’t have the time to write it. Use the links I provided to get information about the highlights of my visit. And then do yourself a favor: schedule your own museum tour in Washington DC one day soon. Bring your kids or grandkids over age 8 if you have some. You won’t regret it.

I spent about an hour there. I spoke to a woman at the information desk, got a brochure that listed all of the Smithsonian museums in the area, got a Metro map, and followed her suggestion to see the permanent exhibit in the West Wing called “The Smithsonian Institution: America’s Treasure Chest.” It included a sampling of items that could be found in the various other Smithsonian Museums. I couldn’t decide which was more impressive: the actual collection or the architecture of the room it was in.

West Wing of Castle
The West Wing of the Smithsonian Castle houses a permanent exhibit of sample items from all Smithsonian Museums.

By the time I was ready to move on, I’d decided on my next two destinations: the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of American History, both of which were right across the Mall.

National Museum of Natural History

I visited the National Museum of Natural History first, primarily because it was the first one I came to when I crossed the mall. There was a slight moment of panic when I thought that a group of about 30 school kids would be coming in with me, but they realized, right before they reached security, that they were in the wrong museum and left. Phew.

Inside, the first thing I did was find a locker for my shoulder bag and rain jacket. I was toting around my Nikon with its medium lens and it was heavy. The only reason I brought it on my trip at all was because there was a tiny scratch in my iPhone 7’s camera lens and I wanted to make sure I could get good pictures my trip. But the iPhone photos weren’t that bad and I didn’t want to lug the heavy Nikon around.

Main Hall of Natural History Museum
The Main Hall of the Natural History Museum. There were a lot of interpretive displays related to that big elephant, perhaps to make us feel a little less bad about killing and stuffing a big elephant.

Seeing Museums on my Own Terms

As I hinted in a sidebar near the beginning of this post, I really enjoyed being able to visit museums on my own terms. Not only could I decide which museums to visit, but I could decide which exhibits in each museum I wanted to visit and how much time I wanted to spend at any exhibit I wanted to see. There was no rush to finish up with things I cared about to see other things I didn’t care about. I made incredibly good use of my time and saw just about everything I wanted to see. After this trip, I can’t imagine visiting a museum any other way.

I was primarily interested in seeing the Gems and Minerals exhibit, which had been recommended to me by many friends who know about my interest in gemstones. Known officially as “The Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals,” it’s a permanent exhibit on the second floor. The Geology part was extensive and informative — I got a real kick out of seeing a display of columnar basalt just like the cliffs behind my home. Wandering on, there were exhibits about mines and mining and then, finally, the rocks I’d come to see: hundreds of specimens of beautiful gemstones from all over the world. I took numerous photos with my iPhone, sometimes setting it right up against the glass to eliminate glare. I wished they had book or website that cataloged every single one; it would be incredibly useful for identifying the specimens that I come across at rock shows.

Colored Rocks
This display, called “So Many Colors,” arranged rock specimens by color. Every single specimen was identified.

Black Light Rocks
This display shows the features of rocks in regular and then black light. (Yes, that’s my reflection in the back of the display.)

More rocks.

I could share all my photos with you, but I won’t. If you like rocks, you really need to see this exhibit.

At the end of the exhibit hall were some famous gems, including the Hope Diamond, which was in its own rotating display with its own extra guard. Although a lot of folks had come to see just that, I really enjoyed the rest of the exhibit, which had taken me well over an hour to walk through.

Afterward, I visited just one other exhibit, and I didn’t stay long: “The Last American Dinosaurs: Discovering a Lost World.” I didn’t stay long, mostly because the place was full of kids on a school field trip — different, younger kids than at the entrance — and I was developing a headache that I realized was likely due to caffeine withdrawal. I hadn’t had any coffee that morning.

The Tyrannosaurus was just one set of bones on display.

I did stop at the gift shop, where a saw a lot of rocks like the ones I collect for a lot more money than I usually pay. I also saw gemstone jewelry, most of which wasn’t nearly as nice as mine. Then I found my way down to the ground floor where there was food. I bought a small, remade sandwich wrap, a bottle of water, and something that really saved me: an Awake caffeinated chocolate bar. Holy cow. I ate half the bar right after my sandwich and my headache was gone 15 minutes later. Seriously: I need to buy these and take them with me when I travel.

The Museum of American History

It was nearly 1 PM when I left the museum and walked next door, to the The National Museum of American History. I followed the same drill with security and then stowing my stuff in a locker.

This museum is famous for housing Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers (from The Wizard of Oz) and Archie Bunker’s chair (from All in the Family), neither of which I saw. There’s way much more in its three floors. I didn’t really have anything specific I wanted to see, so I started at the bottom at the hall of Transportation and Technology, specifically, the exhibits about transportation by water and land, electricity, power machinery, and money. That alone took over an hour, with lots of stops to really look at the exhibits and the signs that explained them. I took a few pictures, but not many.

Tucker
If you haven’t seen Tucker: The Man and His Dream from 1988, watch it. You’ll get an idea of how ahead of its time this car was.

The American Enterprise exhibit focused on American pioneers in business and industry. It seemed to me that they made a special effort to include as many women and people of color as they could. That’s a good thing — it introduced me to a lot of American businesspeople I’d never heard of.

I skipped the food exhibition and, therefore, missed Julia Child’s kitchen. Oh, well.

I did go to see the Star Spangled Banner, which used to hang behind a protective screen in the main hall. Now it’s in its own room, laid almost flat, behind a pane of glass. I raised my phone to take a picture and the guard said, “No photos!” I assured her my flash was off but she just repeated, “No photos.” I can’t quite understand why I can’t take a photo of this particular relic, especially if my flash it turned off. I’d share a photo from the museum website, but I can’t find one there, either.

I wandered around a handful of other exhibits but, by that time — late afternoon — I was tired. I decided to grab a Lyft to a restaurant near the AirBnB and call it a day.

