New York

Sunday we attended the Liverpool Ward, Syracuse New York Stake

We headed to Rome.... New York afterwards. Frances Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance, is buried in Rome.

The next stop, also in Rome, was Fort Stanwix National Monument

Check out this cool drawbridge mechanism in the fort!

This is a Revolutionary-era fort, part of the skirmishes as the battle at Saratoga.

We walked into the fort right as they were doing a cannon demonstration. S got to participate as the gun commander--she got to shout all the orders.

On our drives we saw a groundhog

Some interesting speed limit signs

And a town called Herkimer (name of a guy who died in a battle related to Fort Stanwix)

Wrapped up haybales, I call them marshmallows because it really looks like a field of marshmallows

Monday we headed to Saratoga National Historical Park

Saratoga overlooks the Hudson River. The British were coming from that direction, fighting uphill. This battle was the turning point in the American Revolution because the French realized that the American colonists were serious and could possibly win the war, so they started to help us.

We stopped at Chester A. Arthur's grave on our way into Albany, New York.

Also on the way into Albany, the RCA Victor dog knowns as "Nipper". He nipped at people and the painting with him listening to a Victrola with his head cocked was titled, His Master's Voice, supposedly he was listening to a recording of his master.

We headed to the New York State Capitol, which J said looked like someone's ginormous mansion

Inside, both J and S said the staircase the building is known for reminded them of Harry Potter!

Very ornate building

We stopped in Kinderhook, New York to see Martin Van Buren's grave and the angle I took the photo cut off the tip of the obelisk, making it look very strange.

We also went to see the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site--this was his home at the end of his presidency until the end of his life. He shared it with his extended family

A couple of things we saw while driving: this license plate on a truck

And this on the side of a freeway by a rest stop

Tuesday we went to see some art. Thomas Cole founded the Hudson River School, one of the first truly "American" styles of art. We saw his old studio and the grounds of his home and new studio as all the tours were sold out for the morning

This was the Pollinator Pavilion where you were invited to sit and enjoy the scenery and perhaps draw

Cole's views of the Catskills from his home. He painted these scenes a lot, loved nature a lot and the site reflects that today.

We crossed the Hudson on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge

We took a quick trip into Massachusetts to see more art!

Norman Rockwell has a special place in my heart and it was so fun to take J and S to see his museum and studio.

There was a fantasy art exhibit going on at the time, outside on the grounds AND inside too! Check out some of these fantastic and fantastical pieces of art!

Some of my favorite Norman Rockwell pieces hanging in the museum

These are the sketches and the dress that the model wore for The Problem We All Live With which was about Ruby Bridges integrating her elementary school

We got to see inside his studio too

We headed over to find his grave

He served in the military as an artist!

We headed back into New York to see the Vanderbilt Mansion!

It was not open for tours the day we visited, we did see the grounds. You just cannot get the scale of the mansion from the photos!

We saw the gardens. I wish I had such lovely gardens (with zero effort!)

The view of the Hudson River from the back of the mansion

Wednesday we went to see the Roosevelts' homes. Val-Kill was Eleanor Roosevelt's home after her husband died. She had used it as a workshop to train people in manufacturing trades and then turned it into her home where she lived the rest of her life.

This was Val-Kill, which was a Dutch/English mashup of "Fall Kill" in Dutch which means "valley stream", there was a lovely stream running past the property

This was the Stone Cottage, next door to Val-Kill

It was the only building we were able to go in. This display was of items manufactured at Val-Kill

I was mesmerized by all the flowers in the gardens behind the houses

We went over to the Roosevelt home, where Franklin and Eleanor raised their children

Like so many other sites, under construction! Hard to see what it looks like under all that scaffolding.

We saw the grounds and the gravesite

And this really cool set of sculptures behind the presidential museum and library. Churchill and Roosevelt became very good friends and allies. The sculpture made from pieces of the Berlin Wall was made by Churchill's granddaughter.

