Day 60 New York into Vermont

After today, there are only ten days left and eight states remaining!

I continued eastward on Monday towards Cooperstown NY, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. I paid the entrance fee just to take a quick look inside and spent 30 minutes walking through the displays and the plaques honoring players and managers who have been elected for inclusion in the Hall of Fame. I could have spent all day but couldn’t leave the dogs very long. I walked through the town, which is very much a tourist trap with many baseball souvenir shops. I walked into Doubleday Field, where they played the annual Hall of Fame Game from 1940 to 2008, after which it was discontinued due to scheduling difficulties.

Cooperstown is at the southern tip of Ostego Lake, shaped much like the finger lakes, but smaller. Still, it is an active recreation area with a small marina and a lighthouse that serves no functional purpose.

From there, I drove to Albany and walked through the Governor Nelson Rockefeller Empire State Plaza, a very large complex with modern buildings built south of the State Capitol Building. I drove a mile further into the city to the large Washington Park, where I gave the dogs some exercise. Albany is a very nice city, in some respects more enjoyable than visiting New York City.

I drove north alongside the Hudson River, and crossed over to the other side to Troy, NY. There was a welcoming sign claiming that Troy is the “birthplace of Uncle Sam.” I had to research that claim, and it turns out to be very true. This is because Samuel Wilson, a Troy resident who supplied barrels of beef to the U.S. Army during the War of 1812, was nicknamed “Uncle Sam”. The barrels were stamped “U.S.”, but soldiers jokingly referred to the provisions as “Uncle Sam’s.” So I would guess Marvel Comics named the second “Captain America” character Sam Wilson on purpose!

It was a short trip from Troy to Vermont. My first stop was to drive through an actual covered bridge, and the directions to the closest one took me past an odd obelisk shaped structure in Bennington. This was the Bennington Battle Monument, which is the tallest building in the state of Vermont, commemorating the Battle of Bennington, which was a turning point in the Revolutionary War. On August 16, 1777, Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys, the New Hampshire Militia, and volunteers from Massachusetts defeated British troops charged with capturing provisions stored at the Bennington military supply depot—the site where the monument stands today. The monument was dedicated in 1891 with a ceremony led by President Benjamin Harrison and a gathering of tens of thousands of onlookers. I took the elevator up near the top, which offered views toward New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

From there I drove to my campsite at the Molly Stark State Park. Molly Stark was the wife of General John Stark, a Revolutionary War figure. Although she was very accomplished herself, she is perhaps best known for one of her husband’s rallying cries: “There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!”

Photos include the Hall of Fame, a few plaques from some of my favorite players, the Doubleday Field, the lighthouse, a few pictures from Albany (the state capitol building, the Egg Center for the Performing Arts, the Cultural Education Center – behind the fountain – and a statue in Washington Park), the covered bridge, and the Bennington Monument.