Tarrytown & Kinderhoook, NY- Sunday July 14, 2024

       We were brainstorming ideas for places to go for breakfast this morning when we remembered Horsemen Bagels in Sleepy Hollow, and we decided that would be fun to try.   It was a good choice.  The bagels were nearly twice the size of the ones from Tim Horton's and the strawberry cream cheese was homemade with real pieces of strawberries in it.  The place doubled as a Carvel ice cream store, and Julie was tickled to see both "Cookiepuss" and "Fudgie the Whale" again.

     Since we were back in Sleepy Hollow, we went looking for a few things we missed yesterday.  We had driven across the larger bridge called the Headless Horseman's Bridge, where the climax of the tale was supposed to have taken place, but we didn't find the right perspective to see the bridge itself well.  While we were driving around yesterday, we had missed the large metal sculpture of the Horseman and Ichabod Crane, but we ended up finding it today and stopped for a picture.  Julie also revisited a nearby stone she had driven by with the horse chase scene on it.  This one was by the parking lot for the Rockefeller family estate called Kykuit.

     We drove out of Tarrytown and headed north on the east side of the Hudson.  We drove through Poughkeepsie and headed to the town of Kinderhook, where President Martin Van Buren's home is.  This town is on the east side of the Hudson but not far from where Emma is.  We drove past the President's home but didn't stop.  We were headed to the Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse.  It was built in 1850 and the story was published in 1820, so it doesn't take complicated math to see that this building couldn't have actually been Ichabod Crane's.  However, when it was built, it replaced the one-room schoolhouse that was run by a schoolmaster by the name of Jesse Merwin.  This Merwin is supposed to have been the inspiration for the character that Washington Irving named Ichabod Crane.  Irving had spent some time in Kinderhook, and no less than President Martin Van Buren himself testified that Merwin was the indeed inspiration for the character of Ichabod Crane.  (The name of the character may have come from the 1812 officer who had that unusual moniker too.)

    The schoolhouse itself was closed today, but we took a while to walk around the grounds.  It sits on the estate of Luykas Van Alen a Dutch settler whose tidy brick house stands nearby.  If you recall, yesterday we wrote that there were competing claims over who was the inspiration for the character of Katrina Van Tassel.  Some say that Katrina Van Alen from this Kinderhook family was the original Katrina.

     Anyway, even though the buildings were not open, it was still nice to stroll around the grounds here and read the historical signs.  Julie found some raspberries growing in the bushes but told us they were sour after trying them.  As we walked behind the brick Van Alen house, it seems like several of us walked through some strange mud because we got a sooty blackness on the parts of our feet that peeked through our sandals and Crocs.   

     After we had explored enough in the hot sun, we drove past the Van Buren home again.  We didn't stop there because it was past lunch time.  We had promised Abby that we would have lunch at the McDonalds near Emma that has a Playland.  While she was still climbing and playing, Julie took Emma to a nearby store for some necessary things for her apartment.  We made one more stop with Emma- the Guaranteed Irish store in East Durham.  The girls got some Irish treats here, and we headed towards Emma's apartment to drop her off.

     We said our goodbyes to Em in her kitchen, and we headed for home.  It was after 3:00 when we left Emma's.  Once again, though, it took us much longer than the four and a half hours that the GPS said.  We made several stops, including at the Mohawk Valley Welcome Center, one of several regional centers run by the state.  This one was a disappointment because even though they had a cool looking playground with an Erie Canal theme, the gates to it had padlocks on them.  Abby was certainly disappointed that she didn't get to play there, especially  since she could see some disobedient bigger kids that had climbed over the gate to get to the playground.  It didn't seem very welcoming for a so-called "Welcome Center."  None of these facilities have racks of brochures anymore either.  We miss being able to pick up a handful for reading in the car and possible future scrapbooking.  We figure paper brochures in general are about to go the way of the CD, the cassette tape and the dinosaurs.  For dinner, we stopped at a Zebb's near Syracuse.  We used to like going to the one in Orchard Park, and hadn't been to one since that closed.  Abby told the waitress here all about her iPad (actually, an Amazon Fire tablet that she uses in the car) and as always she had to give her a hug when we left.