FDR country...

We've been tooling around the Catskills and Hyde Park area of the Hudson Valley for a couple of days to see what's here. It is really beautiful country. Lots of wooded mountains and the Hudson River.

Hyde Park and the Hudson Valley was the summer home area for very wealthy New York families like the Vanderbilts, Livingstons, Rockefellers, and Roosevelts. Around 1880 to 1900, they built lavish mansions here and furnished them in grand style. This is the birthplace, home and burial grounds of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His presidential library is also located on the grounds, all of which were donated to the United States by FDR. FDR and Eleanor expanded this home from a large house on the Hudson to a mansion in the 1930s.

The home was donated intact with all furniture and furnishings exactly as FDR used it, so here's FDR's bedroom exactly as he used it. It is very dim inside to protect it from sunlight damage and they don't allow flash pictures, so the pictures are as dark as the rooms were.
Eleanor's bedroom next door was rather sparse by comparison.

This is the Vanderbilt mansion about 2 miles North up the Hudson from the Roosevelt's. It's a huge carved sandstone example of what "gilded age" mansions looked like here. It was built around 1895 at a cost of over $2 million and after the Vanderbuilts died, their niece, who inherited it, couldn't sell it for $250,000, due to the Great Depression, so she donated it to the federal government at the same time as FDR donated his (and at his suggestion).
Then we visited the Rhinebeck Aerodrome today. It's an operating antique airplane museum and flying field. Unbelievably, they still fly some of these planes that are more than 50 years old. You may notice the oil catchpan under this 1942 Fleet biplane. That's because it's in flying condition! It was flown here, but many years ago.

This 1931 Great Lakes biplane is also in flying condition. There were about 200 of these built and they were the favorite acrobatic airplane for almost two decades.

They also had a very large number of antique airplane engines, like this 1930 Kinner B5 Rotary and this Hall-Scott V8 with exquisite workmanship and design. Most of these aircraft engines shared the concept of no solid engine block. The cylinders were simply bolted to the crankcase to save weight.

We also wet touring in the Catskill Mountains for a few hours. Very hilly and wooded terrain. We went around the Ashoken Reservoir (as in "Ashoken Farwell", the song Kathy and I play as a duet on piano and guitar). It's a beautiful spot that you can't see much of because it's a reservoir for New York City and there is absolutely no entrance to the hills surrounding it and no recreation or development on it's shores. They're so worried about pollution that it's strictly off limits for everything "except fishing by special permit" according to the signs. Right..... I wonder which NYC politicians you have to donate to in order to get a special fishing permit?

We're going to finish our Hudson River trip tomorrow by going up to Waterford, which is just North of Troy and Albany and is the start of the Eerie Canal leg of the trip. I'll have to lower the radar arch for low bridges on the canal systems.