Historic Eastern Seaboard Days 7 & 8

Yesterday we drove from Old Mystic, Ct to Newburgh, NY.  It wasn't to bad of a drive, just over 152 miles.  Doing this trip could spoil you for the other trips that have a lot of driving in their trips, like Alaska. Here is the route we took.

That night we went over what was going on today and we had a wonderful social and got to meet two new guest that are starting the trip from here.
Today we left for West Point for a tour of the grounds.

We arrived at West Point at about 11:30 AM, we had a wonderful guide that told us a lot about West Point.  He did ask us to help out the Cadets by cheering for Army during the Army/Navy game coming up this fall.

You may be able to see the Cadets ready to march to lunch.  The opening there going up the step is there dining hall and it seats all 4000 cadets.  On both sides of the dining hall are there barracks or rooms.  There are between 2 &3 cadets per room.

As you can see they march right into the dinning hall.

This statue is called Lucky and every year before finals the cadets will come out to spin the spurs of Lucky to have good luck on their finals.  But they have to do it in there dress whites and at midnight.  They say the lines are very long.  You may see a hand reaching up there to spin those spurs, that is Cyndy's hand and I think she was able to spine them a little.

This monument is facing the Hudson River and has some great remembrances.

Our guide telling us all about this area and what it means.  They call this the million dollar view, Hudson River is in the background, and during the summer every Sunday the Army band put on a concert below.

The reason for this monument is that during the War between the north & south 60 some major conflict there were at least two graduates were fighting against each other.  There are cannons mounted up by the round things with major conflicts engraved on each one.  Notice the cannons that are planted with the barrels in the ground.  That is to symbol that we will never fight against our selves again.

Our next stop was at the Cadets Chapel, this is looking back down the hill and you can see the monument in the background where we were just a few minutes ago.

Looking from the front door down towards the alter.

These are windows were all donated from the different class that have graduated.  Each year a class graduates they have added a window with there year and the on that was 100 years before.

This is what one of the Cadets rooms look like.  When they show up here all they really need is the cloths on there backs, because the army supplies them with all the clothing they will need for there 4 year commitment here.  They get all there meals and a place to stay.  When they graduate they will be 2nd Lieutenant and have to serve 5 years active duty and 3 years reserves.

West Point Crest.

Our next stop was the Purple Heart Memorial, they are working on building a list of all the service men & women who received a Purple Heart.  Cyndy was able to find here Uncle Joe's name but I could not find one for my Uncle Wilmer.

 This was our next stop was Washington Headquarters.

This was Washington Headquarters Building.

This a monument for Washington looking out at the Hudson River.

Today was a great day, sun was out and it was a warm day of about 75 degrees.  Lets hope the weather stays good for tomorrow.  We are off to New Jersey, and visiting New York City.

Historic Eastern Seaboard Day 6

Today we got started about 9:00 AM with a carpool into Mystic Seaport.  We are going to visit Mystic Museum & working Ship Yard for Sailing Boats.

We are all waiting out side for Cheryl to bring out the tickets for us.

This is the group getting together for a group photo.

All right we are getting ready to explore.

This is what they call a Braque (bark) Sailing Ship, because they have sails running from the front to the back of the boat.  The ones that have sails that are perpendicular to the ship are Sailing Ships.

This is a keel off of a boat that has been damaged from the oak worm.

There is a lot of really nice oak in this yard, that came from what they call live oak trees.  These were all donated from when Huglo hit the coast a couple of years ago.

They do all their on milling here of the logs.

Charles W. Morgan was the very first ship that this yard restored and is back for some more major work.  They are hoping to get it done in 3 years.

They have a lot of work to do outside with board replacement and caulking.

You can see some of the work they have been doing on the upper deck.

This was the captains quarters.

1st mates quarters.

Looking aft on the ship on the second deck.

Cyndy almost had to duck to get through the walk ways.

This on and the below is a model of what Mystic Seaport looked like back in the 1800's.

Lobster Car, what is that?

This what they call Lobster Cars, I call them Lobster traps. These need a little bit of repair.

There were a lot of nice homes across from the ship yard.

We don't know what kind of flower this is but it looked neat.  We had a great morning walking around this area.  They had it set up with all the different shops that where used to build the ships.  Tomorrow we move towards Newburgh, NY.  We only have 152 miles, this is the kind of traveling I like.

Historic Eastern Seaboard Day 5

Today we left park for a long drive, 80.8 miles to Old Mystic, Ct. where we will be staying in Seaport Campground for 2 days.

  After the long drive and arriving at the park around 1:00 PM we went to the Submarine Force Museum and the Nautilus.  We watched a 45 minute movie on how the subs changed the US Navy.

Here we are entering the Museum and the rain is finally catching up with us.  Hope it pass's us soon.

Oh, this is a great tour of a nuclear sub.

This is the entrance to the Nautilus.  It is nice they put stairs in so we didn't have to go up and down ladders.

How would you like to sleep in these bunks?  Not much room to roll over or sleep on your side.

Officers dinning area, they ate the same food as the enlisted men.

Enlisted dinning area.

These men were under hard times, so they got the best meals and all the ice cream & milk they wanted, along with the strongest coffee they could drink.

Cyndy even made it through the hatches with no problem, I had a backpack on and it was just a little harder but we made it.  There was one time I got into a hallway and could not turn around and had to back out.  This was a great tour and we saw the patch for Louie's Sub.  Great day for all.