East Coast visits and Hyde Park

John and Helen Lucid with us 

We’ve been visiting friends and relatives for the last four days. We drove to Webster, NY or Friday and spent time with Val, our former sister-in-law and her family. We had a nice barbecue dinner and lots of reminisces from previous times. On Saturday, we drove to Hopewell Junction, NY to meet Greg’s parents for the first time. We had a good time, learning about their past, and having dinner on the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, NY. We lucked out, there were hot air balloons being launched from nearby. 

Springfield

Sunday we did our one tourist visit for these four days, we went to Hyde Park and Franklin D Roosevelt's Presidential Library (the first to be created). There are a lot of things to visit here, but we only had about three hours, so we concentrated on the Museum and Springfield, Roosevelt's home. The tour of the home is excellent, giving both it's history and amusing stories (like when King George VI saw Franklin's collection of British political cartoons, which Eleanor had asked to be removed before his arrival). We also spent what time we could at the Museum, focusing on his programs to try to end the Great Depression as well as prepare the country for World War II. We could have spent considerably more time here. 

Springfield Living Room with wheel chair

We continued on to New Britain, Connecticut to visit with Mark and Steve. They invited Darcy, Greg and Gail for dinner. As usual, we talked a lot about traveling and mutual friends. Finally, on Monday, we paid a visit to Ruth and her daughter, Emily in Reading, Massachusetts.  She had just been with us to France, but we got to see her new condominium, which was quite nice.

Do you know it's hard to be on your best behavior for four days in a row?