Day 36 July 23, 2016 Boston MA to Seneca Falls NY

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Up and off early to try to slip out of the Boston area as early as we could.  The Boston traffic is always quite daunting.  Today’s drive would take us on I-90 across Massachusetts, up through upper New York state.  We had a lovely ride through central MA and then through the Berkshires in the western part of the state.  All of this countryside is part of the area where Bostonians go to escape the city.  It was beautiful. 

We crossed into New York state and took the Taconic State Parkway south, headed towards Hyde Park.  What a lovely drive!  Hyde Park is where Franklin D. Roosevelt was born and raised.  It is a smaller city with the Roosevelt home and landholdings now under administration by the National Park Service.  The Presidential Library for FDR is under the auspices of the National Archives.

We were able to go on a fine ranger lead tour of FDR’s family home and it was filled with original furnishings.  It had the actual room and bed where FDR was born.  It was the home that FDR and Eleanor, shared with FRD’s mother, Sarah.  Sarah actually ran the household and mostly raised FDR and ER's children.   We heard a lot of great stories about happenings in the home and were pleased to have the chance to walk around inside and take photos.

We then walked over the actual Library and Museum.  Because FDR had been president for over 12 years, through a time of enormous challenges and changes, with the Depression and WWII, there was a lot of ground to be covered here.   He did things like save the banks, start the Civilian Conservation Crop, gave people work through the WPA, stated Social Security and Unemployment compensation.  His accomplishments were astounding.

We appreciated that this library did not shy away form some of the more difficult and controversial aspects of his presidency including his decision that inter Japanese Americans in camps, his and Eleanor’s  extramarital affairs, and the fact that he was paralyzed form the waist down and used a wheelchair which was not at all widely known.  We got to see the lighter weight wheelchair that he used, and was highly disciplined with his rehab and working gout to keep every bit of his upper body strength available to him. He contracted polio when he was 39 years old and it took 7 years of intensive rehab to return to his active public life.

There were also some really good sections focusing on Eleanor and her partnership with FDR, contributing greatly to all of his accomplishments. His political career for running for governor and for vice presidency and presidency were all done with Eleanor as a very strong advocate and partner. 

Following the Library, we went to visit one of the “cottages” that was part of their landholdings.  This one was built for and belonged entirely to Eleanor and two of her best girl friends.  This was really her one and only “room or her own”, although it was a pretty substantial home which had at one point included a business they started using local people to handcraft traditional furniture.

We just missed the last tour of the day, but were able to walk around and get into one of the buildings.  She stayed and worked there following her husband’s death, and continued to be there and entertain world leaders there until 1962.  You could feel a really good spirit on this land.

It was time for the buildings to close and we still had driving to do to get to Seneca Falls, NY by night.

Part of the drive was along the Hudson River and then along the Erie Canal, and we had the chance to see a brief exhibit showing how the canals worked.  We have regularly had transportation as one of our travel themes; here we added canals to this theme. The Erie Canal is still in operation, but now primarily used by pleasure craft. We stopped at one of the locks but this was cut short by an intense thunderstorm.   

We don’t get enough rain and thunder and lightening in San Diego.  Makes it harder to drive, let alone to see the sights, but the rain was refreshing.

We arrived in Seneca Falls as the sun was setting. We checked into our AriBnB, an apartment with a sleeping loft overlooking, Cayuga Lake, one of New York State’s famous Finger Lakes.  Time to sleep because tomorrow would be an exciting day.