New York Trip Continued

What is it about hotels that makes me toss and turn all night long?  That's what I've been doing this whole trip.  On top of that, we haven't heard anything about our land offer yet (we really thought we'd hear something today), so that has me too excited to sleep, too.  Anyway, I owe you a blog since I'm a day behind already, so here we go.

In addition to little sleep on this trip, we realized at Hopewell on Friday that we didn't pack the camera charger and the battery that was in the camera was dead.  We are pretty sure we left the backup battery charging at home.  After dinner Friday night, we stopped at Best Buy to buy a universal charger so we could use our real camera instead of cell phones.  We plugged the battery in that night, but the charger doesn't really work.  It charges for about 10 seconds and then goes into standby mode.  So that night, Steve plugged and unplugged the battery from the charger to get a charge on it.  That worked for Saturday's parks.  He tried it again Saturday night and it didn't take long for it to recharge.  However, on Sunday while we were at Vanderbilt National Historic Site (our first site of the day), the battery died.  I'm telling you this because I'm too tired to deal with transferring pictures from two cell phones onto the laptop to add to this blog.  :-)  I'll add pictures when we get home tomorrow.

Our first park on Sunday (10/8/17) was Vanderbilt NHS.  We chose an odd time to come to this park because they are near the end of a $3 million renovation to both the inside and the outside of the house.  So if you are looking forward to pictures of one of the Vanderbilt mansions, let me tell you now to set your expectations on the low side.  The outside of the house was covered in scaffolding on all sides and the furniture on the inside of the house was covered with sheets.  Because of the renovations, we were only able to tour about half the house.  I will say even though we didn't get the full experience, the house is really cool.  This is our second Vanderbilt house tour (the first was The Breakers in Newport, RI) and it's just crazy how much money they had and poured into their houses.  We had another fantastic ranger as our tour guide here which just adds to the experience!

We had lunch at Chatham Brewing Company where we had a yummy sampler.  It must be because it's the time of year and I love malty beers, but we've had some great Oktoberfests on this trip, and Chatham's was great!

Our last park on Sunday was Martin Van Buren National Historical Site.  We had another great tour here by a ranger who was so new to the park service that he didn't even have his uniform yet!  It was interesting to learn that MVB was not born into money - his father was a tavern owner, he didn't finish school, and he never served in the military.  In fact, he was only one of two presidents to not finish school and not serve the country (Grover Cleveland is the other president with the same statistic).  Instead, MVB made his money with his political career and bought the house this site features when he had the money.  It's an odd house because the Van Burens renovated it at one point and added a monstrosity of a tower to it (my opinion - I think it is hideous and doesn't really fit the house), purely for decoration.

We had dinner at Brown's Brewing where we had a really good beer sampler.  They had a whiskey porter that was my favorite beer of this trip!

That brings us to today, which was an easy day.  We started at Saratoga National Historical Park, aka a battlefield.  I haven't read my previous blog posts in a while, so I don't know if I have mentioned that forts and battlefields are generally not my favorite types of National Park sites.  Saratoga was pretty interesting though.  My favorite part was seeing the pheasant and deer.  :-)  I think my problem with battlefields is that we're literally looking at fields and I just can't visualize what happened there.  Also, I always mix up who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are which always throws me off when listening to the narrations for the stops along the driving tours.  Steve always does his best to get me through it though.  One interesting monument at Saratoga is one that doesn't name a specific person, however the symbolism on it represents Benedict Arnold.  While he was kind of a hero at Saratoga, he ended up being a traitor later.  Watch Drunk History to learn all about his treason.  :-)

After Saratoga, we had a three hour drive to the Finger Lakes where we stopped at two wineries near Cayuga Lake (the middle finger if you look at a map).  After wine we had dinner at Prison City Brewing Company where the beers were all hoppy, so Steve enjoyed his own sampler.

Let the Ranger Do Their Job

Today we toured Franklin's and Eleanor's houses in Hyde Park, NY.  We started at Franklin Delano Roosevelt National Historic Site and had about 15 minutes to kill before our tour started.  We used that time wisely and went into the FDR Museum and Presidential Library which is a great museum full of info and exhibits throughout FDR's life.  The tour was even better!  I always recommend a ranger-led tour whenever you can at any park because they are always chock-full of information!  Even better if you can pull him or her aside at some point to ask a question - sometimes you get really cool information you would never expect to get.  This happened today with Ranger John Foraker.  We were talking about how many parks we have been to so far and he was telling us he needs to get to Alaska before the end of next year.  There is a mountain out there named after one of his distant relatives that will likely be renamed to the original name of the mountain (along the lines of Mt. McKinley being renamed to Denali).  Then he told us about why his relative was important other than some sort of government job along the way - Joe Foraker is the only person to ever have punched Teddy Roosevelt in the nose.  This got a good laugh out of us especially since the squabble was over a football game!

