Day 5 and 6 - FDR Day and Mystic

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It is so hard to blog from the campground.  They have free wifi, but it is slow and most of the time the ipad and iphones are dead when we get here.  Plus we are currently only staying 1 night at each place, so we basically get here at 9pm and leave at 9am. 


Sunday was FDR day.  Since FDR is Daniel’s favorite president, we spent the day in Hyde Park visiting everything related to FDR.  Hyde Park is located in the Hudson Valley and is absolutely beautiful! FDR’s family owned approximately 1600 acres of land in Hyde Park, and the National Park Service still owns 900 acres.  So there was quite a bit to do. We actually probably could have stayed in the Hyde Park area for 2 days, but we were only scheduled one day. We started the day with a tour of his home.  After touring his home we toured Val-Kill, which was the home of Eleanor, after FDR died. Val-Kill was originally the home of Val-Kill industries, where they made furniture, but after Val-Kill Industries went under, she had it converted to a home.  The map shows Val-Kill and Top Cottage are close to one another, basically they are on the opposite side of the main road from the FDR home.  So we got tickets to Val-Kill for 1:30 and tickets to Top Cottage for 3:10.  Thinking we could just go to Top Cottage after Val-Kill.  Well people are not allowed to drive to Top Cottage, but there is a trail from Val-Kill to Top Cottage, which is 1 mile.  So of course, we just decided to walk.  I mean why not, we just walked 11 miles a day around NYC.  We can handle 1 mile.  It was 2:40, when we left on our 1 mile journey, we practically ran up the trail to make it by 3:10.  When we got there the park ranger informed us that it didn’t actually start at 3:10, that’s what time the shuttle left from the visitor’s center.  SHUTTLE, WHAT SHUTTLE????  However, Top Cottage, was awesome.  It was just newly acquired by the NPS and it is not really furnished at all.  Everything in it is a reproduction, but the whole point of it is that you sit outside on the porch with a very knowledgeable Park Ranger and learn about FDR.  We could ask any questions we wanted.  Considering I did not have a very good US History teacher, I learned a ton and added about 17 FDR books to my Amazon Wishlist. 



Oh and while I’m talking about knowledgeable park rangers, the ones in Hyde Park are AMAZING!!!! The Park Rangers from NYC should def. go take some lesson from them.  Our Park Ranger at Top Cottage, said the Statue of Liberty is one of the only places in the country where they will just hire a Park Ranger off the street, because it is so hard to get people to do that job.  But he agreed with me that they are being paid to answer people’s questions.



Today was spent mostly in Mystic, CT.  Yes, I’ll admit I really only wanted to come here because of the movie Mystic Pizza.  It is a really cute seaport town.  Lots of nice shops.  I did get to eat a slice of pizza from Mystic Pizza! And of course I took a picture of it.  We ate a slice of pizza as a snack, so that we could have a nice dinner tonight.  Dinner was just okay…I’ve had better, and the service was pretty awful.  We probably should have just had Mystic Pizza for dinner and been done with it.  But those are the chances you take when you travel. 



Tomorrow, we were supposed to spend the day in the Cape Cod area, but if we do we will still be 6 hours away from Acadia.  So as of right now the plan is to drive further up the coast to find another KOA…don’t worry I know where one is and I am calling first thing at 9am when the open.  I do not want a repeat of last Wednesday night.  If we are able to stay we will be three hours closer to Acadia, so we can get there earlier on Wednesday. 



Days 5 and 6 did not include as much walking, but I still got over 10,000!







Oh and I am officially turning into my Nanny.  I bought a package of Wet Ones to put in my purse for the trip.  While packing the car last week, I found a package in the very back and decided to put them in the console of the car.  When I opened the console, I found a package that was already in there.  So, yes I have three packages of Wet Ones.  And Daniel told me today that I needed to learn the words to songs instead of just humming them.

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