Cooperstown–Baseball Hall of Fame

This was a special stop Gary had been looking forward to for a long time.  We had visited the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio a number of years ago and had wanted to get to Cooperstown ever since.  And it did not disappoint. Cooperstown long ago became synonymous with the Baseball Hall of Fame. You are far more likely to hear “he’ll be in Cooperstown one day” than you ever would “he’ll be in the Hall of Fame”.  The building itself is not particularly imposing inside or out, but the contents are awesome.

Whereas the Football Hall has bronze busts, the Baseball Hall has plaques. The first floor houses the Plaque Gallery. Each plaque captures in just a few short words the very essence of each hall of fame player.  The first floor also houses Induction Row which contains items related to the most recent inductees  We visited the Hall just after this year’s induction ceremony weekend.  Ron Santo of the Chicago Cubs and Barry Larkin were this year’s inductees.  Gary took pictures of many of the plaques and the ones that were the most memorable to him including this one of “Sparky” Anderson, the last manager to lead our Detroit Tigers to the World Championship..

The second floor has a gallery dedicated to probably the most famous of the original five inductees --  Babe Ruth.  There a great portrait in the art gallery of “The Babe” in the batter’s box pointing to where he is going to hit a home run in the outfield bleachers.  There was also a second floor section for sportswriters and radio announcers, two of whom were famous to fans of the Tigers – Joe Falls and Ernie Harwell.

 

 

 

The third floor had a section dedicated to Hank Aaron, a TV monitor continuously playing Abbot and Costello’s “Whose on First”, a display case of all the World Series championship rings, and a section dedicated to the many batting and pitching records of baseball.  But maybe best of all, I got a photo of a future hall of famer.  Isn’t he a handsome one?

Our pictures for Cooperstown are at:  https://picasaweb.google.com/116107386675555024952/CooperstownBaseballHallOfFame

We have been backlogged uploading our picture albums but have recently uploaded several since our last album of Lancaster, PA.  And we are working on the rest of them as well.

Albany, New York

As we drove quite a way to see the baseball game in Troy, NY, we decided we would also take in Albany, the capital of New York State,  Albany is on the banks of the Hudson River as is Troy.  We obtained a walking tour map at the visitor’s center and explored the city on foot. We were very much struck by the enormity and architecture of the complex of government buildings in Albany.  In many respects, it reminded us of Brasilia, the capital of the country of Brazil, not the government complex of just a US State.  When one thinks of of certain states having fiscal problems, including New York State, you just look around and think here is part of the reason why.

Baseball in the Hudson Valley

We moved on from our site in Vermont to the Cooperstown area, about an hour east of Albany, NY.  On Tuesday, we went to a baseball game in Troy, NY between the Tri-City ValleyCats and the Connecticut Tigers.  Both teams play in the New York – Penn League which is a “short season” league, basically for players who were recently drafted out of colleges and are beginning their professional careers.  For some of these players it will be their one and only stint at professional baseball.  For others, they will be assigned to the Class A teams next year for a full season of professional ball.

We wanted to see some of the talent the Detroit Tigers had drafted (they also have a Rookie League team in Lakeland, Florida).   There were a a few players who appeared to have the talent to advance in the organization and conceivably one day make it to “the show”.

The game was a lot of fun.  This park had lively music clips between every pitch and some sort of fan activity after each half inning.

We aren’t on a tour of baseball stadiums, but we now have been to games in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maine, and New York this baseball season.  And we probably still have a few games to go,

A Relaxing Week in Vermont

Ah, it was nice “to take a week off” and relax a lot.  We camped on South Hero Island, the largest of Lake Champlain’s islands.  The Lake is about 125 miles long and defines the border between much of western Vermont and eastern upper New York State.  We were unable to catch a glimpse of “Champ”, Lake Champlain’s equivalent of “Nessie” or the Loch Ness Monster, but then we were being mighty lazy.  We made it to the pool a few times and played par 3 golf a couple times.  And we caught up on some chores such as washing and cleaning the motor home.

We traveled three times into Burlington, Vermont’s largest city.  It is a lakefront college town as the home of the University of Vermont.  It is yet another town we have visited with a vibrant downtown shopping, dining and entertainment district.  Maybe we had become too adjusted to the Detroit metro model where the city moved out to the suburbs with shopping malls and very little “downtown” anywhere in the city or suburbs.  Burlington is only a town of around 40,000 people but had a dining district of at least 20 blocks, the core of which was a pedestrian only street filled with sidewalk cafes and shops.  And it wasn’t just busy on the weekend.  There were huge crowds there on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

Back in the USA

After a month of traveling about eastern Canada, we are now in Vermont for a week of relaxation from all of the touring we have been doing.  We thought we would take a moment and reflect on what we will miss and won’t miss about Canada:

