Empire State, Part 3 - A Wrap on NY and a Smidge of Mass
We left you all on the last post from NY with a teaser about a fools folly. Well, where to begin with this one, let's start at the beginning then.
We had 2 points of interest to view as we headed east towards Boston and both are in the village of Woodstock, NY, or so we thought. The 2 points were the site of the 1969 Woodstock Musical Festival and the Pink House where Bob Dylan and The Band (then known as The Hawks) laid down the Basement Tapes in 1967. Debbie and our son Joe are huuuge Dylan fans so the Pink House was a definite can't miss. The Woodstock Musical Festival...well, I'll get to that in a bit.
We drive about an hour and a half east from our last spot at Gilbert Lake, NY and arrive in Woodstock, NY. We have reservations at the North South Lake SP and go to check in at noon and no joy. They do not have our reservation and I have no confirmation e mail so we go on the hunt for a last minute spot for the night.
Finally around 3 PM we are settled in at the Rip Van Winkle RV Park just outside of Woodstock, perfect. First sight seeing objective was the Pink House and Google was our friend.
Per Google, the current owners of the house state on their website that you're welcome to come on by, take a quick photo, please don't trespass on our property and look thru our windows...basically respect our privacy, take your damn photo and get the hell out...fair enough.
Also, when you enter our private half mile long access road please be aware that this lane is shared with other property owners in the area and one of them is not down at all with the Pink House visitors. He has posted no trespassing and other aggressive signs but not to worry, we have rights to this road as well and you are our visitors, so long as you behave yourselves.
OK, after reading all of this I'm a bit concerned about this trek. Well, one sure fire way to answer that concern is to drive on out and have a look see and that we did.
Absolutely beautiful countryside with the backdrop of the Catskill Mountains, we wind our way along Stoll Road looking for Parnassus Lane where the Pink House is located. We drive and drive along Stoll Road and my spidey senses are telling me we must have passed Parnassus. I cop a u-turn and back track and then see the street sign for Parnassus Lane, a large tree obscured it when we were driving in from the other way. Very stealthlike, nice try but I was on it!
We slowly and respectfully drive down Parnassus Lane and about a half mile in we see the Pink House. Debbie is ecstatic! I use their driveway to execute a 3 point turnaround poised for a quick exit, Deb gets out, photos are snapped (strictly following the website directions from the owners) and we're outta there.
All in all it was pretty cool to check out the place where so much great music was written, played and recorded back in 1967. Critics have said that Dylan was at his peak as a songwriter during this time but I dunno know, he has written some pretty good stuff since that time.
Some of the members of The Band would recall years later that Dylan would show up at the Pink House in the morning, sit down and write out a few songs, hand it to The Band and say 'hey, can you guys put some music to these lyrics?'. Then he'd split and these guys would try to figure out what the hell he meant with the lyrics.
Then come early evening he'd show back up and listen to their mucic, give a nod and turn the recording equipment on. That must have been a really creative time spent by true musicians in the Catskills back in '67.
Next stop, the site of the '69 Woodstock Musical Festival...hey Deb, get us google directions for that. OK, we have a problem, what's that?
Seems as if the Woodstock Music Festival did not happen in Woodstock, NY but in Bethel, NY which is about an hour and a half drive going back in the direction we just drove today from Gilbert Lake. You gotta be kidding me...now in the back of my mind I am recalling that it was not IN Woodstock but I thought it must be pretty damn close, not 90 minutes away. Talk about deceptive advertising, you name your Music Festival after a City it's not held in? Damned hippies!
Instead of driving 3 hours all the way out there and back, why don't we head back to camp, have dinner and listen to the Woodstock album? Unanimous decision, back to the Ripper we go.
I guess the place is now a National Park, so would have been nice to see, but not a big deal, we saw the Pink House!
Perhaps 'fools folly' is a bit strong here, but hey, we tried! Part of the journey I suppose. And as I said, some things must remain sacred and so it is with our Woodstock Musical Festival site visit. For whatever reason it was not meant to be and that's just fine with us.
