A few days in New York

May 31, 2011 from Croton Point Park at Croton-on-Hudson, NY
We’ve spent a few days in the Empire State so that we could go see our first grandson, Oscar, who is now nine months old.

We got to see him at Christmas and how he has changed in five months.  He is a happy and active child with lots of charm.
Oscar is the first-born child for our son, Jamison and daughter-in-law, Jane.  They live in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Harlem, NY and commute daily into Manhattan where Jamison is an associate editor at Grove/Atlantic, Inc.  http://www.groveatlantic.com/  and Jane is on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History http://www.amnh.org/ .
These two young adults stay slim with a lot of walking, including the 64 steps up to their apartment.  Speaking of walking, both days that we were in New York we took long walks around the neighborhood and were amazed at the amount of parks, community gardens and well-tended kiddie playgrounds and athletic fields we saw.  We even went past a permanent carousel in the park.

The carousel is located in Riverbank State Park alongside of the Hudson River.
We also strolled past this work-in-progress on the complete rehabilitation of the only known residence of Alexander Hamilton -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton The site is officially named Hamilton Grange National Memorial, Manhattan Sites, NY, NY.


The park we are in is about 50 miles north of Manhattan.  To get into the city we drove 2 miles to the Metra North train station at Croton-on-Hudson where we could park all day for a reasonable price and got half-prices senior tickets for a very fast and very comfortable commuter rail line trip into the city.  We caught an express train both days so each one way commute was about 35 minutes.  From the train station it was a $12 or $13 cab ride to the kids apartment.
How many of you remember a scene like this from your working days:

We sure don’t miss those trains.
Today we drove 30 miles north to Monroe, NY to stock up on groceries at Walmart and to check out a possible “escape route” from the area.  Because this is mountainous country with many winding roads we wanted to check out this route.  As it turns out, it will work for us.  Bonus:  our Illinois Tollway I-Pass works on the EZ-Pass system in the northeast and New England states. Sure beats fumbling for the wallet.
We got this view of the Hudson River which flows right past our park.

And here is a picture of where we are parked.

Thursday we head for Maine.
Stay tuned.