Ambar

I wound up at Ambar Capital Hill, a Balkan restaurant. I had never had Balkan food and since it was walking distance from the AirBnB, eating there was a no-brainer for me.

I sat at the bar, as I often do when I’m traveling alone. They had a few happy hour specials of small plates and that’s what I went for. Veal soup, bread basket with traditional spreads, drunken mussels, and Balkan Kebab. All excellent. I tried the Sarajevo Old Fashioned (plum rake, bourbon, bitter, and cane syrup) and later tried an apricot rakia. It was an excellent meal and, as usual, I stuffed myself.

I needed that walk back to the AirBnB.

The AirBnB

I made my way though the two locked doors and finally got a chance to really look at the AirBnB unit I was staying it. It was on the ground floor of the row house with two windows facing front. There was another window facing a back yard, but it was blocked by the full-sized refrigerator in the tiny kitchen.

It wasn’t a bad place, but it certainly wasn’t the “five star” accommodations the host kept reminding me it was. Although both front windows had blinds, only one of them had curtains and neither opened. The double (or maybe queen) bed was shoved up against the wall and had no headboard so the pillows kept falling into the space between the window and the bed. I actually made a list of all the things wrong with the place and sent it to the host at the end of my stay, mostly because every single time he/she sent me one of their long, canned messages it reminded me that the place deserved a 5-star review. That really bugged me. I gave them 4 stars but only because of the value for the money. I got what I paid for. All I did there was sleep, wash up, have coffee in the morning, and reheat some leftovers. It was clean enough and convenient enough. But the $95 cleaning fee really irked me when I found the previous guest’s hair in the shower. Ick.

AirBnB
You’re looking at more than half of the room I stayed in. I don’t see Five Stars here, do you? As I told my host in the private part of the review, it has all the charm of a freshman girl’s dorm room. You can see three of the six fake plants; not sure what purpose they served other than to increase tackiness.

My New Phone

In the morning, after coffee, I took another shared Lyft back to Union Station. I was the first customer at the Verizon store.

I wound up buying a new iPhone XS. The smaller screen one. I really liked what I’d seen about the camera. My iPhone 7 was nearly two years old and the camera lens had a tiny scratch. It didn’t make sense to spend $80 to replace the camera in a phone that old.

They had a 55 and older special going that gave me a second phone worth up to $900 for free, including free data, calls, texts, etc. All I had to pay was sales tax (which they didn’t tell me up front). So I also got a red iPhone 8 max. It’s still in its box. I don’t even know its phone number.

They sold me the insurance on both phones but I later canceled it. I figured that if I broke the new iPhone, I’d use the second one as a spare. Free insurance. Whatever.

On my way out of Union Station, I took my first pictures with the new phone. They came out okay.

The National Postal Museum

The National Postal Museum was right across the street from Union Station. I used to be a serious stamp collector. Now I just buy stamps I like and eventually use them. (I’d love to sell my old stamp collection if you know anyone who is interested in first day covers, commemorative blocks, and other mint stamps.) I walked over to the museum to take a look.

Inverted Jennys
Safely displayed behind glass with a light that goes on only when someone is standing right in front of the display. This is one of the most valuable stamps in the world. The history of its release into the world is fascinating.

The museum has a good display of interesting/historic stamps — including a block of four Inverted Jennys behind glass that I was allowed to photograph — as well as larger displays downstairs for the various ways mail is transported. There were planes hanging from the ceiling and an entire mail car from a train.

The lower level atrium exhibits at the National Postal Museum.

Postal Train Car
Interpretive signs help visitors understand how mail was processed on-the-go inside train cars like this.

I spent a lot more time there than I expected to, really taking in the exhibits and learning a lot about all kinds of things related to the mail. It might sound dull to you, but I found it fascinating. But then again, I’m interested in a lot of weird things.

It was well after noon when I finished up with the Postal Museum. Before leaving, I stopped at the post office inside the building and bought a bunch of really neat stamps to use over the coming year. In the gift shop, I bought a refrigerator magnet of the Inverted Jenny.

Then I set out, on foot, to the next museum on my list.

The Newseum

The Newseum is the only non-Smithsonian Institution museum I visited on my trip to Washington. It was a must-see for me and my only regret is that I arrived there so late in the day.

I also arrived hungry, which is not a good thing. I decided to buy a ticket for the guided tour to get an overview of the museum’s highlights. While I waited for the tour to start, I went into the ground floor cafeteria, which Wolfgang Puck has put his name on, to have lunch. I had a very disappointing meal of fried catfish and sweet potato fries.

There was just me and an older couple on the tour. (I suspected that they were Trump supporters when they challenged the guide’s description of Fake News at a small exhibit dedicated to that topic.) The guide started us on the top floor and we worked our way down. There is a ton to see. The tour gave us some good highlights and insight, but it wasn’t enough for me and I wound up returning the next day to revisit many of the exhibits. My favorites:

Today’s Front Pages are the front pages of newspapers from all over the country and world. Not only are they in a long, narrow exhibit on the top floor, but the exhibit is repeated outside every day so you don’t have to pay to see them. (You can actually view 700+ of these online on the Newseum’s website.)
Pictures of the Year has award-winning news photography from the past 75 years.
Here’s an example of a document from the News History Gallery.
News History Gallery shows 300 newspapers (and their predecessors) dating back to the Middle Ages, with interpretive signs that help you understand the significance of each.
The 9/11 Gallery is very moving in an eerie sort of way.
9/11 Gallery includes the broadcast tower from the top of the World Trade Center, along with front pages from all over the world. It’s a pretty intense display, especially the section that shows the possessions of a journalist who went in with some firefighters and was killed when one of the towers fell.
First Amendment Gallery has displays related to the five freedoms of the First Amendment.
Internet, TV, and Radio Gallery traces the history of the spread of news information.
First Dogs is an exhibit of photos of Presidents with their pets. It was a fun break from the reality of today’s news cycle.
The Berlin Wall is a two-story exhibit that the Newseum building was actually constructed around. It includes several panels from the Berlin Wall — more gathered in any single place outside Berlin — and most of a guard tower, as well as many exhibits explaining what the wall was all about and how it curbed the spread of information.