On the way back to the Ripper we drove thru charming Woodstock with drum circles blaring in the town square, art galleries hopping, ice cream vendors doing a brisk business, every parking spot occupied...not my kinda scene at all. We stopped by a store in town and did some souvenir shopping and then called it a day. This was a long day and it was nice to unwind back in camp for the night.
We are getting sooo close to our destination of Boston now. I scope out the map and see that we are maybe a 3 hour drive to Boston where we are scheduled to arrive in 5 days, totally doable don't ya think? So how to spend this next week?
We settle on an island in the Hudson River about 10 miles or so south of Albany, NY, the State Capital. Place is called Schodack (pronounced Show-Dak) Island State Park and it is a beauty! Probably the best campsite we've had so far on this trip with tons of privacy, steeped in history and many fun things to do in the area.
Took a ride into Albany, NY to check out the State Capitol building and nose around a bit. We drive in and follow the signs for the Capital Plaza and end up on a City street with lots of old buildings surrounding us. Wonder which one of these is the Capitol building? Deb, see that Capitol Policeman walking over there? Yes, well he looks like he needs someone to talk to, ask him where the Capitol is.
Excuse me sir, where is the Capitol? Ah, it's right here maam, and points to the huge building right next to us! And I was right, boy oh boy, did this guy need someone to talk to! He proceeds to spend about 15 minutes with us explaining all the sights to see in his hometown of Albany and it was greatly appreciated...but, at the same time I'm thinking, don't you have a Governor or someone to protect?
All joking aside, he was very nice (Chandler was his name according to the badge) and took the time to spend with some visitors to show off his hometown, the Governor be damned! Thanks for all of the great info Chandler! We politely put an end to the conversation and moved on to check out some of his suggested sites to see.
Another piece of history for you...did you know that the name Albany is derived from the Algonquian Language that means 'the crappiest roads in America'. I am not kidding, every single square foot of streets in this City are horribly potholed with patch repair after patch repair on the same spot resulting in mounds of AC pavement a good 3 or 4 inches above street grade. And these are everywhere, what a nightmare. The front end alignment guys in this town must be making some serious coin!
After a nice day ambling around Albany we head back to the island and decide that this is such a stellar spot let's extend our stay here from 2 nites to 3. Had a relaxing evening and as I'm having dinner I'm perusing the campground info given to us at check in, campground map, tidbits of history, do's and dont's, that sorta thing.
In looking over the campground map in search of biking and hiking trails I notice a large area at the southerly end of the Park that is labeled 'Area Access Restricted Do Not Enter', hmmm. I think this requires an H Team investigation just for you followers of the blog 'eh?
So next morning I head out on my trusty Trek bike and ride down a knockout georgeous bike trail alongside the River for about 4 miles in search of this restricted area. I had been hearing the sound of a chainsaw and as I turned a corner there stood 2 park employees, one with a chainsaw and hard hat on and the other one looked like a young summer intern with no protective equipment.
They were removing a tree that had fallen across the path. It was a pretty good sized tree blocking the entire path and chainsaw guy says come on thru, you can lift your bike over the fallen tree. I say no, that's OK, you guys are busy, I'll find another way around. And as I finished that statement a huge limb fell from above and had I taken his invite would have crushed me. Then, he says, it's all OK now, come on across, you can use my hard hat if you want! Ah, no, I'll go another way, you guys stay safe and please get that young intern a damned hard hat and some eye and ear protection.
This ended up being the only path to the restricted area so mission scrubbed for today so I'll hit it again tomorrow after Frick and Frack have hopefully removed the fallen tree.
What the hell could this place be, so I googled it. Search engine query 'what the hell is up with the restricted area at the south end of Schodack Island?'. The first few items that popped up had to do with the usual adverts on camping, local restaurants and the State Park. But you know, to get to the real whackos and conspiracy theorists you gotta go to about page 5 of the google query responses to get the real interesting stuff! So I did.
Turns out General Electric back in the '60's and '70's was cranking out capacitors from their plant in Hudson Falls, NY a bit up river from Schodack. The production made heavy use of PCB's which is an extremely toxic compound and they just dumped the shit into the Hudson River, like 1.5 Million pounds of it! It became the 2nd largest Superfund environmental clean up in this Nations history.
