Road Trip - Day 6! (MA, CT, NY)

May 31, 2012 (Thursday)

Springfield Armory NHS -
"Organ of Muskets"

We started our day with a visit to the Springfield Armory National Historic Site. The Armory is one of two National Park Armory sites, the other being Harpers Ferry in West Virginia. The site offers an 18 minute video that is worthwhile to view. After the video, we looked at the museum displays. We spent about an hour and fifteen minutes at the site, but one could spend more time if you wanted to view the other buildings surrounding the main exhibit building.  The Historic Site commemorates the role of the nation’s first armory by preserving the world’s largest historic US military small arms collection.

Originally, I had planned for us to visit the Armory site the prior day, but we ran out of time. This changed our schedule a bit. I had wanted to visit New Haven, Connecticut since it is an old city with lots of architecture.  Stay tuned on a travel adventure to that area in the future!

Springfield, CT - Capitol

After the Armory, we headed towards our next destination, Weir Farm National Historic Site. Along the way, we stopped off at the Capital of Connecticut – Hartford. The Capitol is very pretty. We noticed some weird things in the area, at least to our prior experience/knowledge. There seems to be a lot of mini-vans all decked out as school buses. There also seemed to be a lot more police in CT than anywhere else, we noticed in our travels. It seemed weird to see police officers directing traffic at construction zones – that does not happen in Michigan. Maybe CT has a high police budget?

The Weir Farm National Historical Site was under major renovations during our visit. The site is the second National Park Site dedicated to an artist, the first already being mentioned. Weir Farm was an artist colony, founded by J. Alden Weir.  Weir was a well known American Impressionism artist. Again, we were not familiar with the works or life of Weir. The short film at the visitor center was very informative and definitely worthwhile if you know nothing about Weir. There were many artists painting while we were onsite. There is not a lot of parking at this site, if visiting you may want to arrive early in the day.

Vanderbilt Mansion NHS

View of the Hudson from the Vanderbilt Mansion Site

We ventured back into New York State, this time to visit some sites in the Hyde Park area. The Hyde Park area is very nice. Our first stop, in the area was Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site. The grounds are free to visit, but the mansion is $8/person (under 15 is free) or free with the National Park Pass. The hour long tour was GREAT! Our tour guide was a gentleman named Mike. He did a great job and was very interesting. The views of the Hudson River are superb, be sure to check that out if you take a visit! There really is not a lot to see here other than the Mansion and the River.

The Home of Franklin D Roosevelt National Historic Site was the next destination.  Tours run from 9:30-4, but the grounds are open until dusk. The museum is open until 6:30. It was a bit late for a tour and the museum, but we did walk around the grounds.

It would have been another excellent evening for camping, but there were absolutely no campgrounds in the area, so we ended up staying at the Quality Inn for $89/night + tax. The room and lobby were very clean, but the stairwell areas were dirty and a bit smelly. The room that we stayed in had a single double bed and was a bit small in size. The room décor was mismatched.

We grabbed dinner at a place just down the street from the hotel, called Pete’s Famous Diner/Restaurant.  The menu was very large, and was defiantly busier than they expected, since they were understaffed.  Mike and I both had Calzones. The Calzones were very large and only were $5-$6 each.  We had planned to head to the Dairy Queen next door, but we were too full from the calzones.