Sections of the Berlin Wall on display at the Newseum.

As I mentioned earlier, although I got a glimpse of many of these things during the guided tour, I actually came back the next day for a much better look. In between, I had dinner at the Carving Room, which a friend recommended. (The food wasn’t bad but the service sucked.) I wound up taking half my meal back to the place I was staying. I did a lot of walking that day, but when it came time to go back to the AirBnB, I used Lyft again. The shared ride service was incredibly cheap and a lot more convenient than the Metro.

The next morning, I returned to the Newseum to really focus on the exhibits that I wanted to see. Honestly, if you’re the kind of person who walks through a museum just looking at the exhibits without reading the signs that go with them, you’re missing half (at least) of the experience.

It was a really beautiful day — the first day of my visit with plenty of sun and bright blue skies. I started my visit to the Newseum with a trip up to the outdoor patio on the top floor. From there, I could look up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. I’d revisit that spot later in the day, before leaving to visit my next stop just to take in that view one more time.

The view up Pennsylvania Avenue on the Newseum patio.

A Quick Walk through the National Gallery of Art

My next intended destination was the Air and Space Museum, which was on the other side of the National Mall. I had two ways to get there: I could go the long way east on Pennsylvania Avenue to Fourth Street, walk south across the Mall, and then walk west up Jefferson Drive. Or I could cut pretty much straight through the National Gallery of Art and follow the walkway across the mall right to Air and Space. I took the shortcut.

This fountain stands in the main entrance hall for the National Gallery of Art.

I really didn’t intend to spend any time looking at art, but the shortcut required me take a bit of a roundabout route through the building. Along the way was the gift shop, which I think I spent 30 minutes touring. I wound up buying a book and getting some ideas for a jewelry design. Then I made my way out to the south exit, stopping briefly to a few photos of the amazing architecture in the building.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

I’ll admit it: the main reason I came to Washington DC was to see the National Air and Space Museum. The first time I came to Washington, when I was a kid, it might not have even existed. The second time, when I was still a relatively young adult, I had limited interest in aviation. Now, with almost 20 years as a pilot under my belt and some experience with rebuilt or replica antique aircraft, I was very interested in aviation. I had been itching to visit Air and Space for years.

The National Air and Space Museum has two locations. The main location — the one most tourists visit — is the one in Washington DC. That’s the one I’d see that day. The other one is called the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center — named for its benefactor — is in Chantilly, VA. I’d see that the next day.

But first I needed lunch. Always eager to try different ethnic foods, I walked over to the National Museum of the American Indian next door. I’d heard very good things about its cafe. The museum itself looked interesting but I admit that it was not on my list of things to see, mostly because living in Arizona for 15 years, visiting various Native American museums (including the excellent Heard Museum in Phoenix and the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City), and spending an unusual amount of time on the Hopi and Navajo reservations had pretty much overdosed me on Native American culture. But the thought of trying some unusual native food enticed me into the building. The cafe was split into regional areas, each one serving up some native food. I had something from Central America — I can’t remember what — and it was good. Of all the museums I visited, this one definitely had the best food, although it was typical cafeteria style serving.

Next door, at the Air and Space Museum, I went through security and then checked my bag and jacket again and began exploring. I’d been wanting to see a planetarium show for a while and there was a planetarium on the premises. The only show on the schedule that looked interesting, Journey to the Stars, was showing just one more time that day in just a few minutes, so I bought a ticket and got on line. Soon I was seated near the wall in the round planetarium, eager to see that machine in the middle do its magic. I was disappointed. Instead of giving us a true planetarium show, they showed a specially formatted movie on the domed ceiling. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t what I had come for.

I think that set the tone for the rest of my visit. Don’t get me wrong — there were a lot of really great exhibits and displays. The Spirit of St. Louis hung from the ceiling. The real original Wright Flyer sat in its own exhibit room. There was an extremely informative exhibit about time and navigation. The Golden Age of Flight told the story, with plenty of aircraft on display, of the period between the two world wars, when aviation first began to thrive. Pioneers of Flight covered “firsts” for pilots and aircraft. Apollo to the Moon was an extremely informative display about the moon missions.

Main Hall
The Spirit of St. Louis is hanging from the ceiling at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC — with a lunar lander right below it.

WrightFlyer
A panoramic image of the original Wright Flyer. This is the first aircraft that attained controllable, self-powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903.

Herndon and Pangborn could be found on a plaque in one of the galleries. Wenatchee’s local airport is named for Pangborn. Did you know that it had such a place in aviation history? Only they didn’t land at the airport because it didn’t exist yet; they landed at Fancher Field, which is now a housing development called Fancher Heights.

Docked Spacecraft
I loved the lighting in the museum — natural light through huge windows. This is one of the last shots I took during my visit.

I wandered around and took a ton of photos. Along the way, I noticed what I thought was a disproportionately large percentage of displays designed for children. Explanations were over simplified — no, I didn’t use the phrase dumbed down, although it did come to mind — and questions were left unanswered. There was a lot of touch this, push this button, slide this drawer, compare this to something you know kind of stuff. There were entire galleries I didn’t bother going into because they looked as if they were for kids. Not having kids and not really enjoying their company — especially noisy school groups — I stayed clear. But it left me feeling somewhat disappointed. I didn’t know what was missing, but I felt as if the museum could have been a lot better.

