Zoom Flume and the Catskills- Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The weather has been hot (though not as bad as the rest of the country seems to be getting)  and it was a great day for a morning at a waterpark.  After breakfast, we left our hotel and went to Zoom Flume Water Park in the Catskills.  The two girls tried nearly all of the slides, and Julie went down many of them too.  Scott brought some books to read, and was busy taking pictures.  (He had to pay nearly as much as the others to get in though.  That was no good deal).    The girls seemed to like the Black Vortex slide, which takes them through a darkened tube;  They rode it twice.  Julie liked the Wild River because the three of them were able to come down the slide in the same large tube.  The three also took their time on the Lazy River.  The girls were both brave enough to take the steep Canyon Plunge slide, even though they said it gave them a wedgie because they went down so fast.  The three liked the Zoom Flume, because they were able to ride mats down.  Of course, Anna and Emma finished in the wave pool, which is always a favorite of Emma’s.  We stayed about two hours, and were willing to stay a while longer, but both girls were ready to go on to other things.

We drove on to East Durham, which may or may not have an Irish American Heritage Museum.  The AAA book seems to be wrong on this point, and seems to actually be describing one in Albany.   East Durham may have had one at one time, or it may be getting one.   It does have a lot of Irish flags and shamrocks on the couple of businesses in town and we’ve heard that the town is much more at festival times.  We probably picked the wrong place for lunch because it just seemed like a townie diner inside, and not a spectacular one at that.  We got directions to the Irish community center, which seemed to have an Irish museum in it at one point, but it is closed now.  Up on a hillside park behind it is an interesting site.  There is a very large map of Ireland built with bricks on the ground.  The flags of the counties and the provinces are flying from many flagpoles on the map.  The map is so big that it’s as big as a parking lot, and it’s hard to see what it actually is from the ground.  The hill that is right behind it offers a nice view, but oddly, the map then has to be viewed “upside down” with the north at the bottom and the south at the top.  On the same hillside is an Irish cottage, complete with a thatched roof.  It may function as a museum at times, but no one was there today.  Anna tried the latch on the top half of the “Dutch door.”  It swung open.  We peeked in and saw that it was appropriately furnished inside, but we didn’t want to go any further for fear that we might be breaking in.  It seemed odd, all by itself.  There was a sign at the road that said it was the future site of an Irish village, but we’re not sure what the plans actually are.  Before we left East Durham we stopped at a gift shop called “Guaranteed Irish.”  It actually was quite a bit larger than it looked from the front, and had a lot to browse through.  Scott paid more than he probably should have for several CDs.

There was still a lot of time left, but we were without a plan at that point.  We were so near to Catskill Park that we decided to drive through.  We set Lizzie the GPS for “Phoenicia” and let her take us through the mountain roads.  Scott and Julie listened to the new CDs and enjoyed watching the trees and mountain scenery while Anna and Emma took a much needed nap after the weather’s heat and the cold water wore them out this morning.  We passed through Hunter and near Devil’s Tombstone, though we couldn’t find an explanation for that colorful name.  We did drive through Phoenicia and stopped at a shop that specialized in kaleidoscopes, among other things.   We passed a number of odd places, and enjoyed the journey.

When we finally came out of the Catskills and rolled into Kingston, it was about 4:00.  Most of the tour places were closing, and we missed a chance to take the boat cruise on the river.  We did stop at the visitor’s center and walked from there down to the Hudson River.  The girls bought some duck food from a vendor.  When they threw the food to the ducks, a gang of Canadian geese swam in and started biting the ducks to get the food from them.  The girls were surprised at how mean they were.

From Kingston, we followed Route 9W north, and when we passed through Saugerties, we saw a sign for a lighthouse.  Not knowing what to expect, we turned towards it.  We parked in a little lot, and followed a very nicely kept little path.  The sign said it was a half-mile trail, but it seemed a bit longer than that.  It went through a wooded area, and ended up in the river bank vegetation, so there was a variety of terrain and plants.  It took us down along the river, of course, and it ended at the lighthouse.  (We all thought this walk was much enjoyable then the trail-that-isn’t at the Kaaterskill Falls, yesterday.)  The lighthouse doesn’t look like a traditional cylindrical lighthouse at all.  It is a 1870s brick house, but has a light installed at the top of it.  Apparently a lighthouse keeper lives in it, and a few rooms are available for a B&B stay.  We saw a club of kayakers, who ended up getting into a shouting fight with another boater.   The walk and the lighthouse was certainly one of the best parts of our day.

We continued up Route 9W, to our hotel in Coxsackie (which we have learned is pronounced Cook-SOCK-ee, and not, um, phonetically).  The girls got Chinese food and we got Subway and went back to our room to call it a day.