The PCB's settled into the river bottom for miles and miles presenting a problem for normal dredging operations of the river to provide safe shipping. What then do you do with the dredged material that is heavily laden with PCB's? Well I guess treat it to remove the toxicity and place the material is some protected area...like maybe a restricted area at the south end of the Schodack Island SP? So, that's theory #1 as to what this restricted area may be for.
Theory #2 is that the restricted area is a constructed wetlands for wildlife and habitat. I believe this theory holds water.
When I arrived I did not encounter any stay out signs, no security fencing, no personnel around, no surveillance cameras so I rode my bike around the site for about 30 minutes. They had about 6 or 7 one acre sized ponds about 10 feet deep which were all dry. Some sporadic growth of vegetation here and there within them so the project looked to be fairly new or maybe it's a total failure, dunno.
Due to a lack of security measures I do not believe that this site is a repository for toxic waste, at least I haven't started glowing green yet. So I'm going to stick with Theory 2 and leave it at that. Not quite the hard biting investigation with dramatic results we all hoped for but it did give me something to do with a morning and gave Debbie some peace and quiet!
Our next stop was over the NY State line to Massachusetts to spend the day and night in the Berkshire Mountains. We found a very comfortable campground at the base of Mt. Greylock, the highest point in MA at around 4000' and went down to bike on the Ashuwillticook Trail which is an 18 mile out and back paved bike trail that courses thru picteresque countryside, lakes and hillsides. Very enjoyable and one of the finest bike trails I've seen.
That evening we drove up to Mt. Greylock to catch the sunset and it was stunningly beautiful. It was a clear evening and we could see forever. Apparently you can see 5 States from this summit - MA, NY, VT, NH and maybe CT(?). All we know is that it was an incredible panorama of mountains, hazy farmland valleys, hemlock's (my favorite tree) galore and no one else around.
The next morning we broke camp at 9 AM which was about 2-3 hours earlier than our norm!
Whoa, whoa Howie, what's up with the damn rush? Well let me tell you. My big sister Sue and Bill are getting married in Salem in a week and we are due into the Winter Island RV Park in Salem today! Yep, another island! This one is in Salem Harbor and it is quite perfect.
I think for the first time in this blog's hsitory, you guys are now caught up to our current location.
This is going to be a blast of a week with family culminating with the nuptials next Saturday. I may take a week or so off with the blog but fear not dear followers you will hear about this coming week in the next post.
Also, just received my new camera so picture quality and quantity should be remarkably improved going forward.
Thanks you guys for following, we are doing great and hope that summer is kicking off in a proper fashion for all of you.
Peace out, Deb and Howard
We left you all on the last post from NY with a teaser about a fools folly. Well, where to begin with this one, let's start at the beginning then.
We had 2 points of interest to view as we headed east towards Boston and both are in the village of Woodstock, NY, or so we thought. The 2 points were the site of the 1969 Woodstock Musical Festival and the Pink House where Bob Dylan and The Band (then known as The Hawks) laid down the Basement Tapes in 1967. Debbie and our son Joe are huuuge Dylan fans so the Pink House was a definite can't miss. The Woodstock Musical Festival...well, I'll get to that in a bit.
We drive about an hour and a half east from our last spot at Gilbert Lake, NY and arrive in Woodstock, NY. We have reservations at the North South Lake SP and go to check in at noon and no joy. They do not have our reservation and I have no confirmation e mail so we go on the hunt for a last minute spot for the night.
Finally around 3 PM we are settled in at the Rip Van Winkle RV Park just outside of Woodstock, perfect. First sight seeing objective was the Pink House and Google was our friend.
Per Google, the current owners of the house state on their website that you're welcome to come on by, take a quick photo, please don't trespass on our property and look thru our windows...basically respect our privacy, take your damn photo and get the hell out...fair enough.
Also, when you enter our private half mile long access road please be aware that this lane is shared with other property owners in the area and one of them is not down at all with the Pink House visitors. He has posted no trespassing and other aggressive signs but not to worry, we have rights to this road as well and you are our visitors, so long as you behave yourselves.
