We headed north from Maryland to Rhinebeck, New York, about 100 miles north of NYC along the Hudson River and home of the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival, arguably the premier wool and knitting event in North America. We attended the festival last year and wanted to go back. The festival is great and the Hudson River Valley in the fall is stunningly beautiful. Carrie began the long weekend with a needle felting class, where everyone in the class made a Rhinebeck knitting gnome. Carrie is a financial sponsor of a sheep at Prado de Lana Sheep Farm in Massachusetts and at the festival Carrie got to meet Amanda, the shepherd who cares for her sheep. Amanda does a monthly videoblog from the farm, so Carrie felt like she already knew her. Carrie also got to connect with other online knitting friends from around the country.
While we were in the Hudson River Valley we visited the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, just a few miles south of Rhinebeck. FDR’s family had owned this estate for many years and it was one of his favorite places. While he was president he enjoyed spending time in Hyde Park and he had an office in the house where he could work. The house was interesting in that it was large and very nice but it was rather simple and not ostentatious. The grounds also house the FDR Presidential Library. Designed with input from FDR, it is the only presidential library in which a president worked while in office.
While in Hyde Park we also visited the Vanderbilt Mansion, owned by Frederick Vanderbilt, a grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who first created the Vanderbilt family wealth. The National Park Service maintains this estate not as a tribute to the Vanderbilts but as an historical snapshot into the lives of the wealthy during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Unlike the rather modest FDR home, the Vanderbilt mansion presented a flamboyant display of wealth intended to impress the other members of New York high society. It was the location for many high society parties and it reminded us of a smaller version of the Palace of Versailles in France. Although it seemed like a fabulous mansion to us, it was only a seasonal cottage for the Vanderbilts, used mostly in the spring and fall. They spent summers at their “real” mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and winters at their lavish apartment in New York City, when the social circle was in full swing.
We left New York on October 21 and, realizing that the weather could soon turn cold, we took a southern route back to California. Sure enough, we avoided an early-season snowstorm in Colorado just a few days later. We made a stop at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, site of the longest cave system known in the world. We took a guided cave tour in the morning and then had a wonderful picnic among the fall colors. As we were finishing lunch a deer came right up to our table and ate scraps of apples and strawberries leftover from some prior picnickers. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of us and stayed around for at least ten minutes. We then headed south to Spicewood, Texas, near Austin, to visit our nephew and his family. We had a fun family visit and had some great barbecue at Opie’s.
