The Fall is typically a period where I like to get back on the road and do some traveling.  The summer vacation crowds have dissipated, the weather’s still warm, and the campgrounds are mostly empty.

This Fall, I’m just doing a some short trips.  I’ve started a new drug therapy for my colitis that requires infusions over the next couple of months.  It’s one of the latest IDB drugs, but I’m a poster child for bad side effect reactions.   So, I’m staying relatively close to home just in case something wacky happens.

One recent short trip was over to the lower Hudson River Valley to check out some historic sites.  I love visiting historic sites and the lower Hudson Valley between New York city and Albany has a great collection of places to visit.

Martin Van Buren National Historic Site

We started our exploration just south of Albany at President Martin Van Buren’s home.  This site is near the Massachusetts border just south of I-90 on Route 9 in the little hamlet of Kinderhook, NY.

All I knew about Van Buren was that he was one of our early Presidents.  He was the guy with big bushy mutton-chop sideburns and badly in need of a haircut.

Turns out Van Buren was another very accomplished man.   Born in New York, he was a State Senator, NY State Attorney General, NY Governor, US Senator, and US Secretary of State.  He was Andrew Jackson’s Vice President and was elected the 8th President of the United States.  That’s quite a resume.

Some other interesting things I learned about Van Buren are:

• He was the first US President to be born as a US citizen.  All prior Presidents, we born on US soil but as British subjects.
• He was the only President who had English as a second language.  Van Buren’s parents were from the Netherlands and his native language was Dutch.  He spoke Dutch at home and had to later learn English.
• Van Buren earned his national political stripes as a political operative for Andrew Jackson.  He helped get Jackson elected and earned the nickname The Red Fox of Kinderhook for his red hair and political shrewdness.

His home in Kinderhook is a substantial house.  He bought it while he was President and retired there after leaving office.  When he bought the property it was a fixer-upper brick colonial.  He renovated the house and had an architect redesign it as an Italian style home. He called in Lindenwald for the linden trees on the property.

Van Buren never earned the prestige to get his face on any bills or coins, so Lindenwald doesn’t get large visitor volumes.  But, it’s still a cool place to visit.

The Park Service gives a nice tour of the house.  The house has been restored to the way it was when Van Buren lived there.  Almost 80% of the furnishings are original.  If you’re in the area, it’s a worthwhile stop.  Here are some pictures.

FDR Home and Presidential Library & Museum

Route 9 runs along the eastern side of the Hudson and it’s a nice road to explore the valley from.  We continued south on this road for about 47 miles to Hyde Park.  Here there’s the Home of FDR and his Presidential Library & Museum.  I did a quick visit here in 2013, but it’s worth seeing it a second time.

The FDR Home and the Presidential Library & Museum are all on the same property.  There’s a nice large Visitor Center (Henry A. Wallace Visitor Center) for both with plenty of parking. One ticket get’s you a tour of the Home and access to the Presidential Library.  A regular adult ticket for both is $18, but with my geezer pass it was only $6.

The home and property were acquired by FDR’s father, James Roosevelt in 1867.  He expanded the house and called the estate Springwood.  FDR was born there and it was his life long home.  His mother Sara lived at Springwood until her death in 1941.  In 1945, FDR donated the property to the Department of Interior.  You can read more about Springwood in this blog post I wrote – Hyde Park and West Point.

The FDR Home tours are held each hour.  We took the Home tour back in 2013.  It’s interesting but we skipped it this time and just took some pictures of the home when no one was around.

The FDR Presidential Library & Museum was built in 1941.  It does a good job depicting FDR’s time in office.  It’s a great place to get immersed into the history of this very significant period.  There are numerous displays, several short films, and artifacts.

On this visit, we got to see a new special exhibit called The Day of Infamy.  The large multi-room exhibit takes you hour by hour through the days of December 7th and 8th showing how FDR spent these difficult days in 1941.  It’s fascinating to see the meetings he held, the documents, and phone call transcripts.

The bulk of his time was spent trying to find out the extent of what was happening in Hawaii and elsewhere in the Pacific.  Unlike the instant news sources that we have today, his only sources of info were telephone calls and cable dispatches.  He spent most of December 7th upstairs in his private study with Harry Hopkins.  A Cabinet meeting was held in the study as was a quick briefing with Congressional leaders.

