Martin Van Buren Is OK

Wicked Awesome Road Trip

Day 3
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Niagara Falls, NY, to Kinderhook, NY
322 miles

Our goal for today was to travel across much of New York state and hit the first of many dead prez fixes for this trip: Martin Van Buren’s Lindenwald in Kinderhook.

We seemed to have some trouble getting totally awake (by “we” I mean “me”) and had to make a stop pretty early in the drive to fuel up on sugar (Timbits!) and take a break. The weather wasn’t too great, either, so driving wasn’t very fun.

Boring driving

Boring driving with rain

We lucked out with our timing, and that early morning stop (plus a crazy long wait for a turkey sandwich at an afternoon stop) put us at Lindenwald just as a tour group was finishing up. If the group had stayed longer, we would have seen just a little of the house, but because they were leaving, we got the last tour of the day, and it was just us. Score!

MVB’s house apparently went through many iterations before being acquired by the NPS and was even a retirement home. Somehow, the original wallpaper in the dining room remained intact. I love details like that. I didn’t know much about Martin Van Buren. I always thought his name was cool. My niece and I said it would be a good name for a dog, and that it would be hilarious to shout out the door, “Martin Van Buren, quit pooping in the flowers!” His nickname, “Old Kinderhook,” was said to have inspired the expression “OK.”

Original wallpaper is more than OK.

 

MVB’s shaving kit, but not his fan

I love the style of this house. Unfortunately, the grass had just been cut, and we took some with us as an unwanted souvenir.

Spidey enjoys biographies.

After our tour, we drove in to the town of Kinderhook, which was absolutely adorable (and unfortunately of which I have no photos). As the name suggests, the town is of Dutch descent, and the architecture was so different from what I’ve seen before. I could totally picture living there.

We paid our respects to MVB and Mrs. VB and checked out the exterior of the Ichabod Crane schoolhouse. Apparently Washington Irving spent some time at Lindenwald and based the characters in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on some townsfolk.

It looks like something is missing from the top of MVB’s grave marker.

Not much to it, but it was right down the road from Lindenwald, so why not stop?

We ate at a Greek diner near our hotel for dinner. We enjoyed the food, but it took forever, so I played with the mirror image setting on my camera.

We spent the night at a Hampton Inn near the Albany airport. Somewhere in the vicinity a bridge was being demolished–a task that was worked on overnight–and we could hear every bit of the destruction. My mom called the front desk to find out what the horrible noise was, and they told us about the bridge and that they didn’t have another room where we could move away from the noise. They did say they could comp our room. My mom said, “Well, that would make us feel better.” I love my mom! We all pretty much fell asleep immediately after learning of our free room, so I guess we did feel better.