OK, after reading all of this I'm a bit concerned about this trek. Well, one sure fire way to answer that concern is to drive on out and have a look see and that we did.
Absolutely beautiful countryside with the backdrop of the Catskill Mountains, we wind our way along Stoll Road looking for Parnassus Lane where the Pink House is located. We drive and drive along Stoll Road and my spidey senses are telling me we must have passed Parnassus. I cop a u-turn and back track and then see the street sign for Parnassus Lane, a large tree obscured it when we were driving in from the other way. Very stealthlike, nice try but I was on it!
We slowly and respectfully drive down Parnassus Lane and about a half mile in we see the Pink House. Debbie is ecstatic! I use their driveway to execute a 3 point turnaround poised for a quick exit, Deb gets out, photos are snapped (strictly following the website directions from the owners) and we're outta there.
All in all it was pretty cool to check out the place where so much great music was written, played and recorded back in 1967. Critics have said that Dylan was at his peak as a songwriter during this time but I dunno know, he has written some pretty good stuff since that time.
Some of the members of The Band would recall years later that Dylan would show up at the Pink House in the morning, sit down and write out a few songs, hand it to The Band and say 'hey, can you guys put some music to these lyrics?'. Then he'd split and these guys would try to figure out what the hell he meant with the lyrics.
Then come early evening he'd show back up and listen to their mucic, give a nod and turn the recording equipment on. That must have been a really creative time spent by true musicians in the Catskills back in '67.
Next stop, the site of the '69 Woodstock Musical Festival...hey Deb, get us google directions for that. OK, we have a problem, what's that?
Seems as if the Woodstock Music Festival did not happen in Woodstock, NY but in Bethel, NY which is about an hour and a half drive going back in the direction we just drove today from Gilbert Lake. You gotta be kidding me...now in the back of my mind I am recalling that it was not IN Woodstock but I thought it must be pretty damn close, not 90 minutes away. Talk about deceptive advertising, you name your Music Festival after a City it's not held in? Damned hippies!
Instead of driving 3 hours all the way out there and back, why don't we head back to camp, have dinner and listen to the Woodstock album? Unanimous decision, back to the Ripper we go.
I guess the place is now a National Park, so would have been nice to see, but not a big deal, we saw the Pink House!
Perhaps 'fools folly' is a bit strong here, but hey, we tried! Part of the journey I suppose. And as I said, some things must remain sacred and so it is with our Woodstock Musical Festival site visit. For whatever reason it was not meant to be and that's just fine with us.
On the way back to the Ripper we drove thru charming Woodstock with drum circles blaring in the town square, art galleries hopping, ice cream vendors doing a brisk business, every parking spot occupied...not my kinda scene at all. We stopped by a store in town and did some souvenir shopping and then called it a day. This was a long day and it was nice to unwind back in camp for the night.
We are getting sooo close to our destination of Boston now. I scope out the map and see that we are maybe a 3 hour drive to Boston where we are scheduled to arrive in 5 days, totally doable don't ya think? So how to spend this next week?
We settle on an island in the Hudson River about 10 miles or so south of Albany, NY, the State Capital. Place is called Schodack (pronounced Show-Dak) Island State Park and it is a beauty! Probably the best campsite we've had so far on this trip with tons of privacy, steeped in history and many fun things to do in the area.
Took a ride into Albany, NY to check out the State Capitol building and nose around a bit. We drive in and follow the signs for the Capital Plaza and end up on a City street with lots of old buildings surrounding us. Wonder which one of these is the Capitol building? Deb, see that Capitol Policeman walking over there? Yes, well he looks like he needs someone to talk to, ask him where the Capitol is.
Excuse me sir, where is the Capitol? Ah, it's right here maam, and points to the huge building right next to us! And I was right, boy oh boy, did this guy need someone to talk to! He proceeds to spend about 15 minutes with us explaining all the sights to see in his hometown of Albany and it was greatly appreciated...but, at the same time I'm thinking, don't you have a Governor or someone to protect?
All joking aside, he was very nice (Chandler was his name according to the badge) and took the time to spend with some visitors to show off his hometown, the Governor be damned! Thanks for all of the great info Chandler! We politely put an end to the conversation and moved on to check out some of his suggested sites to see.
