Oct 27 2008

I’m in the motor coach overlooking the Hudson River at West Point, where we’ve camped for 3 nights. It’s been like old home week for Thom, connecting with many classmates. Army beat Louisiana Tech at Saturday’s football game which was the wettest football game we’ve ever attended! Our boys have experienced the life of a cadet here, with a tour of the mess hall, Grant Hall, the obstacle course, the game parade, and tail gating before/during the game. We’ve had a full day of Calvert School today, so we’ve even studied like cadets.
Thanks to Casey and Ester Haskins for a fabulous dinner in their beautiful home, and we enjoyed seeing their son, Aaron who’s a yearling now. It was also a great surprise finding Sam & Carol Johnson here. Thanks for breakfast, a great tour, and your laundry facilities! We had an enjoyable walk with Les Knotts and his sons Aaron and Tyler. Thom also caught up with Tom Gerard, Tim McDonald, Pat Ortland, and Mike White.
The only negative thing that happened was when Robby and Will were wrestling on The Plain on our walk back to the RV. Will ran to tell us that Robby was hurt, and sure enough, Robby sprained his ankle. Thom piggybacked him to the RV, removed his sock, and found a baseball-sized ankle. After X-rays, they determined it wasn’t broken, but now he’s on crutches for a week! Well, we have lots of school to do with his foot elevated this coming week.
So let’s see, after my last update, we spent a great day in Boston. With 6 of us, we opted for the trolley tour with 17 stops of historic Boston and Cambridge. Sights included the Boston Harbor, Paul Revere’s house, The Old North Church (1 lantern by land; 2 by sea…remember?), Breed’s Hill (misnomer Bunker Hill), The Boston Common, Fenway Park, and many others. We rode the T to avoid traffic and parking, which is Boston’s subway. Outside of taking one wrong train, we did pretty well and the boys experienced commuting at 5pm…a foreign concept after spending 3 years at Ft. Greely! Mort, Sarah, and Nathan Orlov treated us to a delicious home-cooked meal and we had a great visit after a 14-year gap. We caught up on laundry and school at Hanscom AFB’s RV Park (best Laundromat on our journey so far!).
After Boston, we headed south to Newport where we viewed the mansions along Cliff Walk on a glorious, sunny day after finishing schoolwork. Nice summer cottages those New Yorkers built over a hundred years ago! The kids loved the scary Halloween Festival set up near our RV Park by the naval base with graveyard and pirate scenes. Seems like there’s something to be seen everywhere we go!
We stopped at Mystic, CT to walk the tall ships and visit the shipyards of that celebrated era. The boys learned how ropes, sails, masts, and ships were built hundreds of years ago. We met David, a 13-year old boy traveling by sailboat around the world with his parents Rosemary and David. He’s homeschooling in the 8th grade Calvert program just like Robby! He’s currently working as an apprentice in an old printer’s shop at Mystic for a few weeks.