Moving on to New York

Bennington War Monument

September 6 - We were up earlier today.  We had breakfast from the coolers and left at 9.  It takes a while to load everything back in the car and get ice from the machine and put it in the coolers.  Today we

Cool Moose 

headed west for NY.  On the way we stopped in Bennington,VT to see the monument there for the Battle of Bennington during the Revolutionary War.  It was quite impressive and you could go up but we were on a tight time frame and it was starting to drizzle so I just took photos.  They also had a cool painted moose that was titled the Covered Bridge Moose since that is what was painted all over it.

Our first stop in NY was on our way to Saratoga National Park to wash the car.  It was covered with dust and dirt from yesterday’s adventure and it was driving Bill crazy.  We couldn’t go through a car wash since we had the bikes on the back so he found one where you do it your self.  A big im-provement for sure.

Which side will he choose?

Saratoga was nice.  They had a very well done movie about the 2 battles fought there during the Revolutionary War.  It explained why it was the turning point for the Americans.  It was there that Benedict Arnold was a hero for our side before turning traitor later.  Scum bag!  After the movie we drove the battle fields.  We decided to eat lunch from the coolers in the parking lot of the Visitor Center before heading out on the car tour.

Martin Van Buren House

Not too far south near Albany was the Martin Van Buren NHS.  We timed it perfectly and got on the next tour of the house.  It was quite impressive with several of the newest inventions of the time.  They had running water on one floor by using a pump inside the house to pump water up to a 100 gallon tank that could be used to flush the only toilet as well as fill the only built in bath tub and the various sinks in the kitchens and laundry rooms.    It’s too bad his son was a gambler and lost the home to debtors.  It later became an orphanage and an old folks home.  They were able to recover about half of the furnishings but the most impressive was the beautiful wall paper in the main dining room was original with the exception of the ends of the room.  Bill was sad to learn that he was the founder of the Democratic Party.  Look where that’s gotten us!

Thomas Cole House

The Outhouse

We knew we would be close but we hurried to the Thomas Cole NHS.  We didn’t arrive in time for the tour but I did get into the visitor center for my stamp and got to take photos of the house.  He was a leading landscape painter by 1843.  This is where landscape painting began.  The house was nice but I was more impressed with the 3 seater fancy outhouse in the yard.

The next challenge was to find lodging for the night.  We wanted to start tomorrow in Hyde Park but the only pet place was $155.  Not!  We found a Super 8 one town away for $99.00.  I just can’t believe the prices on the cut rate motels.  Once we got moved in we had a snack and chilled for a while.  Bill wanted to eat out but I wanted to use up more of the food in the coolers and since we had a microwave this was a good time to do it.  When we got ready I cooked corn on the cob, squash and heated up venison burgers and Italian sausage.  Later for dessert we heated up peach crisp.  We have emptied one cooler of 3 so far!

After watching “Hell on Wheels” and typing it was time to call it a day!