Another piece of history for you...did you know that the name Albany is derived from the Algonquian Language that means 'the crappiest roads in America'. I am not kidding, every single square foot of streets in this City are horribly potholed with patch repair after patch repair on the same spot resulting in mounds of AC pavement a good 3 or 4 inches above street grade. And these are everywhere, what a nightmare. The front end alignment guys in this town must be making some serious coin!
After a nice day ambling around Albany we head back to the island and decide that this is such a stellar spot let's extend our stay here from 2 nites to 3. Had a relaxing evening and as I'm having dinner I'm perusing the campground info given to us at check in, campground map, tidbits of history, do's and dont's, that sorta thing.
In looking over the campground map in search of biking and hiking trails I notice a large area at the southerly end of the Park that is labeled 'Area Access Restricted Do Not Enter', hmmm. I think this requires an H Team investigation just for you followers of the blog 'eh?
So next morning I head out on my trusty Trek bike and ride down a knockout georgeous bike trail alongside the River for about 4 miles in search of this restricted area. I had been hearing the sound of a chainsaw and as I turned a corner there stood 2 park employees, one with a chainsaw and hard hat on and the other one looked like a young summer intern with no protective equipment.
They were removing a tree that had fallen across the path. It was a pretty good sized tree blocking the entire path and chainsaw guy says come on thru, you can lift your bike over the fallen tree. I say no, that's OK, you guys are busy, I'll find another way around. And as I finished that statement a huge limb fell from above and had I taken his invite would have crushed me. Then, he says, it's all OK now, come on across, you can use my hard hat if you want! Ah, no, I'll go another way, you guys stay safe and please get that young intern a damned hard hat and some eye and ear protection.
This ended up being the only path to the restricted area so mission scrubbed for today so I'll hit it again tomorrow after Frick and Frack have hopefully removed the fallen tree.
What the hell could this place be, so I googled it. Search engine query 'what the hell is up with the restricted area at the south end of Schodack Island?'. The first few items that popped up had to do with the usual adverts on camping, local restaurants and the State Park. But you know, to get to the real whackos and conspiracy theorists you gotta go to about page 5 of the google query responses to get the real interesting stuff! So I did.
Turns out General Electric back in the '60's and '70's was cranking out capacitors from their plant in Hudson Falls, NY a bit up river from Schodack. The production made heavy use of PCB's which is an extremely toxic compound and they just dumped the shit into the Hudson River, like 1.5 Million pounds of it! It became the 2nd largest Superfund environmental clean up in this Nations history.
The PCB's settled into the river bottom for miles and miles presenting a problem for normal dredging operations of the river to provide safe shipping. What then do you do with the dredged material that is heavily laden with PCB's? Well I guess treat it to remove the toxicity and place the material is some protected area...like maybe a restricted area at the south end of the Schodack Island SP? So, that's theory #1 as to what this restricted area may be for.
Theory #2 is that the restricted area is a constructed wetlands for wildlife and habitat. I believe this theory holds water.
When I arrived I did not encounter any stay out signs, no security fencing, no personnel around, no surveillance cameras so I rode my bike around the site for about 30 minutes. They had about 6 or 7 one acre sized ponds about 10 feet deep which were all dry. Some sporadic growth of vegetation here and there within them so the project looked to be fairly new or maybe it's a total failure, dunno.
Due to a lack of security measures I do not believe that this site is a repository for toxic waste, at least I haven't started glowing green yet. So I'm going to stick with Theory 2 and leave it at that. Not quite the hard biting investigation with dramatic results we all hoped for but it did give me something to do with a morning and gave Debbie some peace and quiet!
Our next stop was over the NY State line to Massachusetts to spend the day and night in the Berkshire Mountains. We found a very comfortable campground at the base of Mt. Greylock, the highest point in MA at around 4000' and went down to bike on the Ashuwillticook Trail which is an 18 mile out and back paved bike trail that courses thru picteresque countryside, lakes and hillsides. Very enjoyable and one of the finest bike trails I've seen.
