If you were in upper New York state, would you not want to see Hyde Park, Woodstock, and the Catskills?  Well, we certainly did.  These were all places that we have heard about over the years and wondered what they were like.

Our first adventure today was in the town of Hyde Park.  We went to see Eleanor Roosevelt National  Historic Site.  This site was the home of Mrs. Roosevelt on weekends and her holiday retreat during her husband’s presidency and became her permanent home after his death in 1945.  The home was created from and old factory and was very humble.  World leaders came here and were treated as family.  The home is small and cozy by the standard of the big home where FDR grew, but it was the only home that was Mrs. Roosevelts to furnish and decorate as her own.  The big home belonged to FDR’s mother, and Mrs. Roosevelt never felt at home there.  Here a Val-Kil Mrs. Roosevelt felt personal freedom which fostered her ideas about human rights and world peace.

 

The second site that we visited was the childhood home of the president/the renovated home of the president and his family.  The house was the birthplace of the president.  It began as a farmhouse on a farm of 1500 acres.  In 1915 the house was greatly enlarged and became much more elegant.  The house remains exactly as it was at the time of the president’s death.  President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt are buried in the rose garden of the estate.  In keeping with the Roosevelt’s, their grave is marked by a plain marble monument.

 

This the bedroom and the bed in which the future president was born.

The last thing we visited at Hyde Park was the library and museum of the president.  The museum has  photographs, artworks, official documents and speeches, gifts from all over the world, family possessions and letters from the lives of the president and the first lady.  It even contained the president’s car.

Finally today we went to Woodstock.  Woodstock, the event, happened in a farmer’s field near a small town in the Catskills.  Today the town is a memorial to that event.  Small shops of every kind reflect the sixties era and the events of that time.  It is a town that is a little offbeat, but one that could be fun to visit for several days. 

Then there are the Catskills.  They are nice hills.  They are pretty, but we know where there are others that are pretty special too.