I think this is an example of one of the gee whiz dumbed down displays: a 747 nose poking out of a wall. Although I’m sure there was a plaque about it somewhere, I didn’t see it. The plane could not be accessed by visitors. It just hung there.

And then I was done. I’d seen everything that looked interesting to me and was ready to move on.

Scooting to Lincoln

I retrieved my things and stepped outside. It was still a nice day and it was definitely too early to go back to my AirBnB cubbyhole. It was also my last day in Washington DC so I wanted to make it count. I thought a trip up to the Washington Monument might be nice and thought I’d try walking. It wasn’t far — not even a mile — but it was hot out. The humidity, which I’m not used to at all, was killing me. (Not literally, but you know what I mean.)

My GoPed

Back when I lived in Arizona many years ago and had more money than I knew what to do with, I bought myself a a gas powered scooter called a GoPed. The idea was to fold this thing up and take it with me in my helicopter so I’d have ground transportation when I arrived. And that’s what I did — but just once. You see, I took it to Sedona and climbed aboard to ride down from Airport Mesa into town. Along the way — fortunately, near the start of the ride, was a cattle guard. That’s when I learned that a scooters tiny wheels are not compatible with cattle guards. The scooter stopped short but I didn’t. I landed on my face and broke my nose — a fact that I’ve keep pretty much secret for the past 10 years. I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my life, but that was the dumbest. After that, I wasn’t very interested in riding the GoPed. I wound up giving it away to someone in exchange for him removing the surveillance cameras from my hangar before I moved to Washington.

And, in a weird twist of fate, surgery to fix my crooked nose was not necessary because within a year I had another accident: I tripped over the JetA hose at the airport while fueling a Lear jet. When I landed on my face again, the resulting broken nose actually fixed the first break. Truth is stranger than fiction. The way I see it, I was gypped out of the nose job that I’ve always needed.

So when I saw the row of five Skip rental scooters, I stopped for a closer look. I’d been seeing lots of people scooting around Washington DC on these electric vehicles. With just a long stretch of fine gravel “sidewalk” along the side of the mall and a few street crossings, it didn’t seem as if it would be a difficult ride. Why not give it a go?

After struggling a bit to make the app I downloaded work, I was heading west along the south side of the Mall, moving at a good clip. No, I didn’t have a helmet on. Although they say you have to wear one, there wasn’t one available with the scooter. But you can bet your ass that I was keeping a sharp lookout for potholes. (Cattle guards were unlikely.)

The Washington Monument was deserted that day because it was closed.

The ride was quick and very enjoyable. The breeze cooled me down and the humidity stopped bothering me so much. But I was disappointed when I got to the Washington Monument: it was closed to the public. Apparently, they’re upgrading the elevator and it won’t be open again until spring 2019.

So I kept going. The Lincoln Memorial wasn’t far beyond it and I was having fun. I scooted up there, stopping once to get a shot of the Monument framed by the trees along the path and a fountain I didn’t realize existed between it and the Lincoln Memorial.

Lincoln
Although Republicans like to point out that Lincoln was a republican, I truly believe that today’s Republican Party would horrify and disgust him.

Once I reached the Lincoln Memorial — which was a lot more crowded on that Wednesday afternoon than I expected it to be — I found a place off the path near a bike rack filled with rental bikes to leave the scooter and tapped the appropriate buttons on my phone to “return” it. Then I walked up the steps, past dozens of people sitting in the shade, and visited the big statue of Mr. Lincoln. As I looked up at his wise old face I wondered what he would think of “the party of Lincoln” today, led by a barely literate, narcissistic conman who spreads hateful messages that divide the country he fought so hard to keep together 150 years ago.

I walked to the north wing of the building where Lincoln’s second inaugural address had been inscribed on the wall. (The Gettysburg Address is on the wall in the south wing.) Although it touches on many religious themes and quotes Jesus more than once, it finishes with words that I wish a real president would take to heart sometime soon:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Lincoln was a wise man, but I can’t see anything he had in common with today’s Republicans.

Afterwards, I went outside and sat on the steps. The sun was setting on the other side of the building so the steps were in the shade. A lot of people were gathered, sitting around, chatting, resting. I saw the spot on one of the landings where Martin Luther King, Jr. had made his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963; someone had splashed the letters engraved there with water.

Reflecting Pool
In case you’re wondering, this is what Lincoln is looking out at.

Getting a Lyft from there back to the AirBnB took a long time with three scheduled drivers cancelling before one finally arrived. When I got back to the tiny apartment, I ate leftovers from the day before. I was asleep before 9.

Going to Virginia

I checked out of my AirBnB unit around 8 AM and headed toward the metro station on foot carrying my bags. Every time I take a small bag without wheels I swear I’ll use a wheelie bag next time but I still find myself using shoulder bags. That wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t buy so many books along the way.

This was the best breakfast of my trip. The coffee cup was the size of a small soup bowl.

I stopped for breakfast at a cafe near the Eastern Market metro stop. They gave me a huge cup of coffee with my smoked salmon omelette.

Then I used the Metro card I’d bought on my first day to hop on a train bound for Virginia. I made sure I got on the right train so I wouldn’t have to change trains. It took at least 30 minutes to get to Wiehle-Reston East station. Once there, I called a Lyft and took that to the Steven F Udavar-Hazy Center, which is right near Dulles Airport.

At the National Air and Space Museum’s Udavar-Hazy Center

SR-71
In your face: an SR-71 is the first thing you see when you arrive.

It was raining pretty hard when I arrived. I walked in, went through security, and checked all of my bags in a locker. Then I walked into the biggest hangar I’d ever been in and let my jaw drop. I mean, how could I not? I was standing on a platform overlooking the hangar floor with a SR-71 Blackbird right in front of me and a space shuttle in the room behind it. Parked on the floor and hanging from the ceiling on both sides of me were well over 100 aeronautically significant airplanes.

