Yeah mon

For our week at Franklyn D Resort in Jamaica let's skip the commentary and let the pictures speak for themselves

 

 

Long Island circuit

After reviewing the map and the calendar, Dave decided that he could spend 3 days at home with the older girls or take a tour of Long Island and the outer borough National Park sites. Was there really any decision? Having left Grampa Ed out of the Great Southwest tour, he and Grandma Joan tagged along, trading their sweltering house for the chauffeured comfort of the Nissan Rogue.

We navigated NYC rush-hour traffic and the Throg's Neck bridge to arrive at Sagamore Hill in time for the grandparents to score tickets to the house tour

Meanwhile the girls set out to complete the three junior ranger booklets required to earn the patch. To celebrate TR's "wonderbook of nature", we had to find the big copper beech outside the house: check.

The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine doesn't speak to elementary schoolkids, but everyone likes to see a big stick

See, there's another one

 Grandma spotted PBS celebrity Mark Shields coming out of a tour and introduced herself

 Could we pass up this photo-op?

Erin was pleased to learn that butt is not just a potty word

Now for the hard-to-reach places. Gateway National Recreation Area includes parts of Sandy Hook, NJ, Staten Island, and Jamaica Bay, Queens. Pick your poison. We battled the JFK airport traffic to reach Jamaica Bay wildlife refuge, which truly was an oasis in the city, with the occasional bellowing of a 747 taking off.

 

Hey diamondback terrapin, watch out

 

there's an osprey up there!

 If one were to follow the map and GPS to Fire Island National Seashore one would see roads leading straight to the lighthouse. Upon arriving in person one would find a sign forbidding those without federal permits from using such roads on the entirety of Fire Island. One would then park a mile away and hike the boardwalk to the lighthouse.

 

Glam shots in the late afternoon sun

A tickler

The girls couldn't be convinced to ascend the lighthouse, but we did tour the museum and see the great lidless eye

This is an aside, but adjacent to the National Seashore was Robert Moses State Park and one of the best public beaches on the entire East Coast. New Yorkers love to hate the man who created a massive transportation network while in the process altering nature and destroying neighborhoods. But it must be said, on this day, after having traversed one of his cross-borough bridges, then many of his cars-only parkways around Queens and Long Island, and finally taking in his spectacular 8 mile-long causeway across the Great South Bay to reach Fire Island, we fully appreciated his vision of moving people efficiently around NYC and also out to the beaches.

Surfer girls

Day two and we're in upper Manhattan where miracle of miracles, we found a parking spot on the street. That's Riverside Church, not our destination, but beautiful nonetheless. On our way into Manhattan, Grampa got a demonstration of the power of GPS. For comparison, as a teenager, when we drove to Yankees games, I can remember vividly the terror of being routed south from the Stadium onto the streets of the South Bronx, completely lost, in sketchy territory, crossing unknown bridges before finally stumbling onto a northbound thoroughfare. This day, traffic is tied up on the conventional routes. We're told to take the Cross-Bronx Expressway (thanks again, Mr. Moses) and then exit onto an access road under the highway for a mile or so before crossing some unknown bridge and magically popping out onto 125th St. From there everyone got a chance to see the Apollo Theater and, as a sign of how upscale Harlem has become, the Banana Republic store immediately next door.

 

General Grant National Memorial is huuuge

and the largest mausoleum in North America

The inside contained essentially nothing but two dark and creepy sarcophagi. This completely freaked out Erin, but 8 year-olds are fearless creatures and Caroline completed the tour. The exterior was much more entertaining.

 

Since Bobblehead George had gotten to return to his roots in Virginia, we felt it was only fair to do the same for Bobblehead Alex. Perhaps someday we will get to Nevis to see his actual birthplace, but second best was his home in Harlem.

The heat and the hills took their toll on the grandparents, but they made it

We already knew of Alex's death after a duel with Aaron Burr, but what we didn't know was that his son had died three years earlier defending his father's honor on the same dueling grounds and with the same pistols

 Erin and her favorite founding father

St. Paul's Church in Mount Vernon, New York, was one of those random but delightful sites. In the old-fashioned pews, the docent demonstrated how sleeping churchgoers were rudely awakened.

The church served as a hospital during the Revolutionary War Battle of Pell's Point and the little exhibit was complete with severed limbs

Ha-ha, Erin's in the stocks

OK, I'll do my time, too. I suppose some would consider it cruel and unusual punishment to drag one's children to 58 National Park sites over their summer vacation.

 

Back in Boston now, for one more local site, the offices of Frederick Law Olmsted, father of modern landscape architecture. This machine was used in the wintertime to project bright light onto the plans soaked with potassium cyanate, which would then turn the color...well, see you learn something new every day. 

Fun in the car