Presidential Humor & Walking on Water

Brook N Wood Campground
Elizaville, New York

We spent the last couple of days seeing some of the sights before we leave the Hudson River Valley tomorrow.  Since my younger brother-in-law went to West Point, we decided to include it on one of our sightseeing trips. 




Being raised in a Navy family, I felt like a spy walking around the West Point Museum.  I kept waiting for the bells and whistles to go off when we went through a doorway. 











I don't know what happened to the Visitor Center but I hope it wasn't from a stray artillery round. 





Dad always said that the Navy had much better food than the Army, but I never expected the cadets to be this thin.

The FDR Home and Presidential Library are in Hyde Park, NY not too far from West Point.  Since this was the very first Presidential Library, we weren't expecting too much but we were pleasantly surprised. It was one of the best presidential libraries we have seen.  There was so much to see that we spent two days here.

FDR's home, "Springwood"











Eleanor Roosevelt's residence, Val-Kill Cottage, was  about a mile from Franklin's home.














The Vanderbilt Mansion was just a few miles up the road.  The orange construction equipment around the exterior is due to the ongoing restoration of the foundation. Technically it was referred to it as a "cottage" because it was so much smaller than their other residences. Since we are currently living in a 320 square foot RV, I have a hard time relating to a home this large that was only used a few weeks each year.



One of our  favorite attractions in this area is the Walkway over the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, NY.  The the Poughkeepsie-Highland  Railroad Bridge was abandoned after it burned in 1974. It was re-purposed as a pedestrian bridge in 2009 making it the longest (1.28 miles) elevated (212 feet above the Hudson River) pedestrian bridge in the world.

 We couldn't get to a place to take a photo of the  pedestrian bridge from the riverbank, but it runs parallel to the Mid-Hudson Bridge.   It was a beautiful day if you don't count that large black cloud overhead.






The view was gorgeous.











Today we went to the home of Martin Van Buren.  It was interesting that both Franklin D Roosevelt and Martin Van Buren collected political cartoons and both had them prominently displayed on the walls of their homes.  A sense of humor must be a real asset in politics.