Ranger Foraker was incredibly knowledgeable of all things Roosevelt and Steve and I learned a whole bunch of new tidbits of information today.  I knew Teddy and Franklin were distant cousins, but I never knew that Teddy was actually Eleanor's uncle and he walked her down the aisle at her wedding to Franklin while Teddy was president!  Eleanor's maiden name was Roosevelt already, so she didn't even need to change her name.  When Franklin was born he was 10 pounds, and all six of his children with Eleanor were 10+ pounds as well!

During the tour the ranger spoke about how Franklin emulated a lot of his life after Teddy (literally followed every one of his footsteps throughout life and his career).  One of the many things they shared in common was that they were both the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.  The first keel FDR commissioned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy was the USS Arizona.  As soon as the ranger mentioned this I had chills and goosebumps down my arms.  If you don't know why I had this reaction let me remind you that December 7, 1941, is "a day that will live in infamy" when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and sank the USS Arizona during FDR's presidency.  Pretty strange how that all came full circle.

The house itself was beautiful and it was the house FDR was born in, he grew up there, and then spent his married life there and raised children at that house all with his mother right down the hall.  Mama's boy, much??  Eleanor never owned a house of her own until Val-Kill was built, but I'll talk more about that later.  One of the rooms in FDR's house was where he met with Winston Churchill while they reviewed a letter from Albert Einstein about the atomic bomb.  Also, King George VI and the Queen Mother visited this home.  The ranger told us a funny story about that visit - FDR had several political cartoons hanging in the foyer right outside the dining room that were from the Revolution and the War of 1812, so they weren't favorable to the British.  Sara, FDR's mother (who owned the house), asked him to take the cartoons down before the royals arrived.  Long story short, they ended up arriving sooner than anticipated and he didn't take the cartoons down.  King George did see them and read each one for about 10 minutes and it was dead silent in the room while he did it.  Afterwards, he says with a smile to FDR in front of Eleanor and Sara that it looks an awful lot like his collection at home.  Turns out FDR and King George bonded quite a bit and that could have been partially due to both of them having disabilities (FDR was paralyzed by this time and King George VI was a stutterer).

One last story to share about Fala, FDR's beloved scottie.  Fala and Franklin bonded instantly and were inseparable as soon as they bonded.  Because of this, Fala became a celebrity too.  Before Fala came along, you would have no idea where the president was unless you were secret service or in the "need-to-know" circle.  Once Fala acquired his own fame, and people recognized his name being said by secret service, people would just follow the dog to see the president.  This created a security issue, so they gave Fala a code name:  The Informer.

Dining Room

Study

Political Cartoons

Wheelchair lift

FDR's bedroom - the chair at the foot of the bed is where Fala would sleep

FDR's house, called Springhill

The final resting places of Franklin and Eleanor

Fala's final resting place

Sorry the FDR blog is so long, but it really was a cool house and rangers always have a way of making a site more interesting especially when they are as passionate as Ranger Foraker was!

After FDR's site we had lunch at Hyde Park Brewing Company.  The food was great, the beer was mediocre.

After lunch, we headed over to Val-Kill (Valley + Kill means "Stream" in Dutch), which is the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site.  We hopped on to a tour here where we learned that the home Eleanor built was the old factory for the Val-Kill Furniture company.  We also learned that Eleanor was Val-Kill's number one customer and many of the furniture pieces in her house were from the factory.  Her house was so cozy and had such a warm, "homey" feeling to it - so different from the home she shared with Franklin and his mother that seemed to spare no expense.

