I talked about Day 2 here. Now that I’m numbering the days I see that I have it wrong. Day 1 was really a travel day. We left Sacramento on Tuesday at 11:45 and got to Albany well after dark. That’s why I didn’t count it. I’ll stick with the current numbering system that forgets the travel day.
Kathleen and I both entered handwoven items at the show and needed to deliver them on Friday. That was the first stop of the day.
After delivering our items we drove back to Hyde Park so we could tour the Vanderbilt Mansion. This family tree starts with Cornelius, born in 1794. At age 16 he bought a sailing barge using $100 borrowed from his parents. He started his own shipping business and eventually was involved in railroads. In 1871 he opened the largest strain station in North America, which would eventually be called Grand Central Station. The bulk of Cornelius’ estate went to the firstborn son, William. Wlliam doubled the Vanderbilt fortune and each of his 8 children built extravagant mansions, shown on the chart above. The estate on the far right is the one I toured last summer in Asheville, North Carolina, known as “America’s Largest Home”. Notice on the family tree there are no heirs for Frederick’s home, third from right.
Frederick and his wife, Louise, had no children. They left the estate to Louise’s niece but she didn’t need it, having plenty of her own money and a mansion, after marrying into another rich family. She tried to sell the property but there were no buyers. Her neighbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggested that she donate the estate to the National Park Service, and the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site opened in 1940.
The entrance hall was used for seating and conversation as well as having doorways into all the other first floor rooms. The green marble pilasters were imported from Italy. (From Wikipedia: “In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function.“) We were told that many of the home’s features and furniture were imported from Europe.
Reception Room. The National Historic Site website says: “Eighteenth-century-style French salons were a typical feature of Gilded Age mansions. Though infrequently occupied or used, they nonetheless were essential in the display of wealth and worldliness.“
I took this photo of the ceiling in one of the rooms. I think it was the Reception Room.
This is on the second floor where you can look down to the first …
…or up to the skylight.
Mrs. Vanderbilt’s bedroom modeled after those of 18th century French royalty. The railing around the bed was typical of royal bed chambers. I don’t remember if this was determined to be true, but the tour guide told us one theory that there may be observers when a Queen gives birth so there is no question about who is the true heir. I just found this on the National Historic Site website: “The railing around Mrs. Vanderbilt’s bed is an architectural convention borrowed from many European royal palaces. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it served both practical and symbolic purposes related to royal births and ceremonies that occured daily when the king or queen woke up. At Hyde Park, the railing serves no purpose other than to reference the architecture of Europe’s finest royal houses.”
I don’t remember what this room is but looking at the map I think it is probably the Boudoir.
We took the stairway to the Servant’s Basement.
This is the view from below. There are four floors (including the basement), 54 rooms and 21 fireplaces. The third floor is closed to visitors and we were told that it is not as it originally was, being used to house Secret Service agents at some point in the history of Hyde Park. There is much more information to be found on the referenced website.
Change of scene… We stopped at the Eveready Diner in Hyde Park for lunch and met up with California friend, Siobhan, here. I didn’t drive during this whole trip and kept losing track of which town we were near. We stayed outside Tivoli, New York and drove to Rhinebeck, only 11 miles south. Hyde Park is only another 10 miles south of Rhinebeck. So we were back and forth on that same corridor for the whole trip.
On the way home (to our AirB&B) we took a side road to see some of the countryside.
Fall colors in evidence.
To be continued…
I got them situated near the other Jacob sheep and hung my newly made sign (that includes my location). I delivered my entries in the fiber and photo contests (a whole suitcase full–it’s a good thing that Southwest allows two free bags). Then I went exploring.
This was a pretty area. It was “mixed use” including developed playground and lawn areas, but I stuck to the trails. I was not dressed for the weather. According to the news it was 90 degrees on this day and we haven’t been that hot at home yet. Too bad I hadn’t brought shorts…although the ticks that I found later made me think that maybe jeans were better anyway.
Dogwood. That’s one flower that I knew.
More of the trail.
No one knows for sure why this place is called Soldiers Delight but the purpose for preserving it is the unique geology and ecosystem. 
From Wikipedia: “The site is designated both a Maryland Wildland (1,526 acres) and a Natural Environmental Area(1,900 acres) … The site’s protected status is due to the presence of serpentine soil and over 39 rare, threatened, or endangered plant species along with rare insects, rocks and minerals.”
“Weathered serpentinite is dissolved rock, transformed into thin, sand and clay poor soil which is easily eroded. This creates a land surface which is stony, unfertile and sparsely vegetated and is the reason that the term “serpentine barren” is used to describe these areas.
Signs explained that “the serpentine grasslands and oak savanna systems are now imperiled due mainly to the lack of American Indian and lightning fires which are critical to this fire-dependent ecosystem…The oak savanna ecosystem is one of the rarest communities in Maryland.” Over 90% of the less than 1000 remaining acres lies within Soldier’s Delight NEA.
Praire warbler.
I hiked the 2-1/2 mile trail around the grassland area and came back up to the main road. I decided to take another trail that went to the chromite mines. Half way through this one I started to think that maybe I should have brought water…and food. I realized how hungry and thirsty I was. It was already about 3:30. Did I say that it was very hot? I started to have visions of having to be rescued. Or not–how would anyone know where I was? I also found a tick on my hand. Then I started to feel like there must be ticks everywhere. Forget those mind games. I was still enjoying the new landscapes.