Completely overwhelmed by what I was seeing, I decided to take a free guided tour. I went down to the tour meet-up area where a bunch of people were already waiting. They split the group in two and I went with one guided by a retired aeronautical engineer. When he learned that I was from Washington State, he began stressing the world Boeing and looking pointedly at me every time he said it. (Boeing is based in Seattle. I don’t live anywhere near Seattle.)

He spent 90 minutes showing us around, mostly in the pre-1920 Aviation area and military aviation areas covering the period up to the end of World War II. It was the tip of the iceberg. When he let us loose, I walked the entire floor, reading plaques for anything that interested me, and taking dozens of photos.

The Discovery Space Shuttle is in a room surrounded space stuff. When I put a few photos on Twitter, a Twitter friend of mine asked if a computer unit he used to work on (The IDEX II Workstation) was still on display; I went back to this room, found it, and sent him a photo.

Planes
Planes, planes, and more planes. This is the commercial and general aviation side of the building, with a Concorde, Boeing 707 (367-80 or “Dash 80”), and I think a DC-3(?) with all kind of planes hanging around them. The Vertical Flight area was in the far corner of this room.

World's Smallest Plane
This plane was so small that it fit under the wing of another plane.

I won’t share all the photos. (Seriously: after reading this far you must be exhausted.) I will say this: if you have any interest whatsoever in aviation, you must go visit the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. Honestly — it will blow you away. This is an aviation museum designed for real aviation enthusiasts. Kids would likely get bored within an hour, but if you are fascinated by aviation and want to see and learn about all kinds of aircraft, this is the place to visit.

I spent nearly the whole day there. By 3 PM, I was hungry and very disappointed to see that the only food available was at the McDonald’s inside the museum. (Really? Is that the best they can do?) I bought some sort of chicken thing that actually contained chicken, some fries, and one of their cheap hot-fudge sundaes.

After my late lunch, I made my way up to the observation tower to watch the planes coming in for landing at Dulles. It was a perfectly miserable day with low ceilings and heavy rain. The jets came out of the clouds not far from the tower, which has 360° views of the surrounding area. There was an aviation radio tuned into the approach (but sadly not tower) frequency. I stayed for about 20 minutes; while I was there a group of high school students came up with sketch books and sketched various part of the tower’s inside.

Watching Planes Land
What a miserable day, eh?

Winding Down and Heading Out

By about 4:30, I was ready to go. I called the Fairfield Inn, where I’d booked a room, and arranged for a shuttle. Soon I was in a very comfortable business style hotel room that looked out over the hotel’s front entrance. I settled in to watch a movie on HBO. I was exhausted.

Later, I found a Chinese restaurant online that delivered and ordered enough food to meet their delivery minimums. I was surprised when the delivery guy brought it right to my room. It was really good but there was a ton leftover. I stowed it in the room’s little fridge.

In the morning, I woke early, as I usually do. I washed all of my dirty clothes in the laundry room on the premises. While I was waiting for it to finish, I checked out the free breakfast. I was absolutely appalled by the mess left by other guests and not tended to by any hotel staff. I’m talking about food on the floor and countertops, abandoned meals, lack of forks and napkins, empty coffee urns. And that was less than an hour after breakfast opened! It was a real shame; the hotel was nice and very comfortable, but they completely dropped the ball on the breakfast.

By 10:30, I was heading out in the hotel shuttle. Rather than go all the way back into the city for a return train ride, I’d booked a flight on American Airlines to Newark. I could carry on my bag. By some miracle, I got TSA Pre√ so security went quickly. The flight was short and I tracked our progress on ForeFlight along the way, seeing a lot of familiar territory from the air.

My brother met me at the airport and we went back to his place where Penny was very happy to see me.

We ate that leftover Chinese food for dinner.

(Continued in Part 4: Killing Time in New Jersey)

How I Spent My Autumn Vacation, Part 2: The Farewell Tour

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Maria Langer

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I visit my old stomping grounds in northeastern New Jersey and southeastern New York State.

(Continued from Part 1: The Plan and Getting There)

When I got up the next morning, my brother was gone. I’m a light sleeper after midnight but I hadn’t heard him leave. Neither had Penny, which is saying a lot.

Coffee and Pastry

I introduced my brother’s car to my phone so I could listen to my own music and enjoy hands-free phone communication while driving.

I washed up, got dressed, and headed out with Penny in search of coffee. My brother doesn’t drink coffee and his bachelor apartment is lacking in a few of the things I consider necessary, including a way to make coffee. I used Google Maps to track down a coffee shop in nearby Westfield and we headed out in the Maserati to find it.

There was a lot of police activity in Westfield at 7:30 AM and I couldn’t get to the place I was trying to find. I soon realized that there was some sort of street fair that day and the streets were blocked off for that. I parked in a lot, walked right past a Starbucks, and headed off with Penny to find the local coffee shop. I found something better: an Italian pastry shop.

Understand that when you’re born and raised in the New York City metro area — especially by a family with some Italian heritage — Italian pastries are a part of your life. I have a favorite — pasticiotti — which is a sort flakey, covered pie crust filled with custard. It’s extremely hard to find — in fact, the only place I’ve ever found them is in a real Italian pastry shop. Needless to say, there are no Italian bakeries in Wenatchee — hell, there are few real bakeries at all in Wenatchee — and I haven’t found one in Seattle yet, either. So I was pretty starved for Italian pastries and felt thrilled to stumble upon this one.

So at 8 AM, I sat at one of just two tables outside the bakery with Penny, munching a pasticiotti and sipping a rather disappointing coffee while watching various vendors drive up and begin setting up their spots for the street fair. Bovella’s pasticiotti was passable, but not nearly as good as they make them at Ferrara in Manhattan’s Little Italy. But their rainbow layer cookies, which bought to snack on throughout the day, were perfect.

