Road Trip 2011: Day 9 of 20 (Secaucus, NJ to West Point, NY to Hamptons, NY)

We drove north, up the Hudson River, from Secaucus, NJ to West Point, NY

US Military Academy Visitor Center

West Point Museum

We went across the street to Schades for lunch. Adam loved the Hawaiian pizza and orders it all the time now.

Across the Hudson River and down the east side on the way to Long Island

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

We went a good way out of our way to this Lobster Roll place only to find it closed

We checked into our motel fairly late but the kids said they were hungry so we headed back out to eat at the Hampton Bays Diner

Cheeseburger and chicken fingers for the boys. At least my gyro was good.

There was a big car wreck in the intersection in front of the restaurant just as we walked outside

Ocean View Terrace Motel

Wednesday June 8, 2011

The plan for the day was to go to Long Island. We had a reservation to take the last ferry from Orient Point on Long Island to New London, Connecticut. My gut told me to just get up and head to Long Island, but I really wanted to see the Hudson River Valley and West Point. We had such a good time in Annapolis and the Naval Academy that I thought the trip up the Hudson would be worth trying for.

There were some nice views on the way to West Point, but in most places the trees blocked the view. We thought we got to the town of West Point, but the Military Academy Visitor Center is actually in a little village called Highland Falls. Compared to Annapolis, the setting was a big let down. The village was tiny and nothing was really going on.

We toured the visitor center and the museum and they were nice. You can only tour the academy on a guided tour and it seemed like it would be pretty limited. If we had more time we would have done the tour, but with our time crunch we skipped it.

We drove across the street to a little restaurant called Schades and had some pizza and pasta for lunch. It was good. Adam became a big time fan of Hawaiian pizza.

We drove east across the Hudson River and then drove south along the river. There were some nice views. There are a number of attractions in the area and I really would have liked to have toured Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate.

We stopped by the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and looked around a little, but they were in the process of closing so we had to leave before we wanted. The area along the Hudson is really beautiful.

Now it was on to Long Island. I had hoped we could avoid New York City traffic, but all our dilly dallying cost us and put us right in the middle of some terrible traffic. Our GPS kept firing off about traffic accidents and recommending re-routing. We must have re-routed 5 times and I'm not so sure it really helped. It was supposed to take us about 3.5 hours to get from West Point to Montauk at the tip of Long Island. We spent about 5 hours and were still an hour away from Montauk when we gave up. We rescheduled the ferry reservation and stopped in Hampton Bays for the night.

We saw some things but it was pretty much a wasted day. I got greedy, took a chance, and it backfired.