What we will miss:

• Incredibly beautiful scenery
• The natural wonder of the Bay of Fundy
• Fantastic seafood
• Courteous and helpful people who would ask if we needed help if we had our map out
• Great cities – St John, Moncton, Charlottetown, Halifax, Quebec, Montreal
• History that parallels that of the United States, but is also quite unique

And what won’t we miss:

• Cell phone roaming charges of 65 cents a minute
• Data roaming charges that were even more ridiculous (we turned off our data services to keep from possibly using them) – why does cell and data have to cost so much just because you cross the northern border?
• Poutine – although fascinating to try, a dish that is french fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy, is a heart attack waiting to happen.
• Getting light out at 4:15 a.m.
• Fuel prices that are about a dollar a gallon higher for diesel and about a dollar and half higher for gas.
• Sales tax as high as 15% in total in some Provinces.
• The transaction fees on credit card usage – $3 per $100 after they already make money on the buy/sell spread.
• The MOOSE we were excited to see but never saw in spite of the many warning signs.

Montreal

From Quebec City we moved on up the St Lawrence River valley to Montreal.  Once again Gary downloaded us some walking tours and found out how to access the Montreal subway system.  That is basically all we ever need – some walking tour info, a public transportation system, and away we go.  The first day of touring, we went mainly through the old city area.  On almost every walking tour in every city, there are churches on the itinerary. And for good reason.  Churches do represent some of the most unique examples of architecture in almost every city.  And usually they are open and free to enter and tour.  The Basilica of Notre Dame had an admission charge so I just waited until the next day and went to the Saturday afternoon Mass.  There was just one problem.  The Mass was in French and I really didn’t understand a word of it.  We have found that our knowledge of Portuguese, another sister romance language to French, has done nothing to help us with the language here in Quebec.  But we did learn our obligatory: “je ne parle pas francais” and “parlez-vous anglais”  One thing we noticed about Quebec was that there were no road and street signs in English.  In every other Province we have been in from Ontario to Nova Scotia, all signage is in both English and French.

On our second day of touring Montreal, we concentrated on the downtown area.  We don’t know what this building is, but we are sure the architect is a cat lover like us with these cat ears for a roof.  We spent some time in the Fine Arts Museum.  We enjoyed the section of Inuit art.  We also explored the “underground city”.  Instead of shopping malls with huge surrounding parking lots, Montreal has a downtown section of shopping that is mainly in the basements of many of the downtown buildings all of which are interconnected with around 20 miles of “tunnels” all of which access the subway system as well,   This shopping area is huge.  It is shopping mall after shopping mall after shopping mall all connected together.   It is a very unique way to have an inner city shopping district.

Montreal pretty much marks the end of our “cities and seafood” tour.  It has stretched from Florida all the way up the US east coast, into the Atlantic Provinces of Canada and now through Quebec.  We have toured many large and amazing cities over the last three months,  We now look forward to a less intense period of travel through Vermont, New York State and back to the Midwest to visit family and friends.

Quebec City

As we had already visited New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, there wasn’t a lot we wanted to see on our way from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia to Quebec City.  We generally like to travel for a day and then stay put for a week or two, but in this case we just put the pedal to the metal and drove for three straight days.  It is a long way from Northeast Nova Scotia  to any big city.  In New Brunswick we followed along the St John River valley, many times with views of the river.  We were up above the northern tip of Maine when we crossed from New Brunswick into the Province of Quebec.  Form that border up to the St Lawrence River at Riviere du Loup, it was probably the roughest stretch of road we had been on during the past year.  It was washboard rough in lots of sections, likely from frost heaving in the Spring.  In Riviere du Loup, we caught our first glimpses of the St Lawrence River.  There aren’t any bridges northeast of Quebec City as the river is just too wide for them – at least 10 miles of width and more all the way out to the sea.

In Quebec City, we stayed on the south side of the River in the city of Levis across from Quebec City.  From there, we rode the ferry across the river.  What an amazing view.  It was easy to see why the French chose this spot for one of their first settlements, and one of the oldest European settlements in North America.  It is on the highest rock top along the grand river.  It was then fortified with huge walls making it very much a fortress city.  It has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We like Frommers.com, the website of the travel book company, for its city walking tours.  We followed their walking tours through the old city, founded in the late 1608.  The skyline of Quebec City is dominated by the Chateau Frontenac and its copper roofs.  It was built in the late 1800s by the Canadian Pacific Railway.  As shown in the picture to the right, the main roof is being re-coppered this year.  It is still copper color rather than the typical green oxidation.  We toured the old city one day and went out through the ancient gates of the walled to city to tour newer parts of the city the next.