Although I would have liked to attend the fair, it didn’t start until 10 AM and I certainly wasn’t willing to sit around for two hours. So we walked back to the car, climbed aboard, and headed out.

Return to the Palisades

Where were we going? I had some loose ideas. I wanted to hike along the New Jersey Palisades. There’s a wonderful trail there called the Long Path and I knew that if I parked at the State Line Lookout, I could easily access the trail. So that’s where we headed first.

But we didn’t take a direct route. Instead, we went up the New Jersey Turnpike to the Paramus Park Mall exit. I had this weird idea about driving past my old house. For years, when I worked in Red Bank and, later, Roseland, NJ, I’d come home this way and I figured that I’d just follow the road as I had back in the 1990s. But although I remembered a lot of landmarks, I didn’t remember all the turns. I couldn’t find my way from memory. Ouch. I wound up following road signs instead.

Eventually, I drove past my old house — the first house my future wasband and I had bought way back in the mid 1980s. The house looked remarkably the same, although someone in the past 20+ years had replaced the jalousie windows with modern ones that were likely a lot more energy efficient. The neighborhood looked a bit run down, but still suburban New Jersey. In town, the butcher/market where we’d bought food for dinner most nights was closed with a For Rent sign in the window. The town looked sad. Even the gas station on the corner was boarded up. I continued on my way, taking only one photo, noting the deer grazing on someone’s lawn as I drove out of town.

One of my fondest memories of my first house was walking one block into town to this German butcher shop/market to buy fresh, hand cut meat for dinner.

There was construction so I couldn’t drive the usual way — which I did remember — to neighboring Closter, NJ. I followed detour signs and eventually made it into town. Although the town’s Main Street looked pretty much the same, the strip mall that used to have a Grand Union supermarket was different. Now there was a Whole Foods. I stopped and picked some soup, bread, and dog food. Then we continued on, up the steep hill into Alpine and eventually onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway.

It was a gray day and fall had not yet arrived. I remembered the last time I’d been at the lookout — with my future ex-sister-in-law in 2013. It had been closer to Halloween and the leaves were just peaking. We’d gone for a hike down to the ruins at the bottom of Peanut Leap Falls and, afterward, hiked to the State Line Lookout. State Line Lookout was also a big part of my past — in the 1990s, before moving to Arizona, my future wasband and I had belonged to a motorcycle club that met there for rides most Sundays in the spring, summer, and autumn.

The view from State Line Lookout, looking southeast. That’s the mighty Hudson River down there. The cliffs on the New Jersey side stretch all the way down to the George Washington Bridge, which is just beyond the range of this photo.

The place looked just the way I remembered it: the big parking lot filled with visitor cars and motorcycles, the old CCC-built refreshment/gift shop, the lookout points where you can see up and down the Hudson River and out over Westchester County. We got out and went to one of the overlooks where a bunch of photographers with long-lensed cameras were scanning the skies. Birdwatchers. I asked what the’d been seeing. Mostly hawks, but they had seen a bald eagle earlier in the day. I didn’t tell them that a bald eagle often roosts in one of my neighbor’s ponderosa pine trees at home.

Looking back up the steps that take you down toward the Hudson River from the top of the Palisades at State Line.

We set off on a hike along the Long Path. My destination was the Women’s Federation Monument, a stone structure built and dedicated in 1929 that looks like a little castle. To get there, you follow a well-marked trail into the woods, down a flight of rugged CCC-built steps, across a little wooden bridge, and up a trail on the other side of the ravine. It’s not a long walk, but portions are steep. I remember taking my grandmother on this walk years ago, not realizing how steep it was. Along the way, she saw a snake on the trail and attacked it with her walking stick. (She was a gutsy old lady.)

We passed a few hikers walking in the opposite direction when we reached the bridge. That’s where the trail forked off and descended all the way down to the river. We continued to the little castle. When we arrived, we had the whole place to ourselves.

The Women’s Federation Monument is a tiny castle overlooking the Hudson River on top of the New Jersey Palisades.

I took pictures from various angles, went up to the parapeted rooftop, and came down for a look over the river. Although it was quiet there, I could hear the sound of cars zooming by on the Palisades Interstate Parkway only a quarter mile away through the dense forest. After a while, another woman hiking with her (larger) dog arrived. We chatted briefly before I continued on the trail. I hadn’t gone far when something an odd shade of blue-green caught my eye. I made my way through the undergrowth and found myself at the edge of an abandoned swimming pool.

This long abandoned swimming pool is the only trace I saw of the cliff-top estates that once lined the Palisades. The woman in the upper right corner of the photo is the other hiker, who I called over when I found the pool. She said she hikes there all the time and had never seen it.

(By the way, you can see a weird little documentary about the history of the Palisades Interstate Park here. It includes a photo of the dedication of the Women’s Federation Monument in 1929 and some footage of construction at State Line Lookout.)

Penny and I followed a narrow side trail that kept us close to the edge of the cliffs. It was quiet and gave the illusion of being remote. I met up with the other hiker a few times and a jogger passed by once. Other than that, it was surprisingly deserted for midday on a Sunday.

After a while, we made our way back past the monument, down the hill, across the ravine, and up the stairs to the State Line Lookout. I got my soup and bread and the dog food out of the car and sat at a picnic table with Penny for a quick lunch. A motorcyclist stopped by to chat about the Maserati for a while — he knew more about it than I did. I put Penny in the car and walked back to the Lookout’s snack bar/gift shop building for another look inside. It looked the same, but better. I was glad that the hot dog cooker (and its smell) was gone. I bought a bag of potato chips and headed back to the car.

There was a Ferrari and a few other exotic cars parked in a fire zone along the edge of the parking lot as I left. I wondered if I could have made a few new friends if I joined them with the Maserati, but didn’t bother to try.

