Friends

October 19-22

After living in Alaska for over thirty years, Steve and I have friends who have relocated all over the USA. Ed, a rugby pal of Steve’s was our next stop after Boston where he and his wife, Kim and delightful daughter, Bernadette treated us like royalty. Of course Ed was still calling bullsh*# on Steve’s stories while Kim and I got reacquainted and Bern enjoyed a Halloween festival. 

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When Steve worked for the Anchorage Fire Department, he was on the Water Rescue Team. It can be dangerous work, especially when diving under the ice so one of the top public safety  instructors in the world, Butch Hendricks, was hired to train the team members. After the training he and Steve continued to correspond and we stopped by to visit him and his partner, Andrea’s home in Hurley, north of New York City in the Catskill Mountains. The property was previously a rest area for General Washington’s soldiers and there are still remnants of a bathing pool used by the men. The four foot stone walls erected to keep the pigs contained are still visible. 

A few miles down the hill is one of the homes of George Washington. The town of Hurley, briefly the capital of New York, is on the National Register of Historic Sites and claims a building where a reception for President Washington was held.

Mixing it up a bit, we stopped for coffee in the town of Woodstock. The concert site is outside of town and not accessible to the public so I could only hum a few notes of the Joni Mitchell song, Woodstock, and take a photo of a garish sign.