New York, New York (9/15 - 9/26/2023)

We arrived at Sylvan Lake Beach Park via almost all highway driving.  We did have to follow some very specific directions that avoided the Taconic Parkway.  This parkway is restricted to passenger cars only and has a few 10' high bridges.  Ruth is a statuesque 13' 5", that would be a bad day.  The park itself was tucked back into a county park with a lake.  We were in the "meadow".  It was rustic, but had what we needed. 

Yes, an actual phone booth.

With our bikes operational again, we had a lovely 26 mile ride on the Dutchess Rail which was accessed right from the little town of Hopewell Junction near our campground.  The trail was wide and paved and an excellent for my reintroduction to bike riding after my crash. When we got home, we watched the Bills win handily over the Commanders.  Good day.

The next 2 nights/3 days would be in New York City.  We parked our car at the Beacon train station about 20 minutes from Hopewell Junction and caught the train into Grand Central Station.  We came up from the subterranean depth of the station to be greeted by pouring rain.  For some reason, we decided to walk from there to our hotel in Chelsea.  It was about a mile and a half in rain, carrying our overnight bags in raincoats with umbrellas.  Dodging umbrellas on a NYC street in the pouring rain is not fun.  Why didn't we take an Uber or subway you ask?  Honestly, I don't know what possessed us. 

We finally arrived to our hotel, dropped our bags and went on the hunt for food. Our first meal in NYC was a small Cuban restaurant did not disappoint.  It was a sweet reward after our long journey.  We headed out for Madison Square Gardens and the Peter Gabriel I/O Tour concert.  

Entering such an iconic venue was cool.  Neither of us had been inside MSG before and I didn't know what to expect.  It is the pinnacle of NYC sports and music.  I did not feel the same unique vibe as I did when we attended our concert at Red Rocks, but the view from our seats, the sound and the concert itself was excellent, thoroughly enjoyed it.  

The UN was meeting while we were in NYC, not that we were attending, but it had traffic limited and snarled in its wake.  We had booked a morning boat tour of Manhattan which was to circumnavigate the island.  The UN's security detail had different plans.  Even though the tour was limited from circling the whole island, we got up close to the Statue of Liberty and got a lot of history about the 5 boroughs and the various architecture of the city.  It was also a very beautiful sunny day which was a bonus. 

Iconic NYC

After the boat tour we met up with Mike's childhood friend John who came into the city to see us. We had an excellent lunch at Friedman's and walked the Highline trail and visited Little Island.  After all that walking it was time for cocktails at Bathtub Gin, a very toney speakeasy hidden behind the guise of a coffee shop in Hell's Kitchen.  Stopped for some wood fired pizza on the way back to the hotel. A very fun day in the city and catching up. 

Our affair with NYC was almost over but we got up early and headed to Times Square for the spectacle of it all and then strolled through a tiny bit of Central Park.  We continued our good food fortunes with a stop at a small Thai restaurant for lunch.  We popped back by the hotel then took the train right to Grand Central for our train ride back to Ruth.

While we had been lucky enough to miss the wrath of Lee, Ophelia was right on Lee's heels and came right up the coast making the rest of our stay in New York extremely wet.  We had about 3 inches of standing water on our campsite while the rain stayed consistently over us for 2 whole days. Our last day had a break in the rain and we were able to sample some local ciders and a exceptional apple pie from Fishkill Farms.  Bye bye New York, always a pleasure.