Piermont and Beyond

My brother had recommended taking the car up route 9W (no, not 9 west, Google) to open it up a little. So that’s what I did. I don’t know what he was thinking — there were lots of lights and just enough traffic to take the thrill out of driving. Maybe he expected me to go all the way up to West Point? In any case, I didn’t make it that far.

I stopped for a while in Piermont, an old town just downriver from the Tappan Zee Bridge. When I was a kid, it barely existed. But in the past 40 years, it had become gentrified, with lots of upscale housing, shopping, and dining on and near the pier. We walked through a disappointing Farmer’s Market and then strolled through town, where I visited a few shops. I also stopped in the park for a look at the bridge that replaced the old Tappan Zee, which I hear they want to name after Mario Cuomo, a former New York Governor. To me, it’ll aways be the Tappan Zee, named after the Dutch name for the wide area of the Hudson River it crosses.

In the distance, I could see the old Tappan Zee Bridge, which is now being dismantled, along with its replacement.

Then we continued up 9W along the river. I stopped for just a moment at the site of the old Hudson River National Defense Reserve Fleet, which is now marked with a placard and pair of ship anchors. When I was a kid, my family had a small motor boat that we’d launch under the George Washington Bridge. Common day trips back then included a cruise around Manhattan Island, a trip down to the Statue of Liberty, or a trip up the Hudson River, sometimes as far as West Point. Back in those days, the Navy had a fleet of ships anchored at a point along the river, waiting in storage in case they were needed. I clearly remember my father steering our little motorboat up and down the rows of huge ships parked there. They were removed back in 1971 — gives you an idea of how old I am (!) — and sold for scrap, but the memory is strong.

This is all that remains of the dozens of Navy ships once anchored here.

At this point, I was just driving, trying to enjoy the fast car but getting stymied by traffic lights and slower traffic. But I kept driving. Part of me wanted to see the old Bear Mountain Bridge, which was the next Hudson crossing. Another part wanted to check out the rib joint my brother likes near West Point. I eventually reached the bridge but, by that time, I decided to skip West Point. Instead, I headed toward Bear Mountain State Park. I would have stopped in for a quick visit to the Bear Mountain Inn — I remembered its cafeteria-style dining from my last visit 25+ years ago — but it looked crowded with day trippers from New York and the parking lots were full. And had there aways been a fee for parking? So instead, I hopped on Seven Lakes Drive, a place I knew I’d get a good driving experience. It was there that we’d often come with our motorcycles on a Sunday morning, whipping, one after another, around the curvy roads that wound through the forest between the lakes.

Perkins Tower, from the ground.

But first another stop: Perkins Tower. I couldn’t remember ever being there, but I know I had been at least once, probably on a motorcycle outing with the group. I followed the road up to the top and squeezed into a parking spot near the tower.

Leaving Penny behind, I made the short walk to the tower and the climb to the top. There were a handful of people inside — I guess most of the folks whose cars filled the parking lot were out hiking or admiring the view from ground level. At the top is a room with views in every direction — and annotated photographs for each direction that point out landmarks.

Here’s a panoramic view of the inside of Perkins Tower, shot from one corner.

I popped a quarter into one of those binocular do-dads for a look at the skyscrapers of Manhattan through the haze, then made sure anyone standing nearby got a look, too. Autumn had barely touched the area; I knew the view would be spectacular in just a few weeks.

The view south from Perkins Tower on that overcast day. You can see the Hudson River above the trees on the left. Manhattan’s skyscrapers are nearly dead center over the trees, but you can’t see them in this shot. My brother’s car is just left of the path; I’m not really sure if that was a parking spot, but it worked.

I came down the tower, climbed back into the car where Penny waited, and then drove back down the mountain. I followed signs for Seven Lakes Drive. Soon I was on vaguely familiar winding roads, ignoring the posted speed limit signs just as we had on our motorcycle flights through the area years ago. It was pleasant, but it wasn’t the same.

More Reminiscing — and a Good Meal

At the south end of the drive, it was time to return to my brother’s place. That’s when I was reintroduced to the unpleasantness of Sunday afternoon traffic.

I quickly got off the highway and started taking back roads, using Google Maps to help me find one county road after another. I wove my way southeast through Rockland County. In one area I drove through, there were all kinds of makeshift huts erected near people’s homes and in their driveways. They triggered a memory from my college days when the on-campus Jewish student club, Hillel (thanks, Google!) built similar structures in September. Doing my homework now, I realize that it was September 23 and the structures were sukkah structures for the Sukkot festival. I was passing through an Orthodox Jewish community. I hadn’t seen sukkah structures since I left the New York metro area back in the late 1990s.

I eventually made my way back to the Palisades Interstate Parkway and got off at Exit 2. From there, I drove to Hillside Avenue and turned west toward the town I’d been raised in, Cresskill, NJ. I came down the hill past the huge estates, recalling the days when my father would take the family on a Sunday drive up “the rich people’s hill” where the big houses were. He had no idea what was to come.

I drove through town, past the building my grandparents had owned with their bakery on the ground floor — it’s still the upholstery shop that went in when they sold in the 1970s. Then up Grant Avenue, past my third grade best friend’s house — she moved to Old Bridge after third grade — and right on Brookside Avenue. I turned left onto Merrifield Drive — renamed for my neighbor after he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1984 — and drove slowly past the site of my old house. Built in 1901 on 3/4 of an acre of land, it had been torn down about ten years ago and replaced with a pair of ugly McMansions. This was the first time I’d seen them and I wasn’t impressed. It was nice to see that the rest of the neighborhood was mostly intact and that the Heberts still lived in their house on the corner and had a big garden every summer.

And no, I didn’t take a picture. I’d rather remember it as it was.

Why “The Farewell Tour”?