That evening we drove up to Mt. Greylock to catch the sunset and it was stunningly beautiful. It was a clear evening and we could see forever. Apparently you can see 5 States from this summit - MA, NY, VT, NH and maybe CT(?). All we know is that it was an incredible panorama of mountains, hazy farmland valleys, hemlock's (my favorite tree) galore and no one else around.
The next morning we broke camp at 9 AM which was about 2-3 hours earlier than our norm!
Whoa, whoa Howie, what is the damn rush?
Well let me tell you. My big sister Sue and Bill are getting married in Salem in a week and we are due into the Winter Island RV Park in Salem today! Yep, another island! This one is in Salem Harbor and it is quite perfect.
I think for the first time in this blog's hsitory, you guys are now caught up to our current location.
This is going to be a blast of a week with family culminating with the nuptials next Saturday. I may take a week or so off with the blog but fear not dear followers you will hear about this coming week in the next post.
Also, just received my new camera so picture quality and quantity should be remarkably improved going forward.
Thanks you guys for following, we are doing great and hope that summer is kicking off in a proper fashion for all of you.
Peace out, Deb and Howard
We left you all on the last post from NY with a teaser about a fools folly. Well, where to begin with this one, let's start at the beginning then.
We had 2 points of interest to view as we headed east towards Boston and both are in the village of Woodstock, NY, or so we thought. The 2 points were the site of the 1969 Woodstock Musical Festival and the Pink House where Bob Dylan and The Band (then known as The Hawks) laid down the Basement Tapes in 1967. Debbie and our son Joe are huuuge Dylan fans so the Pink House was a definite can't miss. The Woodstock Musical Festival...well, I'll get to that in a bit.
We drive about an hour and a half east from our last spot at Gilbert Lake, NY and arrive in Woodstock, NY. We have reservations at the North South Lake SP and go to check in at noon and no joy. They do not have our reservation and I have no confirmation e mail so we go on the hunt for a last minute spot for the night.
Finally around 3 PM we are settled in at the Rip Van Winkle RV Park just outside of Woodstock, perfect. First sight seeing objective was the Pink House and Google was our friend.
Per Google, the current owners of the house state on their website that you're welcome to come on by, take a quick photo, please don't trespass on our property and look thru our windows...basically respect our privacy, take your damn photo and get the hell out...fair enough.
Also, when you enter our private half mile long access road please be aware that this lane is shared with other property owners in the area and one of them is not down at all with the Pink House visitors. He has posted no trespassing and other aggressive signs but not to worry, we have rights to this road as well and you are our visitors, so long as you behave yourselves.
OK, after reading all of this I'm a bit concerned about this trek. Well, one sure fire way to answer that concern is to drive on out and have a look see and that we did.
Absolutely beautiful countryside with the backdrop of the Catskill Mountains, we wind our way along Stoll Road looking for Parnassus Lane where the Pink House is located. We drive and drive along Stoll Road and my spidey senses are telling me we must have passed Parnassus. I cop a u-turn and back track and then see the street sign for Parnassus Lane, a large tree obscured it when we were driving in from the other way. Very stealthlike, nice try but I was on it!
We slowly and respectfully drive down Parnassus Lane and about a half mile in we see the Pink House. Debbie is ecstatic! I use their driveway to execute a 3 point turnaround poised for a quick exit, Deb gets out, photos are snapped (strictly following the website directions from the owners) and we're outta there.
All in all it was pretty cool to check out the place where so much great music was written, played and recorded back in 1967. Critics have said that Dylan was at his peak as a songwriter during this time but I dunno know, he has written some pretty good stuff since that time.
Some of the members of The Band would recall years later that Dylan would show up at the Pink House in the morning, sit down and write out a few songs, hand it to The Band and say 'hey, can you guys put some music to these lyrics?'. Then he'd split and these guys would try to figure out what the hell he meant with the lyrics.
Then come early evening he'd show back up and listen to their mucic, give a nod and turn the recording equipment on. That must have been a really creative time spent by true musicians in the Catskills back in '67.
Next stop, the site of the '69 Woodstock Musical Festival...hey Deb, get us google directions for that. OK, we have a problem, what's that?
