Welcome to the 20th Century- Vacation Part 3

After leaving Saratoga we continued North along the Hudson River. Along the way of Rt 4 we were hit by an exceptional storm. We pulled the car over to the side of the road near the bank of the Hudson and for nearly 20 minutes watched the storm rage around us. After that we decided that this would make a good first night in a hotel. We stopped at a Best Western just inside Vermont.
Our first stop the following day was the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park. This is a park dedicated to three owners of one house. George Marsh, Frederick Billings and Laurence Rockefeller all at some point owned the house. Their common mission was land stewardship. We took a hike on one of the carriage roads up to what they called the Pouge. It was basically a good sized pond that supplied water to the house and other buildings and water troughs. Quick history lesson: Mr. Billings also held huge investments in the oil and railroad industries at the same time he was committing  himself to land stewardship. Conflict of interests? Anyway Laurence was widely known  as a philanthropist and helped create many of the national parks as we see them today by buying and donating land (most notably in the Grand Tetons). He donated the house at the national park in 1992 and he officially moved out and handed the keys to the national park service in 2001.

The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller House. We took a tour but no photos inside are permitted.

Dan and I at the Pouge taken by two very nice ladies from New Hampshire who sat with us while we made a revolutionary lunch of spaghetti-o's and ravioli.

After returning from our hike and hopping in our car we sped out of Vermont and headed to New Hampshire (which wasn't far away). We drove over a covered wooden bridge to enter New Hampshire and once again arrived at the park almost at closing time. Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site proved more interesting than I originally thought. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was a sculptor and the historic site was where he did much of his work and lived for much of his life. There are many replicas and originals of his works scattered through out the grounds and buildings of the park. We rushed through many of the buildings because they closed at 4:30, but the grounds were open till dusk so we had plenty of time to explore them. History lesson: Mr Saint-Gaudens did many famous sculptures that you may recognize of President Lincoln and coin proofs like the $20 gold piece called the double eagle. He also happened to do the bronze face casting that we had seen a few days previously at the James Garfield NHS.

After leaving Saint-Gaudens (well after everyone else) we headed back the way that we came. And we saw that covered bridge. And our jaws dropped. Coming from the other direction it hadn't seemed all that interesting. Yes covered bridges are cool. However, this one was 449 feet long and built in 1866. After getting out of our car to take some pictures of this remarkable feat of 1866 engineering and throwing off the super excited and overly friendly bridge hunters (escaping them, not literally throwing them off the bridge)- we headed onward to Maine.

Notice the boater. And the fact that it didn't fit in the picture.