Michigan Fall Color

According to the Michigan Color Map, the northern lower peninsula is at or near its peak.  So on a lark, yesterday we scheduled a 3 day 2 night trip to view the colors.   The joy of being retired so we can do trips like this!

Pictures cannot capture what the eye sees.  They don't do good with vistas.  But here are a few of the 2 dozen photos Mary took as we drove to Gaylord today.  Many beautiful scenes were hard to capture with a camera due to intervening billboards and other vehicles.  And way too many came up so quick it was impossible to grab a picture.   But here are a few for you to enjoy.

We also took advantage of our route to visit some of Mary's dad's favorite places.  He loved trout fishing and, especially, fishing on the Au Sable river.  We located the place where a friend of his had a fishing cabin on the Au Sable (river picture on the right).  We also had lunch at Spikes Keg o Nails, his favorite Grayling watering hole. 

Tomorrow we are taking local highways to Ludington, then south to Muskegon.  

Trip Summary and some driving notes

During our drive home, Mary and I talked about the trip.  Both of us were very impressed with the Roosevelt Museum.  For anyone interested in that era of history, you could easily spend 4-5 hours seeing  that museum.  We went through somewhat fast as we had the house tour time, and more to do that afternoon.   The other sites we visited were also quite interesting, as you read in prior posts.   And there is a lot more to see in this part of the country as we did not get to Albany or Cooperstown, among other upstate New York attractions.   So I encourage you to consider a visit to this beautiful part of New York, which is nothing like New York City.

Note: if you don't care about car stuff, you can skip the rest of this post!  After driving this 2017 Ford CMAX hybrid for 6+ years, I had never done this type of analysis so I took this opportunity to collect some data and see how effective Ford's Gas-Electric hybrid technology really is. 

The CMAX is a gas - electric hybrid (not a plug-in hybrid).  The battery charges while driving, especially when you slow down or brake.  What I liked while driving in the hills of New York and Pennsylvania is you get about 20 MPH going up a hill, but use zero gas going down any hills. All this is seamless as the starting of the gas and electric motors is handled by the electronics with no driver involvement.

If you look at my trip summary you can see we went 1593 miles, but 481 (30%) of those miles were on battery power!  My overall gas mileage was 44.1 MPG, but with a little math you can compute that when running on gas I only got 30 MPH.  Of course the hybrid technology has a much bigger effect on hilly roads (even low hills) than on pure flatlands.  So if you have an interest in improved gas mileage, I encourage you to consider a hybrid!  

That's it for this series of posts!

Second Driving Day

Our day consisted of driving over 280 miles  from Pennsylvania to Ohio on I-80. While interstate driving is fairly easy, it was still over 4 hours on the road.  Fortunately, we had some pretty scenery to look at! 

Once we checked in at our Kent, OH hotel, we headed out for supper in neighboring Cuyahoga Falls.  That's the town we lived for a few months when we were first married.  To say it's changed a bit in 50 years would be an understatement!   We did look up our apartment house and took this picture.  It was quite the trip dwn memory lane.

Tomorrow we head to Findlay for lunch with Katie and Becca before heading for Dearborn. That's it for our trip!

First Driving Day Home

At breakfast this morning, Mary asked "What towns are we driving past today?" I looked and notice Scranton, PA. Since we are both fans of The Office, I did a search and found there was an Office Gift Shop, so we decided to see it.  As we drove into town on the Joseph R Biden Expressway, we missed getting a picture of the Welcome to Scranton sign (as seen in the opening of the show) as it flew by too fast.  Bummer!  After much searching we found the gift shop inside a restaurant, and took a selfie with some cutouts.  They had some very interesting items for sale like a Dunder-Mifflin ID badge and a can of Schrute Farm beets, but we passed on buying anything. 

Besides that stop, our drive through western New York and Eastern Pennsylvania was pretty uneventful.  We did encounter some low clouds early on, but it cleared up as we got into the Pocono Mountains.  At the higher elevations we did see some tree color changing (picture on right). There were quite a few road construction zones, but only one had a backup and took a few minutes to clear.

I checked and did not see any places of interest on our 4 hour drive to Kent, OH tomorrow; nothing on the order of Scranton, PA!