You might be wondering why I titled this part of my trip account “The Farewell Tour.” Well, it’s mostly because I spent so much time revisiting the places that had been a part of my life from birth through 1997, when I moved with my future wasband to Arizona. I don’t get back east as often as I used to, mostly because my only relative there is my brother. Throughout this trip, I worked with the premise that I might never be back at all. So every time I revisited one of the places I used to go, I looked at it through the eyes of someone who might never see it again. I know it sounds odd or even sad, but I’m realistic about these things. Why revisit old places again and again when you can visit new ones? That’s what I need to focus on from now on.

I drove south on Jefferson Avenue, past the place I used to pick up newspapers for my paper route in the late 1970s, eventually getting to Tenafly. From there, followed the road along the tracks to Englewood. I’d already decided where I was having dinner: Baumgart’s. That’s where my wasband and I used to eat once in a while. It’s a Chinese restaurant with an Art Deco look and a Jewish name. My grandmother used to eat there sixty or seventy years ago when it was a regular old lunch counter cafe.

I ordered the cold noodles with sesame sauce — they used to make the best — and an eggplant with chicken dish. Then I texted my brother to see what he wanted and made another order to go for him. I took my time eating, remembering other meals there. The noodles weren’t as good as I remembered them and they no longer put pickled broccoli stems — don’t knock them until you’ve tried them — on the table to munch on while you wait for your food. But my meal was good and I was glad I’d come.

The inside of Baumgart’s in Englewood. There’s still a lunch counter up front. There weren’t many people there, probably because it was pretty early for dinner.

I let Google guide me back to my brother’s place. By that time, traffic had subsided and I was traveling away from New York, anyway. I had a little trouble finding my brother’s home — he lives in a huge garden apartment complex — but eventually homed in on it. I parked the car, locked it, and went inside with Penny for the night.

Tomorrow would be the start of my first big trip on this vacation and I wanted to get some rest.

(Continued in Part 3.)

How I Spent My Autumn Vacation, Part 1: The Plan and Getting There

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Maria Langer

A recap of where I went, who I visited, and what I saw.

Regular readers may have noticed that I’m blogging a lot less frequently that I had been in the past. I think the main reason is that I’m keeping so damn busy. This means I’m spending a lot less time in front of a computer and have a lot less time to spend getting my thoughts out in this blog. To my supporters — especially those who have donated to help keep this site up and running — I apologize for not delivering the content you expect to find. Please try to accept another promise to do better.

And that’s what this series of posts is about: summarizing how I spend 18 days from the end of September to the beginning of October. You saw some of the pictures in “postcard” posts; here’s a bit more to fill in the gaps.

The Plan

I began planning this vacation years ago — probably as far back as 2014. The idea was to go out to Vermont to visit my friend Tom and his wife Tammy. Of course, you go to Vermont at the best time of year — autumn, when the colors are peaking. But for a few years I just couldn’t get the trip together. First I was busy building and finishing my home. Then I was busy enjoying my home and satisfied myself with local trips I could easily make with my truck camper.

But by 2017, I was ready for more substantial travel.

As you might know, my work keeps me pretty much glued to the Wenatchee, WA area where I live from mid May through August. Last year, I was lucky enough to be able to escape to Oregon for the big solar eclipse; my cherry season work ended just a few days before the eclipse. That same year, I’d decided to move my camper and boat down to Arizona in October so I could enjoy the trip down there. (The previous year, I’d gone down around Thanksgiving and it was too cold to hike or even enjoy the various places I stopped along the way.) So I turned that into a two-week long road trip that took me to visit friends and sites in Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. Obviously, I couldn’t squeeze another vacation between my August and October trips — I have to be home sometime.

This spring, I started thinking about it again. I had lots of airline miles on Alaska Air. I had lots of free time after cherry season. I consulted Tom for the best time to come. I consulted my brother, who lives in New Jersey where I’d likely enter the area. And I thought about the other things that I might do when I arrived, like spend some time in Washington DC, taking in a few museums.

I sat on the fence for a week or so. And then one morning I just said “screw it,” and I booked my flights to and from Newark. Cancellation fees would make it very expensive to change my plans. My trip dates were set: I’d leave here on September 22 and return home on October 9 for a total 18 days away

(I should mention here that the only thing that makes trips like this possible is a great house-sitter to watch over my home, my garage-based barn cats, and my chickens, who were producing an average of eight eggs a day. I have the best house-sitter.)

Arriving in Newark

I flew into Newark with Penny, a half case of wine, and a huge rolling suitcase.

Because there are so many wineries in the Wenatchee area, Alaska Air will check a case of wine on a flight out of Wenatchee Airport for free. I packed a half-case box with four bottles of wine, a bottle of locally produced apple moonshine, and two jars of my honey. I padded them around with bubble wrap and shoved two of my scarves in there. As you might imagine, the baggage handlers managed to break one bottle of red wine, soaking — but fortunately not ruining — my scarves. A nice woman at the baggage claim area gave me a $75 credit on my account for the next time I fly.

My brother met me at the airport with his Maserati, which I assume was a gift to himself after his divorce. (Everyone should give themselves a gift after a divorce; my gift to myself was my new home and the flexible lifestyle I’d tried (unsuccessfully) to enjoy with my wasband throughout my marriage.) It’s a low-key black sedan that’s very comfortable and wickedly fast. I got to give it a try myself the very next day.

On the way back to his place, we stopped for sushi. As we polished off an enormous sushi boat, we reminisced about the time years before that’d we’d gone to a favorite sushi restaurant in Teaneck, NJ for “happy hour” half-price sushi and had eaten until we were ready to explode. Langers love good food.

Here’s my brother Norb with the sushi boat we shared for dinner. Seriously: it could have fed four people.

Back at his place, I settled into his bedroom. He’s only got one bed and he let me have it because he had to get up very early the next morning. He’s a competitive shooter and had a match in Old Bridge. He left me the keys to his car — he’d take his Toyota truck. We chatted for a while and then turned in for the night.

(Continued in Part 2: The Farewell Tour)