Here's where the title of the blog post comes up.  This tour drove Steve and I bonkers!  We take ranger-led tours to hear what the ranger has to say, not what the know-it-all people have to say.  Additionally, a tour is not a chance to play "Stump the Ranger."  I exercised so much patience on this tour for the people that were on it even though I would have taken much pleasure taking duct tape to their mouths.  To give you an idea of how bad this was, remember, we are at a site dedicated to Eleanor.  The minute the tour started, four people on the tour immediately asked questions about FDR and his political career.  This ranger didn't know everything about it, nor did I expect her to since this was a site for ELEANOR!  The FDR site is two miles down the road people, go learn about him there!  I get that there might be some side questions about FDR at this site, but this monopolized quite a bit of the tour.  When we got into the house, the questions continued.  At least this time they were about Eleanor.  "Did she write her books in long hand?"  "Oh, she typed her books?  Was she a touch typist?"  "Was that where she would have stored the silver pieces when she lived here?"  "How did Sara treat her?"  "Was that the chair she read in?"  OH MY GOD!  Yes, she probably did read in that chair.  Yes, she and Sara got along.  Yes, she typed her books, who the heck cares if she could touch type?!  I'm not exaggerating, those were actual questions asked on this tour.   I love ranger-led tours, but I think my favorites are the ones where it is just Steve and me.  :-)

Inside the house - the table and chairs in the back is where Eleanor and JFK met for 2 and a half hours before she endorsed him for President.

Val-Kill House

Pretty flowers in the garden

Pretty stream on the property

The study - this desk is where she did all of her work.  The couch is where she read.  ;-)

These are framed Christmas cards she received while in the White House.

How You Like Dem Apples?

Remember in my last post I mentioned that Steve has very little vacation and we were saving for a house?  Well, Steve has finally built up a few vacation days and as far as the house stuff goes, we're waiting to hear back on an offer we just put in this evening on some land!  That would be a whole separate blog, but my point for saying those things is that we are on a little trip to take advantage of Steve's long weekend with Columbus Day off on Monday.  We've actually had this trip planned long before we thought it was even possible to put in an offer on something, so here we are!

We were able to get an earlier start than we initially planned for today, so Steve looked into what we could do around the area where we had booked our hotel for the night in Quakertown, PA.  I'll give you a hint, there isn't much to do...the movie theater is the #4 rated item on Trip Advisor.  Steve realized (without telling me so he could surprise me) that Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site was on our way to Quakertown.  Hopewell is a neat little site, especially if you go in the Fall.  They have an apple orchard right by the visitor's center and you are able to pick your own apples for $1.00 a pound.  The first time we came here a few years ago, we picked a couple pounds of apples.  This time, we spent a grand total of two minutes because the mosquitoes were swarming us.  We now have four apples that we'll have as a snack later on this trip.

Steven picking apples

Hopewell Furnace is called such because the furnace made iron.  There are buildings around the property that you are able to walk into and learn about, and there are a few farm buildings and fields of sheep and horses to visit.  There are several hiking trails which we didn't do the last time we were here.  Today, we hiked to the dam at Hopewell Lake and took in some of the pretty scenery.  We aren't here at peak time for the leaves, but they are starting to change, which was pretty to see reflected on the lake.

Hopewell Lake

Hopewell Lake

Sheep

Our next stop was to Manatawny Still Works where we stopped in for a sampler of their three whiskeys, including a honey whiskey that hasn't even been released yet.  All three were very good!  We had dinner at The Proper Brewing Company where the food and beer did not disappoint.  My favorite beer was the Irish Red and Steve's favorite was the Tall, Dark, and Steve.  Tomorrow, we are off to Hyde Park to hang out at Eleanor's and Franklin's houses.

Manatawny Still Works Sampler

The Proper Brewing Company Sampler

Fun sign at Proper

Get to the Choppa!!

It's been a while...
With Steve starting his new job in January, he hasn't been able to build up a lot of PTO.  Also, if you don't already know this, we are in the market for a new house which means financially we shouldn't be planning any parks and beer-in-small-glasses trips for a little while.  But we've done a couple small things I wanted to blog about.

We celebrated our 11th anniversary on August 6.  Due to a family obligation, we actually couldn't do anything that day.  But the day before, we went to DC to do more of a park we've already been to and we went to one of the more recently named sites, which was a new park site for us.  We started by going to Prince William Forest Park.  We were actually here a few years ago, but only had time for the scenic drive.  The scenic drive is really just a drive through a forest with spots to park for hikes, so there isn't much at all to see on the scenic drive.  When we did this, we didn't really feel like we gave the park a fair shake so I'm really glad we went back and did some hiking.

Our first hike was a 1.5ish mile loop (Laurel Loop Trail) to South Fork Quantico Creek.  It was a really easy, relatively flat hike and the creek views were nice.  After that we also did the Quantico Cascades Trail to little baby waterfalls.  This is about 1.4 miles round trip and pretty easy, but a lot of uphill on the way back.

