This morning we took US-44 east to Highland, NY where we bought gas at a Hess station for $3.839 a gallon. Then we crossed the Hudson River and turned north on US-9 at Poughkeepsie, NY. We stopped at a Quizno's in Poughkeepsie for lunch before heading on to the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Springwood", in Hyde Park.
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| From 10 - Hyde Park |
At the Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center we watched a 22 minute film, "A Rendezvous With History", that showed the history of the house and of the Roosevelt's. At the Visitor Center we browsed through the displays while we waited for the 12:30 guided tour of the Mansion to start. The fee for the 1 hour guided tour is $14 and includes admission to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum - since we have a Golden Age Passport (now called the Interagency Senior Pass) our guided tour was free. We had about a 1/4 mile walk from the Visitor Center to the Mansion. Along the way we stopped at Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's' graves.
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| From 10 - Hyde Park |
On the tour of the Mansion we learned the history of the house. FDR was born here and he and Eleanor raised all of their children in the house. After the tour of the house, we walked back to the Visitor Center and passed by the barn. Besides the public restrooms located in the barn, we discovered a children's activity room staffed by one of the park rangers.
After leaving FDR's home we drove about a mile north to the Vanderbilt Mansion. This "small" (small in comparison to other Vanderbilt homes) house was built in the 1890's by Frederick Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. It is quite a sharp contrast to the FDR home. The only way to tour the house is on a guided tour. The tickets cost $8 (another free tour because of Golden Age Passport). The tour took about 45 minutes. We visited the first and second floors and the basement.
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| From 10 - Hyde Park |
After our visit to the Vanderbilt Mansion we drove about 14 miles north to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome museum. Mike had seen a show on the Discovery Channel a few years ago on the museum and was looking forward to visiting it. The museum had just opened for the season. The museum collection is housed in Quonset huts. After buying our $8 tickets we started on our self-tour. Imagine our surprise to find that not only were vintage airplanes on exhibit, but we also saw vintage cars and motorcycles and various airplane engines.
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| From 11 - Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome |
We again crossed the Hudson River and drove south on US-209 back home.
Our day wasn't over when we got back home. The weather had been cool and somewhat cloudy on our trip - no rain had been forecast. While we had been gone for the day, a torrential rain storm had come through and had dumped a lot of rain at the RV park. We had left our awning out (no rain forecast) and apparently hadn't tilted it enough for the water to run off (we've always been very careful about tilting the awning, except this time). When Mike tried to dump the water, the center support broke and the awning ripped.
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| From Awning after storm at Rondout Valley |
A fellow RV'er came down and helped Mike remove the awning. We got the name of a local repairman from the park office and left a message on his voice mail. When he came out to the RV we told him that we were leaving the next day & he didn't have an awning in stock to replace ours. He did haul off our broken awning. Everyone at the park was very helpful - definitely a place we will come back to when we're in the area.
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