We headed to West Point next

West Point was the first military academy in the U.S. and overlooks the Hudson River. It's very beautiful up there

Then we headed to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

We saw Washington Irving's grave (he authored Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

We also saw a Rockefeller mausoleum

Andrew Carnegie's grave

And then we headed to yet another cemetery, Woodlawn, in the Bronx, to see Elizabeth Cady Stanton's grave

Someone had left a women's suffrage flag or two on her headstone

And the J.C. Penney mausoleum

Last stop for the day was St. Paul's Church National Historic Site, also in the Bronx. This church was the site of two events that quantified what freedom of religion and freedom of the press are

A couple of sights as we drove--this town calls itself a "hamlet". Many of the signs we see call towns "villages" or "boroughs"

This was the glimpse of New York City that we saw as we drove over the bridge to Long Island for the week

Thursday we got up bright and early and boarded the Long Island Railroad to head in to Penn Station

We had an actual train conductor who came and punched tickets! (We had digital tickets)

He would leave these behind, as reminders that we paid and how many, so he didn't have to check every passenger at every stop as people got on and off

Lots and lots of mask wearing and social distancing reminders on public transit

We were headed to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum

The museum is actually all underground. You enter right next to the memorial fountains outside on the plaza and head downstairs. The museum is basically in the footprint of the World Trade Center towers. These "tridents" were part of the exterior of the buildings.

At the beginning there was this wall, showing the flight paths of the four planes. The photo of the New York City skyline above was across from this wall.

This is the final column removed from the site during cleanup. The walls next to it were the slurry walls, constructed to keep the river from seeping in.

These are all painted papers, depicting what shade of blue each person thought the sky was on that beautiful, clear September morning.

Remains that could not be identified are interred behind the wall.

These two photos show the towers, when you walk around them you can see where the columns for the towers were

One of the firetrucks that was lost in the collapse of the towers

This was a model of the sculpture, The Sphere, which stood on the plaza between the towers.

It was found in the rubble and now has a place just south of the memorial plaza

There was a tree found that also survived the collapse of the towers

The memorial is a fountain showing the footprint of the towers, with the names of those who died inscribed. Each name is grouped by where the person died.

We visited the Statue of Liberty next!

There is an amazing museum on Liberty Island that shows just HOW big the statue is

The old flame is on display there

We got to go up to the pedestal, the crown is currently closed

See the open door behind the person in the yellow t-shirt? That was where we got to climb up to, almost 200 stairs!

Looking up into the statue from the pedestal level

Our view outside on the pedestal

We got to take the ferry to Liberty Island and then get on again to go to Ellis Island

So many people came through this building, hoping for a new and better life

Many of the inspection cards on display were stamped for the hospital, not necessarily a good sign for the person

If they were lucky, they got to go down the stairs that meant a new life in America

We stopped at Castle Clinton, briefly, but it was under construction, not much to see there!

We headed off to find some sites, like the Wall Street bull and then the Fearless Girl--who used to be facing down the bull but now she's facing down the New York Stock Exchange!

Federal Hall, with a statue of George Washington in front, wasn't far away

This is where George Washington took his oath of office as the first president of the United States

We had dinner at Shake Shack and had to prove we were vaccinated in order to eat inside. That made for a very quiet and cozy dinner inside the restaurant.

Last item of the day was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge

We walked from Brooklyn to Manhattan

Some fun art in the subway

And the beautiful tile murals

Friday we headed back into New York City again.

We headed to Governor's Island, another National Park Service site

More mask signs on the ferry

Castle Williams and Fort Jay (a star fort like many of the Civil War-era forts we've seen) are on the island.

The castle was closed but we managed to find a ranger on duty right then and could do the Junior Ranger booklets

We walked around, seeing the area. There's actually a lot to do on the island, it is not just a fort!

Construction and restoration on Fort Jay

The ferries are always interesting. Watching the docking process was mesmerizing

We stopped at Trinity Church to see Alexander Hamilton's grave. The church was under construction (pretty much EVERYTHING is, so we are not surprised when we have to get creative) and we just saw the grave from outside the fence.

We also went by the African Burial Ground National Monument--they found hundreds of graves when building a building in the 1990s and turned the area into a memorial.

Sadly, the museum part was closed. The exhibits there are excellent

We stopped by the Tenement Museum, didn't take a tour, bought some books instead. The museum is all about the tenements and their inhabitants, from the 1800s into the early 1900s.

We also did a little shopping at CW Pencil Enterprise, literally a store about pencils (and erasers and notebooks)

CW Pencil Enterprise is right next to Chinatown

We stopped by the Manhattan New York Temple. It is in a building that houses the temple, chapel, mission offices, and a FamilySearch center

Saw this as we walked past the church near Central Park

We had Central Park hot dogs for lunch and saw carriages for hire as we walked through Central Park. We also saw lots of dogs and tried to make friends with quite a few.