We also added lots more pics to our picasa web album for this trip.
Sunday, it was Mets baseball at Citi Field. The Brooklyn Moon Cafe where we had coffee Saturday morning was near a G-Line subway stop so we decided to go there for a coffee. Short wait for a bus that was mostly empty except for us, a guy in the back who was non-stop yelling at some personal demons, and a woman sitting behind us who was very loudly berating someone on her cell phone, and, it was hard to believe the person on the other end of the call managed to get a word in edgewise; it seemed she didn't even stop to breathe the entire time we were on the bus (about 12 blocks)! The coffee shop was nice and relaxing though.
Before heading to the subway and the game, we went to the nearby Black Forest Brooklyn (sort of a German beer house) that served a good brunch type meal of bratwurst salad for Kris and eggs with potato and salad for Brian; then it was off to the subway. We took the G-Line to Queens then transferred to the 7-Line to get to the ball park. When we got on the 7-Line, it was packed. A young man sitting with his lady friend offered Kris his seat. Kris said that it was ok, she could stand, but the young man insisted. Nice.
It took a bit more cajoling to get our "real" tickets to the game. We are collecting "real" ticket stubs for all the MLB parks. When ordering on-line they only give you the option of having the tickets mailed to you, or you can "print at home". For some reason the ticketing software doesn't give you the option of picking up your tickets at "Will Call" anymore. While traveling, the only thing to do is to print. So what we do is take the "ticket confirmation" email to the Will Call window and say that we were unable to print for some reason. Most places just do a reprint right there and away you go. At Citi Field you stand in line at Will Call only to be told you have to go to a separate office where they quiz you on why didn't you "print at home"? Silly... eventually they relent and print the real thing for you.
Our tickets were front row upper deck behind home base. Unfortunately our seats sucked; for two reasons. First we were right beside a staircase so the railing beside and in front of us blocked out the view of both the pitcher and the batter and second because we were in the full sun as it was too early in the day for that part to be in the shade. Lucky the game was no where near a sellout so we moved about 6 rows up and had a much better view and in the shade....view with rail...
... view without rail...
Citi Field is right under the flight path of many departures from LaGuardia Airport and there was at least one flight every half inning ....
The game looked to be a bit of a blowout by the visiting Atlanta Braves. The Braves scored in each of the first four innings to build an 8-3 lead but the Mets bullpen shut them down after that allowing the offense time to come back for a 10-8 win. The Mets do a cool thing that we have not seen before. Every time a Mets player hits a home run, that player signs a baseball and they give it to some little kid in the crowd. There were 4 in this game. Very nice and a great way to get fans for life :-) Most parks also have some sort of colorful celebration, usually fireworks or some other display, when one of the home team players hits a home run. In Citi Field, the "big apple" awakes and rises out past the center field fence..
....then goes back to sleep again...
...a bit hokey to say the least :-)
After the game we decided we should go back into Manhattan one last time so took a 7-Line express which was a whole lot faster than the "local" we took out to the game. We went down into Greenwich Village and eventually made our way down Bleeker Street where we stopped at Baker & Co for dinner. A peach salad, a watermelon salad and a shared sausage pizzette were more than enough. Continuing down Bleeker St we walked past The Blue Note, just off Bleeker on 3rd St, a jazz club and one of the first clubs we ever went to in New York many years ago. Highly recommended. Not this time for us though. Anyway, we went into a Grom ice cream shop to finish off the dessert part of dinner.
On the way to the metro we stopped and watched a street league basketball game for a while...
Later a couple more glasses of wine at the Fulton Grand then back to the apartment to pack.
Monday morning we finished packing, chatted with landlord Brian for a bit and headed out. We decided to drive along Fulton to the Brooklyn Moon Cafe for a coffee before hitting the traffic. Afterwards we set our GPS to find the "fastest route" back north to Newburgh where the wee trailer awaited us. Well.... didn't we find just how vindictive our little GPS is!!!! We made the mistake of "thinking" it would retrace the "fastest route" into Brooklyn and take us out through Queens, over the bridge, through the Bronx and across the George Washington Bridge and on our way, so we just accepted it's recommendation for the "fastest route". HAH! The joke was definitely on us... before we realized it we were crossing into Lower Manhattan, and to add insult to injury, the GPS decided we should NOT be in the HOV lane so took us onto the lower level bridge where traffic was at a standstill, rather than on the upper level bridge where traffic was moving freely! Oh well, we did get a look at lower Manhattan in the fog...
