The Hudson River Valley

     Our trip up the Hudson was truly spectacular.  Not only was the scenery beautiful, but there were other interesting things along the way.  It's much better to show photos of the scenery than to try to describe what we saw, so here goes:

 Pretty impressive, huh?  Those are the Catskill Mountains in the background.

Granite formations along the shore.

One of the few commercial vessels we saw along the Hudson.

This is where the Hudson narrows right before West Point.  During the Revolutionary War, the British sailed up the Hudson to attack the American settlements along the river.  To defend themselves, the patriots strung a huge chain across the river right here, stopping the British advance.  

And here she is, the United States Military Academy at West Point, as seen from the water.  We took a tour, which I will write about in my next post.

And while we may be at war, the cadets still have other priorities!  On the other side of this sports auditorium roof, it says, "Beat Navy."

     A little further along the river, we came across the remains of this structure, which is called Bannerman Castle:

     Frank Bannerman was a Scottish munitions dealer who built this replica of a Scottish castle (complete with moat) to store the huge supply of armaments he acquired through military auctions.  It is the only structure on the island ((Pollepel) and it was also used as a summer retreat.  It burned (and exploded) in the 1960's and is currently owned by a Trust attempting to restore it.  You cannot visit the castle or the island--but then it is said that the place is filled with snakes and poison ivy, so who wants to go anyway?

As we traveled up the Hudson, we only stopped over night once, in Kingston, NY.  It is a nice small town where they have been restoring the waterfront and now there are quite a few nice restaurants and a boat museum.  A big plus for this area of New York is that the Culinary Institute of America is located just across the Hudson and many of the chefs who graduate choose to stay in this area--and that means lots of good food available in just about any restaurant.  I don't think we had a bad meal the whole time we traveled here.  Here are some highlights of our stop in Kingston:

 This is the Kingston waterfront where we docked (our boat is in front of the one pictured).

And on the other side of the boat, we always had a flock of Canada geese to keep us company.

And just across from our boat was this rather original camp site, although we never saw anyone there.

A block from the water was this beautiful old church tower with a ship instead of a cross on top.

We thought this sign was just stating the obvious, then it occurred to us that there was probably a whole lot of snow in the winter and they wouldn't be able to find the hydrant.

     After this stop in Kingston, we cruised into New Baltimore, NY (just south of Albany) and did some touring from there--the subject of my next post.