South Fork Quantico Creek selfie

South Fork Quantico Creek

Quantico Cascade Falls

We grabbed some lunch and then went to Belmont-Paul National Historic Site for the ranger-led tour.  This was such an interesting tour!  I found myself silently thanking Alva Belmont and Alice Paul (and many other women) quite a bit for fighting for and earning my right to vote.  The National Women's Party is still active and is hopefully working on that 70% issue.  To my female readers, please go VOTE VOTE VOTE!  These women went through horrendous experiences (jail time and forced feeding through a nasal tube, for example) while fighting for this right.  If you aren't voting, you are letting these women down.  An interesting tidbit about Alva Belmont (not politically related) is that she grew up in a wealthy family and then was married to a Vanderbilt.  They divorced, which was unheard of back in this time.  After the divorce though, she married into the Belmont family (as in Belmont Stakes).  Quite the rich lady she was!

One of the original protest signs from in front of the White House

Pretty door

Joan of Arc statue - this was a gift to Alva Belmont from Mr. Belmont.  There is a huge steel column all the way to the basement just to support this marble statue.

Belmont-Paul House

Fast forward a week and we get to the title of the blog post.  Steve celebrated his birthday on July 12.  I had planned a surprise for him with a few of our friends to go on a helicopter tour through Charm City Helicopters around Baltimore.  Despite the murder rate and skyrocketing drug issues, Baltimore really is a beautiful city.  I wish the city could be cleaned up so that those aren't issues anymore, but I don't think that will be in my lifetime.  Regardless, the city was just as beautiful from the air and we had the most perfect day for flying!  After Steve opened his certificate telling him what I had planned, he immediately went online and found the shirts we are all wearing.  We spent all afternoon yelling this in Arnold's voice and the CCH crew got a kick out of our shirts!  If you're in the Baltimore area, I highly recommend a tour, whether you live here or not!

Baltimore skyline (Photo cred:  T.R.)

Inner Harbor (Photo cred:  T.R.)

Where Sagamore Rye Whiskey (owned by Kevin Plank from Under Armour) is born.  YUM!  (Photo cred:  T.R.)

Fort McHenry - we were so lucky to see them out folding the flag as we flew over!  (Photo cred:  T.R.)

Patterson Park

Johns Hopkins University (booo!!! - since Steve went to Loyola)

Another Fort McHenry picture

GO RAVENS!!

GO O's!  Even from the air, the warehouse is too big for the camera!

The new Pendry hotel (owned by Kevin Plank of Under Armour)

Domino Sugars sign (supposedly the largest neon sign on the East Coast)

Carnival Pride

The party people with Freddie, our pilot.  SO. MUCH. FUN!

We Can Do It!

We got home close to 4:00 am this morning, so we actually went to our last park on this trip yesterday.  Our last park was Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park.  I thought this park would be heavy on the girl power, which it was, but it was really about the "home front" as a whole - not just the women who took over the "male jobs" while they were fighting the war.  The park itself is mostly a very informative museum, but the SS Red Oak Victory is there to tour, and a few other buildings in the town of Richmond have a few signs in front of them.  The site also focused on the role of minorities in the war effort and how they had to fight Jim Crow as well as the Axis powers.  

Unfortunately, the park doesn't open until 10, and we had to leave at 11 to get to the airport.  So we only had time to go through the museum.  We would have made time for the Red Oak Victory, but it was also pouring.  The end of the museum included a quick blurb about equal pay because after the war was over, a lot of women were laid off because the men returned home from the war and wanted their jobs back.  It's kind of weird to think that the equal pay conversation started that long ago.

There wasn't much to take pictures of, so I'm sorry this is a photo-free post.  But, don't let that deter you - it was an interesting park!

Yesterday's Mulligan

Today was a much better day and vacation is back on track to being awesome!  Other than the whale watching, today was yesterday's do-over.  We woke up super early this morning to head back to the Tule Elk Preserve, this time with a full tank of gas.  Just as we were pulling into the preserve, a coyote crossed the road to go meet his coyote buddy on the other side.  I wasn't quick enough changing camera lenses to get both coyotes together, but I did get the one after he crossed the road!  While in the preserve we were greeted by dozens of elk and they would just stare at the car while chewing on some grass.  On our way out of the preserve, we finally were able to snap a few pictures of some quail - those buggers are too fast for the camera usually!  Plus I'm excited to share with you that we have named all of the quail Dan.  ;-)

Point Reyes National Seashore - on our way to the Tule Elk Preserve

Coyote

I love how the elk chose such a pretty backdrop!

More elk

Dan

On our way to Muir Woods, we passed an area with a whole bunch of sea lions.