Day 2 in the Hudson Valley

Our day started with a drive to West Point Military Academy. This is our third military academy after visiting the US Navy Academy in Annapolis and the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs.   They have a 75 minute bus tour so, unlike the other academies, you don't have to pass a security check. The campus is beautiful, with all the granite buildings, built from their own quarry. 

The first stop on the tour was the chapel, which was very impressive.  The  many American flags in the chapel are from various times in our country's history.  Someone asked about marriages so the tour guide told that only graduates of the academy (and a few others) could be married there.  He followed that up with telling how, since all cadets are required to be unmarried, starting at 1pm on graduation day, they have a wedding scheduled for every half hour!  

The next stop on the tour was Trophy Point which has a beautiful view of the Hudson River.  The guide spoke about  the chain the Americans stretched across the  river to stop British ships from passing by.  A picture of a few links of that chain is on the right. 

After the tour we headed for our Hudson River boat ride.  I had found three tours, but when I went to make a reservation, only one offered a tour on the day we needed to go and it was the farthest from West Point.  So we had a 1 hour drive to get to this tour.    But the good news is that it was a beautiful, pleasant ride on the Hudson as you can see in the picture on the top left. 

Since the Hudson is navigable all the way to Albany and has a large amount of boat traffic, it has several lighthouses (upper right) to warn about dangerous areas.

Most of the shoreline is tree covered, but there were a few pretty houses (lower left) and we passed a large barge (lower right) being pushed by a tug.

Overall it was a very relaxing afternoon on the river.

Tomorrow we head back towards home, stopping in central Pennsylvania.  I'm not sure there will be too much to blog about for the next 2 days. 

Roosevelt Homes

 Today was our day to visit FDR's Hyde Park house as well as Eleanor's Val-Kill cottage.  

We arrived at FDR's house before 10 am, but the first available tour was at 11:30.   So we bought tickets to the FDR Presidential Library and walked through it.  This was a very good experience as it covered his entire life with mixed media presentations.  Everything from his early life,  to marriage to Eleanor,  polio, his early political years, the New Deal, and WWII, was included.  On the top right is a picture of the study in this Library that is the only room in any Presidential Library that was actually used by a President. 

Mary also took pictures of the huge Bible he used at his inaugurations, and his presidential desk (on the left).

On our way to the house tour, we spotted Eleanor and Franklin's graves. If you look closely, you'll see two strips with different ground cover - those are the graves of two of Franklin's dogs.  

Our next stop was the FDR house, also known as Springwood.  We learned a lot during this 45 minute tour that covered the two main floors plus the servants hall in the basement.

I've included three interior pictures.

Top right is the dining room

Bottom left is the parlor

Bottom right is the living room

We also took pictures of the second floor bedrooms where Franklin, Eleanor, and various celebrities slept when visiting, including King George VI. One interesting tale was how Franklin and Eleanor served the king and queen of England hot dogs at a picnic lunch. 

Our last stop was Val-Kil, the cottage where Eleanor lived after Franklin died. Both Franklin and Eleanor entertained here in the 1930's as it was a very relaxing place, away from the pressures of office.  Eleanor started Val-Kill Industries here to teach craftsmanship to locals during the Great Depression, but it folded in 1936.  

The dining room is pictured on the right.

Tomorrow we have a tour of West Point in the morning followed by a boat ride on the Hudson in the afternoon.

Heading to Poughkeepsie

We got an early start this morning to drive to Schenectady, NY to meet with John Denver fan and fellow traveler Gail.   She drove us on a brief tour of the town which was quite interesting, before we had lunch at Chez Nous, a favorite restaurant of hers.  We enjoyed our meal, catching up on past years, and talking about both her and our future travels.

After lunch we headed to the Vanderbilt mansion.  This is one of the few mansions built during the Gilded Age that remains.  It is 5,000 square feet with 54 rooms, all for 2 people (Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt), with 60 servants.   This was their spring and fall home, when the climate was best here. They had other homes in New York City (winter) and Bar Harbor Maine (summer).  The picture on the right shows some of the opulence of this house.

We are now in Poughkeepsie for 3 nights.  Tomorrow we are visiting the private home of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the morning and Val-Kill, a private house of Eleanor Roosevelt.