Day 1 of the main part of my trip. I only had one major stop today – Olana, the Persian (appropriate for the day after the Purimspiel)-Italian mansion and studio built by the Hudson School painter Frederick Church in Hudson NY. As shown in one of the pictures below, he could look through a window from his studio and paint a landscape of the river and the Catskill mountains. Then I crossed the Rip Van Winkle bridge over the Hudson to the town of Catskill and saw the smaller yellow house of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson school and Church’s mentor.

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Then a long drive to Gettysburg PA, arriving at sunset. Today is scheduled to have the third most miles of my whole trip, so I stopped and closed my eyes for a while at a rest stop on I84 just before crossing the Delaware Water Gap into Pennsylvania. Tomorrow I will be immersed in the Civil War. Therefore tonight’s song is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, sung both by Joan Baez and The Band.

While driving home from Jay’s house today, I was reflecting on the horrible shootings in New Zealand. Rachel and I visited our nephew Andy there three years ago, and it seemed like one of the happiest and most tolerant nations in the world. Unfortunately, there is no refuge from hate today.

So I finished the prologue of my trip and it turned out to be a good try run from the main segment of my trip that begins tomorrow morning. I learned that I have to keep my phone charged during the day in the car and charge my iPod at night if I want to listen to it while driving the next day. And I’ve gotten into a pretty good routine in the evening – dinner at a local restaurant, check into the motel, fill out my travel journal and blog and try to go to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00. Also, the new travel bag Emily and Glen gave me at my party worked great and I’m going to put in a week’s worth of clothes at a time and just bring that bag in with me every night.

I came back today for the Purimspiel tonight and that was a lot of fun. I will send out a note when the videotape is available for viewing on the synagogue’s website.

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I’ll Be Back (Remastered 2009)

The song of the day is “I’ll be back” by the Beatles. I am at my home computer so I hope I have attached the link. In addition, there are the 46 songs on the soundtrack from “Hamilton”

First of all, I initially forgot to attach pictures to yesterday’s blog, but they’re there now.

I started the day with sunrise at Wildwoods, the next town north of Cape May. Then I spent a few hours walking around Atlantic City – up and down the Boardwalk and on the beach, along with a civil rights garden, a Korean War Memorial and the 228 steps of the Absecon Lighthouse.

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Then I had a nice visit with my 92 year old Uncle Donald Price in his longtime home in Budd Lake NJ. He plans to attend George’s birthday party in Boston this summer. I next had a dinner feast with Jay, Susan, Reese, Jared and Julianna.

Now it’s resume trip on Saturday – and Purimspiel tomorrow evening!

Song of the day- Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen

Perusing the news this morning, I am very grateful that the statute of limitations has likely run out on any possible investigations concerning what assistance may have been provided to me on my admission to Harvard in 1971!

I had just two stops today and they were far apart and both quite enjoyable. First, I visited the house of my fellow Harvard alumnus from the class of 1880, Theodore Roosevelt (his father was a rich businessman … hmmm). For the second straight day (also at the Vanderbilt House), I had a private tour, though I asked enough questions for the other seven that could have been there. We could use a Republican like Teddy today. He had the Square Deal, his cousin had the New Deal and he would be all over the New Green Deal today like one of the many bearskin rugs draping the floors of his home.

I went over the Verrazano Narrows bridge for the second time in my life and took the Garden State turnpike all the way to exit 0, Cape May. I enjoyed viewing the Victorian and Queen Anne houses and hotels and the lighthouse with maybe 50 people in the whole town, instead of the 50,000 that will be there in four months. Many of our friends from New York visited there in the summer and I see the attraction. It reminds me of Oak Bluffs, if all the gingerbread houses in the Campgrounds were larger and all over town.

Alan Slater correctly identified that a few lines from the song “Ain’t we got fun” were from the book “The Great Gatsby”. I didn’t visit Gatsby’s mansion in West Egg yesterday but I was in the area. Today’s song is much easier – “10th Avenue Freeze Out” by Bruce Springsteen.

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Shortly after leaving Great Barrington, I got into a New York state of mind by listening to a live recording of one of Billy Joel’s monthly concerts in Madison Square Garden, while driving almost the full length of the Taconic Parkway and passing through our old town, Yorktown. Once I arrived in Long Island I first visited the Planting Fields Arboretum, where about the only living plants and flowers are in the two greenhouses. My next stop was the mansion built by William Vanderbilt, great-grandson of Commodore Cornelius. I took a tour and saw the old autos he used during car races that took place on the streets of Long Island. But I made a rookie mistake of not charging my phone while driving, so I had to go back to the car and charge it in the parking lot in order to take exterior pictures of the mansion – see one picture below.

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Finally, I made it to Montauk at the far eastern tip of the island. Very few people were there when I saw the lighthouse and a lot of beaches. But I did spot one very hardy soul parasailing in cold air and water.

I added a second song, to honor a town I visited that’s mentioned in one of the songs I listened to – “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” by Billy Joel. The other song “Ain’t We Got Fun” was written in the 1920’s. This reference is somewhat obscure. My esteem will go to the first person who tells me why I picked this song. If nobody answers correctly, I will give the answer tomorrow. Good night from BayShore!

I have begun my journey on my 65th birthday. But what kind of cross-country trip is this? – I haven’t left Massachusetts yet! Today I visited the Calvin Coolidge Library – one large room in the Northampton city library and pretty interesting. In the 1920 election the vice-presidential candidates were Coolidge and FDR. The Norman Rockwell museum in Stockbridge has all of his Saturday Evening Post covers, along with an exhibit on another illustrator, Frank Schoonover. At the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, I saw the paintings they haven’t sold yet. Finally, I took pictures from the visitor center at Mount Greylock (the road to the summit is closed for the winter). Spending my first night in Great Barrington. The song of the day is “Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor.

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On Saturday March 9th, I had a birthday party at our house with about 40 friends and relatives to send me off on my trip. Here is a picture of my cake, complete with a map of the United States, showing my route. Now I’m packing and ready to take off Monday morning!0

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This will be day two of practicing my blog.

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This is Tuesday, March 5, 2019. I am setting up a blog for my upcoming 12 week trip across the United States. I hope to do a summary each night of the highlights of the day, along with some pictures.

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