After the preserve, we went back to Muir Woods National Monument.  Check yesterday's post for more pictures, but this morning it was far less crowded (although still pretty busy) and we were able to better enjoy it.  It was a much more peaceful experience today and I really enjoyed a much happier walk in the woods with Steve this morning.

Inside one of the big trees

We went to John Muir National Historic Site which is the house he lived in with his wife and daughters.  For those who don't know, John Muir loved the outdoors and is called the "father of the National Parks."  He's the one who really got the conversation going about preserving these wonderful parts of our country.  I highly recommend watching the Ken Burns mini-series "The National Parks:  America's Best Idea" to learn more about him and how the park service started.  For me, this park was pretty much all a "National Park Moment" since this was really where the park service idea began - in John Muir's head at this house.  His house had few of his possessions in it, but the desk where he did all of his writing about parks was on display in the "scribble room," as he called it.  We watched the video in the Visitor Center where we learned that the lone sequoia tree on the property was actually planted by him over a century ago!

John Muir NHS

The "scribble room"

Some of Muir's books

The tree Muir planted over a century ago!

If you are signed up for the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial tour, you actually leave from John Muir National Historic Site.  In the National Park Travelers Club world, this is considered a "hard-to-get" park, because it is.  You have to get reservations at least two weeks in advance, and the tour can be cancelled at anytime if the working army base decides to be loading ammunition that day.  We had reservations months ago, and we were lucky that the army didn't have any ammo to load.  Port Chicago is a hidden gem as well - not so much for the scenery or the feel-good story (because it's a very sad story) - but it's a story that needs to be told and one I didn't know about until this trip.  So you are about to be educated because this is a very important piece of history.  Port Chicago was a naval base during WWII and on July 17, 1944, at 10:15 pm, while loading ammunition onto two different boats, the boats blew up killing 323 enlisted men, officers, merchant mariners, and civilians.  There were more enlisted men killed than officers and most, if not all, of the enlisted men were African-American.  The explosions were so big that one boat was completely annihilated and they have never found debris larger than a suitcase.  The other boat was blown in half, with one half launching over 500 feet away.  Of the dead, only about 50 were identified, otherwise all they found were feet still inside shoes and hands still inside gloves.  A terrible tragedy in itself, but it got worse over the coming days.  Within a few days of the explosion, the 253 men who survived (they were in a different part of the base which is why they survived) were asked to get back to work loading more ammunition on more boats or they were threatened with charges of mutiny since we were in a time of war.  About 200 of those men did go back to work because either an explosion would kill them while working, or they'd be executed by firing squad.  The other 50 men did start the conversation about racism in the military and about safety precautions (because none were taken prior to this incident).  The 50 mutineers did face trial and they were found guilty, serving 8 - 15 years in prison.  Most of the 200+ survivors had PTSD and the 50+ mutineers were dishonorably discharged and therefore denied VA benefits.  They were never exonerated.  Sorry to bum you out with an extremely sad story, but I hope you realize that parks are not just about preserving beautiful pieces of land, but they also teach us so much of the past, even the bad parts so we don't repeat it.

I highly recommend doing this tour if you ever get the chance.  I'd like to add that rangers often add to the experience at the park, and both Ranger Raphael (John Muir NHS) and Ranger Stephanie (Port Chicago) were awesome!  Raphael noticed Steve and I wearing our Centennial shirts and was so curious about our adventures and he loved hearing any feedback we had about any park.  Stephanie was former navy, and was so passionate about the Port Chicago story which made the tour that much better (if that's the right word for it).

A piece of the wreckage

What's left of the pier after the explosion.

The memorial - each of the four sections displays names of the deceased

After a heavy afternoon, Steve and I needed to cheer up, so we went to the Jelly Belly factory for a self-guided tour!  Sadly, they don't run any of the machines on Saturdays so we didn't see anything in action, but we did see a lot of jelly beans resting.  Jelly beans actually take 7 - 14 days to make partially because they have to rest in between certain stages.  Since the machines weren't running, we pretty much flew through the tour and we probably spent more time in the gift shop.  :-)

In one of the resting phases

All the pieces of art hanging up are made out of jelly beans

These have been polished, but are resting again before packaging

Want!

We ended the day with dinner at E.J. Phair Brewing Company.  It was a shame our waitress was crap, but the food and the beer were very good!  We end the trip tomorrow with our last park, Rosie the Riveter National Historic Park before coming home.  So look for the last blog on Monday since we don't get home until very late Sunday night.

Sampler at E.J. Phair