Sleepy Hollow Vacation: Day 7

Friday, October 29:

We got up at 6:45 a.m. again and were on the road by 8:15 a.m. after stopping at McDonalds to grab breakfast (love those McDonalds breakfasts... can you tell?). We had to cross the Tappan Zee bridge during morning rush hour so we allowed 1 hour to get to our destination just to be safe. Our first stop was the Kykuit visitor center. We hit no traffice so got there 35 minutes early!! We ate our breakfast and then browsed the gift shop. We also took some pictures around the visitor's center which is in Sleepy Hollow.

At 9:45 a.m. we boarded a shuttle bus to take us to Kykuit- the Rockeller Mansion- for a 3 hour tour. The home has 6 levels at 5,000 square feet each!! All I can say is "wow"!!

Also known as the John D. Rockefeller Estate, it is a 40-room house in Westchester County, New York, built by the oil businessman and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, and his son, John D Rockefeller, Jr., enriched with art collected by a third-generation family member, the Governor of New York and Vice-President of the United States, Nelson A. Rockefeller. It has been the home to four generations of the family. It overlooks the Hudson River and, in the distance, the New York skyline. The Classical Revival Georgian mansion took six years to complete and was refurbished some years after initial construction, being finally completed in its present form in 1913. The gardens are terraced, with formal axes, and include a Morning Garden, Grand Staircase, Japanese Garden, an Italian Garden, a Japanese-style brook, a Japanese Tea-house, a huge Oceanus fountain, a Temple of Aphrodite, loggia, and a semicircular rose garden. We were only allowed to take pictures outside.

For lunch we ate at the Eldorado Diner. It was very good!

After lunch, we went to tour the Lyndhurst Castle. The outside is gorgeous; the inside - well, lots of faux finishes (didn't really like it). And the funny thing is... it probably cost more to do the faux finishes than to have used "real" materials. It was a 60 minute tour.

The house was designed in 1838. When first built, the house was named "Knoll"; but critics immediately dubbed it "Paulding's Folly" because its extremely unusual design, including fanciful turrets and asymmetrical outline. Its limestone exterior was quarried at Sing Sing (now known as Ossining). The second owner, Merritt, doubled the house's size in 1864–65 and renamed it "Lyndenhurst" for the estate's linden trees. His new north wing added an imposing four-story tower, new porte-cochere (the old one was reworked as a glass walled vestibule) and a new dining room, two bedrooms, and servants quarters. Jay Gould purchased the home in 1880 for use as a country house until his death in 1892. It was Gould who shortened the house's name to today's Lyndhurst.

After the Lyndhurst Castle tour, we headed to Kingston Point Park to view the Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse. You could see the New York City skyline from there. The 1883 Lighthouse at Sleepy Hollow, formerly known as the Tarrytown Lighthouse or the Kingsland Point Lighthouse, is the only Caisson-style lighthouse on the river. Like all lighthouses on the Hudson, the 1883 Lighthouse at Sleepy Hollow was designed as a "family station," as the keeper and his family lived in the five-story structure year-round. The duties of the keeper were to perform the never-ending chores of maintaining the lighthouse and lamp and to operate the lamp every night as well as during inclement weather.

It was quite cold today - 50 degrees with wind gusts up to 40 mph - a bit of a chilly day. We still had a few hours before our evening event so we decided to go up to Peekskill and check into our hotel. Once we got there, guess what? No directions and no address!! I had to give Tracy a hard time about that because he was the one who planned this vacation! We did finally find it. It sat up on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. We had a room with a view of the river. After checking in, we relaxed for awhile: Tracy watched TV and I napped.

Sunset from our hotel room:

Around 7:00 p.m. we decided to get some dinner at Wendy's. Then it was time to head to the evening's entertainment: The Blaze at the Van Courtland Manor. Guess what? No directions once again! We finally found it but were 20 minutes late (we had tickets for a certain time). It turned out to be no problem. The Blaze was very cool!! They had almost 6,000 individually hand-carved, illuminated jack o’ lanterns. They had a path that you walked that took you past all the various displays. Each area had a category: sunflowers, snakes, faces, cats, spiders, Irish designs, dinosaurs, witches, pirates, ocean life, etc. The jack o' lanterns were carved and then hooked together to make the various things. It was the coolest thing ever! It took us almost 2 hours to walk the entire grounds! I got a little frustrated because one of my batteries was very, very low so I had brought a fully charged one (so I thought). It was almost dead also. So I had to be very particular about what I took pictures of. My camera did last until the very end! Yea!!