It was interesting to see how FDR knew the importance of keeping the public personally informed.  He dictated several press release statements over the phone to his press secretary.  And four hours after the attack he began drafting his famous speech to Congress.

Normally, FDR’s speeches were written by his speechwriters with input from him.  But the speech to Congress on December 8th was written solely by FDR.  He edited the original version and had Harry Hopkins edit two more versions.  It was a short speech.  His Cabinet thought it should be longer with more info about the lead up to Japan’s aggression.  But FDR said no.  All the original edited versions of the speech are on display as are the original cable dispatches from the Army and Navy in Hawaii relaying the damage reports to the White House.

I’ve visited six of the Presidential Libraries and FDR’s is one of the best.

Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site

A little more than a mile north of FDR’s Home is the Vanderbilt Mansion.  This extremely large estate and mansion sits right on the Hudson River.

The mansion was built by Frederick Vanderbilt, who was one of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandsons.  He built the mansion in 1895 to use as a spring and fall country estate.  Cornelius’s grandsons spent their inheritances building fancy homes.  Frederick built the mansion in Hyde Park.  Cornelius II built the Breakers in Newport, RI and George built the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC.  Inheriting hundreds of millions made living easy for the Vanderbilt boys.

The Vanderbilt Mansion became a National Historic Site in 1940.  The niece who inherited it from Frederick and his wife, Louise couldn’t afford the place and couldn’t sell it.  FDR suggested she donate it to the Park Service as a monument to the Gilded Age.  She did just that in 1940.

This was a place I really wanted to see.  But when I drove up the Main Entrance gate, I had to abruptly stop.  I wasn’t sure my RV would fit through the narrow gate.  Then I saw the sign – Autos Only.  Damn!  I didn’t want to be the subject of this possible phone call – “Hey Dispatch – we need a tow truck down at the Vanderbilt Mansion.  Some yahoo RVer tried to drive his rig through the Main Gate and he’s wedged in there.  Have them bring some chain saws”.   So, I backed up and retreated.  The Vanderbilt Mansion is not an RV friendly place.

I did some quick checking to see if there where other ways to get there without the RV.  There is a once daily shuttle from the Henry A. Wallace Visitor Center to the Vanderbilt Mansion.  The shuttle leaves the Visitor Center at 1:10 pm and returns at 3:55 pm. But, that time wasn’t going to work for us on either day.  Oh well.  I later found out there’s a bike path from the Henry A. Wallace Visitor Center to the Mansion and it’s about a 1 mile ride. That’s the thing to do if you have an RV.  Bring a bike, park at the Henry Wallace Visitor Center, and ride your bike over.  Next time.

Other Places to Visit on the Hudson

The Hudson Valley is loaded with cool places to visit.  Driving down on Route 9 we passed through the quaint villages of Rhinebeck and Red Hook.  Just a few miles south of Hyde Park is the Culinary Institute of America.  This has been called the Harvard of culinary colleges.  You can visit the college campus for free and there are four restaurants open to the public and staffed by the students.  We visited there in 2013.

Also, further south of Poughkeepsie on the west side of the river is West Point.  At the entrance to the Military Academy, there is a Visitor Center and the West Point Museum which are both free and open to the public.  Bus tours of the academy are available for $15.  These are the only methods of public access to the Academy grounds.  We visited the Museum in 2013.

Margret Lewis Norrie State Park

We stayed overnight at the Margret Lewis Norrie State Park just a few miles north of the Vanderbilt Mansion.  This large state park sits on the Hudson River.  It’s loaded with hiking trails and biking trails.  There’s a small 45 site campground that looks like it was built for tenters.  There’s no hookups and only a few sites that can accommodate RV’s.  But there are showers and water spigots.

It was pretty empty when we arrived mid-week in mid September and we had no problem getting a site for my RV.  It was $20 per night for us outta staters, ($15 if you’re a NY resident).  It’s not a bad place to stay and it’s close to all the places you can visit in the area.

We had a nice quiet evening sitting around a good fire.

This was a nice short trip.  The Hudson Valley is a great place to explore for a day or for a multi day road trip.  There are plenty of small towns to see and scenic roads to drive.  We got to see just some of the historic sites along the river.