Seems as if the Woodstock Music Festival did not happen in Woodstock, NY but in Bethel, NY which is about an hour and a half drive going back in the direction we just drove today from Gilbert Lake. You gotta be kidding me...now in the back of my mind I am recalling that it was not IN Woodstock but I thought it must be pretty damn close, not 90 minutes away. Talk about deceptive advertising, you name your Music Festival after a City it's not held in? Damned hippies!
Instead of driving 3 hours all the way out there and back, why don't we head back to camp, have dinner and listen to the Woodstock album? Unanimous decision, back to the Ripper we go.
I guess the place is now a National Park, so would have been nice to see, but not a big deal, we saw the Pink House!
Perhaps 'fools folly' is a bit strong here, but hey, we tried! Part of the journey I suppose. And as I said, some things must remain sacred and so it is with our Woodstock Musical Festival site visit. For whatever reason it was not meant to be and that's just fine with us.
On the way back to the Ripper we drove thru charming Woodstock with drum circles blaring in the town square, art galleries hopping, ice cream vendors doing a brisk business, every parking spot occupied...not my kinda scene at all. We stopped by a store in town and did some souvenir shopping and then called it a day. This was a long day and it was nice to unwind back in camp for the night.
We are getting sooo close to our destination of Boston now. I scope out the map and see that we are maybe a 3 hour drive to Boston where we are scheduled to arrive in 5 days, totally doable don't ya think? So how to spend this next week?
We settle on an island in the Hudson River about 10 miles or so south of Albany, NY, the State Capital. Place is called Schodack (pronounced Show-Dak) Island State Park and it is a beauty! Probably the best campsite we've had so far on this trip with tons of privacy, steeped in history and many fun things to do in the area.
Took a ride into Albany, NY to check out the State Capitol building and nose around a bit. We drive in and follow the signs for the Capital Plaza and end up on a City street with lots of old buildings surrounding us. Wonder which one of these is the Capitol building? Deb, see that Capitol Policeman walking over there? Yes, well he looks like he needs someone to talk to, ask him where the Capitol is.
Excuse me sir, where is the Capitol? Ah, it's right here maam, and points to the huge building right next to us! And I was right, boy oh boy, did this guy need someone to talk to! He proceeds to spend about 15 minutes with us explaining all the sights to see in his hometown of Albany and it was greatly appreciated...but, at the same time I'm thinking, don't you have a Governor or someone to protect?
All joking aside, he was very nice (Chandler was his name according to the badge) and took the time to spend with some visitors to show off his hometown, the Governor be damned! Thanks for all of the great info Chandler! We politely put an end to the conversation and moved on to check out some of his suggested sites to see.
Another piece of history for you...did you know that the name Albany is derived from the Algonquian Language that means 'the crappiest roads in America'. I am not kidding, every single square foot of streets in this City are horribly potholed with patch repair after patch repair on the same spot resulting in mounds of AC pavement a good 3 or 4 inches above street grade. And these are everywhere, what a nightmare. The front end alignment guys in this town must be making some serious coin!
After a nice day ambling around Albany we head back to the island and decide that this is such a stellar spot let's extend our stay here from 2 nites to 3. Had a relaxing evening and as I'm having dinner I'm perusing the campground info given to us at check in, campground map, tidbits of history, do's and dont's, that sorta thing.
In looking over the campground map in search of biking and hiking trails I notice a large area at the southerly end of the Park that is labeled 'Area Access Restricted Do Not Enter', hmmm. I think this requires an H Team investigation just for you followers of the blog 'eh?
So next morning I head out on my trusty Trek bike and ride down a knockout gorgeous bike trail alongside the River for about 4 miles in search of this restricted area. I had been hearing the sound of a chainsaw and as I turned a corner there stood 2 park employees, one with a chainsaw and hard hat on and the other one looked like a young summer intern with no protective equipment.