... across the bridge onto Canal St, through the financial district and up the west side of Manhattan along the Hudson River where our GPS decided once again to take us onto the George Washington bridge non-HOV lane and it was about the same snails pace as the bridge onto the island. Kris commented that Manhattan is just like at home "it takes about an hour and a half to get off the darn island!".
Finally, off the island we made our way to the giant mall in Paramus, New Jersey, where we thought (and our GPS thought) there was a Nordstrom Rack store. Not so much! We did however, go into the regular Nordstrom store for a nice lunch, then found out that Nordstrom Rack was at a different, although nearby, mall. We found it, had a look around in it and a few other big box stores as well then headed off.
We got back to the Newburgh KOA late afternoon. Over the last few weeks we have been having intermittent trouble with our 110 A/C power in the trailer so I, Brian, started having a look at that problem, narrowing it down to either the power cord being connected to the campground power or the connector on the trailer. By some shear luck, another couple (Ron and Elizabeth) happened to come by and started to chat with Kris. I went over and asked Ron if he, by any chance, was an electrician. "No, but I totally wired our trailer" he says and immediately asks what our problem is. So I show him. Hmmmm.... he suggests going and getting his power cord to see if we can rule out that end of it. We try it and voila, his cord works fine. Therefore, we deduce, it is our power cord connection. We end up cutting off the rubber weather cover on the plug to see if a wire has come loose. Everything is good and tight. Through a few trial and error attempts at getting a connection, we determine that there is a fault inside the factory molded connector which we definitely cannot get at. We do, however, determine that if we make the connection to the trailer, while wiggling the connector and holding our tongue just right, we can get a good connection. Ok, that's what we'll have to do until we can get a replacement. So we use some electrical tape to tape it all back together so it is basically weather proof and call it a day. Had a great chat with Ron and Elizabeth. Interesting folks from Oklahoma. Maybe we'll run into them again some day. Nice.
Tuesday we headed north up the Hudson River Valley. First stop was Camping World at Kingston, about an hour north. It turned out to be the crappiest little Camping World we have seen in our travels, so, of course, nothing that will help us. The drive up the valley is very pretty with numerous small, historic towns to be passed through. We stopped in the small, cute looking village of Rhinebeck (pop just over 2,500) for a stroll along the main drag. Chatting with one store clerk we learned that this place gets overrun by tourists in the summer. For lunch, we decided to try some "New York BBQ" at a place called Smokey Rock BBQ, where the very tasty smoked chicken and rack of ribs were more than enough with the rest taken away in a doggy bag for later consumption.. Our stop for a couple of nights was the KOA at Copake NY. We arrived mid afternoon and after getting set up we headed into the slightly larger nearby town of Hillsdale in search of a wine store as our strategic inventory supply was running low. The only wine store in Hillsdale closed a while ago but we were directed further west along highway 23 to Claverack where we did indeed find a "package store" and were able to replenish the supply. Afterwards we continued west on 23 to the historic town of Hudson. A fair number of funky looking stores and boutiques along the main drag but all closed this time of day. As with many towns in the area, great architecture to look at though.
Wednesday we drove about an hour north to the old Shaker villages of Old Chatham, Mount Lebanon and the main one, the Hancock Shaker Village, at Pittsfield Massachusetts. It was a bit of a snark hunt finding the Old Chatham site but when we did we found it all closed up. Apparently over the last decade or so there has been a "large scale stabilization and restoration" effort undertaken with the result that most of the Old Chatham buildings will be moved to the greatly expanded Shaker Museum/Mount Lebanon at New Lebanon NY. Go figure, that museum is not open Wednesdays, so we head for Pittsfield. Maybe we'll try to hit New Lebanon later next month when we head west from New England. We had been to the Hancock Shaker Village a couple of times but many years ago. The village itself, a living museum, has not changed (other than restoration maintenance) but the visitors center area is quite a bit larger. We had an excellent lunch in the cafe followed by a couple of hours of wandering around the grounds, in the various buildings and workshops, and, of course, their wonderful gift shop. This is a really neat place.
On the way back, to the KOA, we stopped in Hillsdale at the Hillsdale House Tavern for a couple of glasses of wine with it's rather eclectic crowd of young and old folks. Nice.