I happened to look up and saw this.
Here is a closer view.
Along the way I found the Choate mine that operated from 1818 to 1888 and for a brief period during WWI. I had expected something bigger when I read the sign pointing to a pit mine (picture the massive mines I’ve seen in the west). It’s hard to imagine that it was a few holes like this produced the world’s supply of chromium.
This is one of the other mines. I did make it back to civilization without mishap (and only one other tick).
I didn’t want to take the main highways because I love seeing the farm country.
I pulled over in a couple of places just long enough to get photos with my phone.
You can’t tell from this photos but that tractor is big enough that the car I’m driving could have almost gone right under it. I don’t know what crop that is for.
Crossing the Potomac River. I crossed a couple of times before I found the parking area for the National Historical Park at a place called Point of Rocks. (Actually I parked elsewhere and finally found this when I started walking toward the river.)
The C & O Canal follows the Potomac River for 184 miles and was used for about 100 years as a way of transporting lumber, coal, and agricultural products. 
The bridge from below.
I walked along the towpath for an hour or so.
Here is a tree I haven’t seen before. Flowers on the pawpaw tree.
I don’t know what kind of insect this is but it is a big one.
There are some lock houses still standing along the canal. These were houses provided to the locktenders who would be available to operate that lock 24 hours a day. This house, built in 1837, has been fixed up and is available for rent.
A view of the lock.
This photos shows the scale and proximity of the house, the canal and the railroad. Point of Rocks is famous because it is where the battle for the transportation rights played out. The mountain on one side and the river on the other left a narrow strip of land. “Both the C&O and B&O [railroad] fought in court for primary access to this “point of rocks.” The C&O won but the two companies compromised, sharing the narrow passage from here to Harpers Ferry.
This is the Virginia Memorial, including a statue of Robert E. Lee, at one of our first stops. I love horse statues.
At this site we saw a couple of groups of school kids having a lesson in Civil War history. We listened awhile to the guide who explained things that I never thought about (importance of flags and drummers as a way to signal, for instance) and then had the kids line up in formation and “right face, left face, etc” It was cute to see most of them turn together but there were always a few that went the opposite way. Watching them reminded me of when my oldest son was in middle school and his history teacher, who was a film buff in addition to teaching history, led the kids in making a film of Pickett’s Charge. The kids were dressed in home-made or scrounged clothing to look the part and carrying home-made weapons (that wooden rifle is still around here somewhere I think). The school band participated as well as some of the kids who owned horses. They played out the event and made the film out in a field owned by a local farmer. I took a photo of these kids to send Matt as a fun reminder about that, but it became less “cute” and more sobering the more we read and the more we delved into the history of what actually happened here. 
This is a view from where the kids are standing and where the Confederate troops were positioned on Seminary Ridge. Union troops were across the valley on Cemetery Ridge. This is part of a Valley that extends a couple of miles and there are significant points to the Battle of Gettysburg throughout. It is incongruous in this beauty to think of thousands of dead and dying men. And no one ever says anything about the dead and wounded horses. Add that in to the scene.
In this idyllic view you can see the Pennsylvania Memorial across the field and to the right. There are places along the route where you read (in the guidebook) about what the aftermath of a battle looks like–the biology of death–blood, flies, bloated bodies, etc. I think that people need to hear that–does it help if we (they) are given mental pictures to try and internalize the horror of war? If kids hear that? What it really looks like? In person? Does it sink in at all what it means to kill another person? To be a bully in the most final sense? This kind of atrocity is being played out in other parts of the world now. Do kids realize how lucky we are to live here? How about us adults too?
This is a view from the tower that includes, in the foreground, the Eisenhower National Historic Site, the home and farm of Eisenhower that he bought in 1950. We ran out of time to visit that.
This view is from Little Round Top, a point controlled by Union soldiers. The rock formation below is known as Devil’s Den and the foreground is Slaughter Pen. There was fierce fighting as Confederate soldiers in a line a mile long approached from the far ridge and the Union soldiers tried to defend it. That description is too simplistic; there is detailed documentation about each battle site and each battle.
I don’t remember details of this house but it is along the tour route.
Near the end of the tour we were at what is known as the High Water Mark, the farthest point reached by Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Gettysburg.
From the Park brochure: “July 3…Some 12,000 Confederates advanced across open fields toward the Federal center in an attack known as ‘Pickett’s Charge’. The attack failed and cost Lee over 5,000 soldiers in one hour. The Battle of Gettysburg was over.”
Completed in 1914, the Pennsylvania Memorial is the largest State Memorial in the Park and is near the High Water Mark.
The auto tour was almost over. Instead of the 2-1/2 to 3 hours described in the brochure I think we were there for about 5 hours.
The tour ended at the Soldier’s National Cemetery, created after the battle, and where 3500 Union soldiers were later buried. Remains of 3,320 Confederate soldiers were removed from the battlefield to cemeteries in the South. Veterans from 1898 War with Spain to the Vietnam War are also buried here.
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