They were removing a tree that had fallen across the path. It was a pretty good sized tree blocking the entire path and chainsaw guy says come on thru, you can lift your bike over the fallen tree. I say no, that's OK, you guys are busy, I'll find another way around. And as I finished that statement a huge limb fell from above and had I taken his invite would have crushed me. Then, he says, it's all OK now, come on across, you can use my hard hat if you want! Ah, no, I'll go another way, you guys stay safe and please get that young intern a damned hard hat and some eye and ear protection.
This ended up being the only path to the restricted area so mission scrubbed for today so I'll hit it again tomorrow after Frick and Frack have hopefully removed the fallen tree.
What the hell could this place be, so I googled it. Search engine query 'what the hell is up with the restricted area at the south end of Schodack Island?'. The first few items that popped up had to do with the usual adverts on camping, local restaurants and the State Park. But you know, to get to the real whackos and conspiracy theorists you gotta go to about page 5 of the google query responses to get the real interesting stuff! So I did.
Turns out General Electric back in the '60's and '70's was cranking out capacitors from their plant in Hudson Falls, NY a bit up river from Schodack. The production made heavy use of PCB's which is an extremely toxic compound and they just dumped the shit into the Hudson River, like 1.5 Million pounds of it! It became the 2nd largest Superfund environmental clean up in this Nations history.
The PCB's settled into the river bottom for miles and miles presenting a problem for normal dredging operations of the river to provide safe shipping. What then do you do with the dredged material that is heavily laden with PCB's? Well I guess treat it to remove the toxicity and place the material is some protected area...like maybe a restricted area at the south end of the Schodack Island SP? So, that's theory #1 as to what this restricted area may be for.
Theory #2 is that the restricted area is a constructed wetlands for wildlife and habitat. I believe this theory holds water.
When I arrived I did not encounter any stay out signs, no security fencing, no personnel around, no surveillance cameras so I rode my bike around the site for about 30 minutes. They had about 6 or 7 one acre sized ponds about 10 feet deep which were all dry. Some sporadic growth of vegetation here and there within them so the project looked to be fairly new or maybe it's a total failure, dunno.
Due to a lack of security measures I do not believe that this site is a repository for toxic waste, at least I haven't started glowing green yet. So I'm going to stick with Theory 2 and leave it at that. Not quite the hard biting investigation with dramatic results we all hoped for but it did give me something to do with a morning and gave Debbie some peace and quiet!
Our next stop was over the NY State line to Massachusetts to spend the day and night in the Berkshire Mountains. We found a very comfortable campground at the base of Mt. Greylock, the highest point in MA at around 4000' and went down to bike on the Ashuwillticook Trail which is an 18 mile out and back paved bike trail that courses thru picteresque countryside, lakes and hillsides. Very enjoyable and one of the finest bike trails I've seen.
That evening we drove up to Mt. Greylock to catch the sunset and it was stunningly beautiful. It was a clear evening and we could see forever. Apparently you can see 5 States from this summit - MA, NY, VT, NH and maybe CT(?). All we know is that it was an incredible panorama of mountains, hazy farmland valleys, hemlock's (my favorite tree) galore and no one else around.
The next morning we broke camp at 9 AM which was about 2-3 hours earlier than our norm!
Whoa, whoa Howie, what is the damn rush?
Well let me tell you. My big sister Sue and Bill are getting married in Salem in a week and we are due into the Winter Island RV Park in Salem today! Yep, another island! This one is in Salem Harbor and it is quite perfect.
I think for the first time in this blog's history, you guys are now caught up to our current location.
This is going to be a blast of a week with family culminating with the nuptials next Saturday. I may take a week or so off with the blog but fear not dear followers you will hear about this coming week in the next post.
Also, just received my new camera so picture quality and quantity should be remarkably improved going forward.
To end this (after I re read it), one looong ass post, I'd like to extend a hearty Happy Father's Day out there to all of you Dad's.
Thanks you guys for following, we are doing great and hope that summer is kicking off in a proper fashion for all of you.
Peace out, Deb and Howard
Would not be an Arnold blog without a proper critique on public works infrastructure! Also, very much dug the Alice Cooper - Waynes World reference.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe I am just getting too old and crotchety, or I've seen my fair share of industrial workplace injuries, but I would have had a word with the supervisor or manager of that tree removal operation! PPE very important.
Love you guys!