Thursday we packed up and headed south east into Connecticut and on into Rhode Island where we booked 2 nights at the Wawaloam Campground just outside of Kingston RI. This is a very nice campground. Large spacious sites, good showers, etc. One of the things that makes this a good "family" campground is that they have devoted large areas of playground, basketball courts, mini golf and a large pool so there are lots of things for kids to do. Thursday night we drove into the coastal town of Naraggansett and found Aunt Carrie's, a recommended and very popular seafood place. Well, didn't we learn a couple of things at this place. We've had both New England and Manhattan Clam Chowder but who knew there was a Rhode Island Clam Chowder? It is a clearer broth, is quite tasty but this version was a bit heavy on the potatoes and not so much on the clams. Good though. The second thing we learned about were Clam cakes. These are a deep fried ball of dough with some bits of clam in them. Tasted a bit like a deep fried pancake and these were mostly dough with just a few bits of clams. Neither one of us really fancied these. We'll stick to crab cakes. For our main course we had a bucket of steamer clams. These were excellent! After dinner we drove around the area a bit and found the Point Judith lighthouse. Too bad, but it is not open to the public and we couldn't really get a good pic of it. We sat and watched the Atlantic for a bit before heading back to the campground.
Friday morning we drove over to the little historic village of Wickford where we were able to sit out on a pier, enjoy a cup of coffee and Kris got in some knitting to boot. Afterwards we wandered along the two short main streets and window shopped, well except for the yarn shop where Kris picked up some knitting supplies and a clothing shop where she picked up a very nice new top. All in all, we see why our friends Jean and Peter like to come to this place. For the afternoon we drove further east to Newport, our first stop being the "oldest tarvern in America", the White Horse Tavern, established 1673...
.... where we had an excellent lunch of salad and grill cheese sandwich in the obviously much refurbished bar.
After lunch we wandered along the main downtown strip, Thames Street. Many restaurants, taverns, boutiques and tourist souvenir shops. We stopped for a break in a Starbucks then continued on our way. We stopped a bit too early for that coffee as about a half hour later the skies opened and it poured. We got a bit wet but were able to find cover when it really came down, but lucky for us and the hundreds other other tourists out this day, it only lasted about a half hour or so. Getting back to the car we decided to drive the famous mansion loop. It was late in the afternoon so we didn't stop and go into any but what you can see, driving along the loop, they are pretty impressive.
We had an early dinner of salads and scallops at Anthony's Seafood, a mixed retail, take away and dine in place quite removed from the tourist area. Boy, was it worth the drive. Excellent! After dinner we took in the better part of a baseball game between the Newport Gulls and the Danbury Westerners. This is the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a summer league where players from colleges all over the country come to hone their skills. Lots of fun. We left after the 6th inning with the Gulls up 6-1, mostly because it was getting dark and the drive back to the campsite involved numerous narrow, winding, hilly, dingle berry back roads where local folks who know the roads totally ignore the 25 mph speed limit.
Saturday we moved on to Plymouth, Massachusetts. We booked six nights at the Pinewood Lodge & Campground about a 10 minute drive from the historic waterfront. Very nice campground; lots of trees and good washrooms. We plan to stay here an commute into Boston a few days, including next Thursday when we have tickets to see the Red Sox play host to the Baltimore Orioles.
After getting checked in, it was first things first... we had noticed late yesterday that our front driver side tire seemed a bit low. On the drive up to Plymouth we stopped at a Nissan dealer and they were nice enough to check it out and confirm it was low and we had a nail in it. The Nissan folks put more air into it to bring it from 16 to about 32 lbs. At the Pinewood Lodge, the woman at check-in recommended a Town Fair Tire store not too far away. We headed over there hoping they could fix the tire today. It was already 2:30 and they close at 4:00 so best hurry.... well, great folks. Not only did they fix the tire, they fixed it for free. Well, not quite free. They put in a new valve stem for all of $4.20. Nice. While waiting for the tire to be fixed we went next door to the 99 Restaurant where we had a pretty decent lunch, albeit a tad late in the afternoon, so it did us pretty much for dinner as well.
Afterwards we drove down to the historic waterfront, got a bunch of info from the visitor center then wandered along the bay. We saw the Mayflower II replica...
...although we didn't go on board, and, of course you must go and see the famous Plymouth Rock...
.... it is a lot smaller than we envisioned. We also found it quite a coincidence that in 1620, the pilgrims would first set foot on a rock that had 1620 carved in it.:-)
... then finished the evening with a couple of glasses of wine at the bar in the Tavern on the Wharf. Apparently this place just recently opened... and it showed! Young guys who were delivering food to customer tables came out of the kitchen with looks of horror on their faces. More than once they stood there wondering where to take the food, and more than once it came out and went back into the kitchen. Several customers actually returned their food. We decided not to come back. Maybe they will iron out all the wrinkles in due time.
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