Road Warrior Momma: #Vanderbilt

Day 10 –June 6, 2014

Philadelphia, PA – Poughkeepsie, NY

187 miles – 2 1/3 hours

Although I love a free breakfast when we’re on the road, it’s hard to watch the kids load up on carbs and sugar – whipped cream and chocolate chip covered waffle anyone? Gross.

We drove through Trenton on our way north, so we could check off yet another capitol. We seriously almost just did a drive-by. What a dump that city is – although the capitol building was impressive. I managed to persuade the kids to at least walk in, but honestly, that’s all we did. I just took a quick picture and got out of Dodge.

Then we drove by Princeton University, because I was curious to see the campus. It’s beautiful. The children however, were not impressed, so we kept on moving.

We got to our hotel in Poughkeepsie by 2:00 p.m., but they had a wedding in-house and our room wasn’t ready. Since I’d scheduled four places to visit in Hyde Park (10 minutes north) tomorrow, I decided to knock one of them out today, so we could get to Albany (and see Daddy) quicker.

We toured the Vanderbilt Mansion, which was the home of Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt. The house is of course amazing, although it is considerably smaller than the Biltmore. Apparently this branch of the Vanderbilt family was rather “conservative.” Audrey seemed to really enjoy the tour and spent most of it trying to impress our guide with her questions. He was very good natured about it, and she never left his side.

In the parking lot after the tour, we were approached by a gentlemen who’s from our town in Georgia. He saw the dealer logo on my car and left a note on the dashboard. It was a little strange, but I wasn’t scared. I think he was just an elderly gentleman who wanted to connect with someone from back home. He retired to Hyde Park, which is peculiar, because I thought everyone headed south for that milestone.

After checking in, we had dinner at the Coyote Grill – I kid you not. Dinner was good. Camden was particularly tickled, because his hot dog turned out to be a foot long. He was so excited! Oh, to be young and so easily impressed once again. After dinner we ventured out to the local Barnes and Noble, which is huge. I think it was the biggest one I’ve ever been. We killed an hour there before retiring to the hotel pool. That didn’t last long, as Hunter and Audrey got into a huge fight that produced some shocked looks on the faces of two mothers who were in the pool with their young ones. Just wait ladies – it’s coming. They won’t always be so little, sweet and compliant.