Cape Cod Lights

Lots of great sites on Cape Cod. Several good lighthouses and at one we went up in. Not cripple friendly, but I made it to the top. Cape Cod was very different than I expected. Lots of trees, lots of hills, many private residences, and many services I didn't expect such as a theater for example.

Cape Cod Visitor Center

The Cape Cod visitor center had a few exhibits and a video about how the cape was formed. The video wasn't too good, however the information we got from the ranger was fantastic. After we finished visiting the sites he recommended we realized how good his intel was. He recommended sites great for our tastes without ever asking us a question.

Cape Cod Visitor Center

The Cape Cod visitor center had a few exhibits and a video about how the cape was formed. The video wasn't too good, however the information we got from the ranger was fantastic. After we finished visiting the sites he recommended we realized how good his intel was. He recommended sites great for our tastes without ever asking us a question.

Kayaks

For the kayakers out there. These two kayaks were nylon-skinned wooden-structure built. Indian style? I've never seen anything like them. After taking these an older woman on a bike said something about me looking at her kayaks. I didn't realize it, but she was watching me looking at her boats from afar. Turns out her husband built them, one was 16', the other 18' and they weighed about 35# each. Pretty neat.

Leaves

We are finally starting to see some changes in the leaves.

Odd Truck

Traveling around the countryside you see odd-looking things sometimes. This truck cab on a truck certainly fit as odd-looking.

Wal Mart and Trains

We stopped at a Wal Mart somewhere along the way for the evening. I'm not sure what town it was in. Within 15 minutes of arriving a train went by on the edge of the parking lot. It was a passenger train, uh oh, there will be more of those. Sure enough every 10 minutes or so another train passed. They appeared to stop around midnight and we didn't have any trouble sleeping. Also, the oddest Wal Mart ever. It was built into a strip mall. On one side of the strip mall Wal Mart had a sign and entrance, just 20' wide, like all the other stores. On the backside however there was a more traditional Wal Mart entrance, but you had to pass the shipping docks to get there. Weird. You can see the train rail equipment in the distance in one of the photos.

Lets have fun in traffic

After leaving Liberty Park we headed out for Cape Cod, MA. Minutes before 5pm we headed out on the roadways. At first we made great headway, then suddenly we came to a stop not far from the George Washington Bridge. For the next two hours we might've traveled 5 miles. Then traffic finally loosened up near the Bronx and we were able to make some headway for the next hour, although still at very limited speeds. Once we reached CT we were finally near the speed limit, but still with sections of 5-10mph. Lisa took some photos with the big camera, but I failed to properly document this section with the cell phone, I can't figure out why…

NY more

NY

Liberty Park

Then, the largest surprise of the trip thus far, we ended up at Liberty Park just outside of New York, NY. This is where you ride a ferry to the Statue of Liberty. We didn't ride the ferry, but we took lots of photos of the area. I don't care much for large cities, however I must say NY is incredibly photogenic. In fact, I think one could take photos for weeks just from Liberty Park and not run out of subjects. There was also a partially restored central railroad terminal. We probably should've spent a little more time around it, but we were concerned about bring in NY at 5pm, on a Friday, in the rain, and trying to drive a giant truck camper around. A fear we later found to be well-founded. On one spot on the lawn there was two lines created that pointed to the site of the Twin Towers that fell in NY. The other end of Liberty Park was a great place to view the Statue of Liberty along with a nice flag display. This is where Liberation Monument is. More cell phone panoramas too! Obviously I'm amazed at the quality of the iphone's photos. These have no post-processing. If I had more time I could do so much more with them, but that's what the hundreds of photos we are taking with the SLR cameras are for I suppose.
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/liberty.html

Sandy Hook, The End

The area also looked to be perfectly positioned to catch migrating birds, however with the weather there wasn't much bird activity. The local Audubon Society had a store here, but we didn't visit it.

The pano photo of the large buildings is of homesites. The area was very neat. I'd like to have more time to visit.

Sandy Hook Nike

A Sandy Hook Battery

Fort Hancock was the nation's first disappearing gun battery and helped protect New York Harbor during WWII. Later Sandy Hook was a site for the Nike Missle Defense System.
http://www.thefortatsandyhook.net/history.asp

Sandy Hook Lighthouse and Fort Hancock

We headed north to visit Sandy Hook lighthouse. Little did we know there was much more there than the lighthouse and the area is steeped in history. This trip, being relatively unplanned, doesn't have specific destinations, but rather we are traveling visiting whatever pops up in front of us. On Sandy Hook we found Fort Hancock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hancock,_New_Jersey

My pano of this one I missed a few images...

Navesink Final

In the bookstore I found a great book about lighthouses called American Lighthouses. I probably should have bought it onsite, but intend to order it when I get home. However, after our visits to other sites since this one I've learned how many lighthouses there are in the northeast. There are an incredible amount of lighthouses!

The pano image of the navesink lighthouse was stitched together from many images taken with an iphone. Pretty incredible for a phone eh?

Navesink Exhibits

There were also exhibits about early maritime activities, and naturally fresnel lenses. One of the neatest things was the image of a compass with all directions listed on it.

Navesink Twin Lights

On top of the mountain in the distance you can make out two towers. These are the Navesink Twin Towers lighthouse. At the top of a semi-steep curvy road you could visit the lighthouse and its museum. As is always the case there was a reason I couldn't climb the lighthouse. In this case the excuse given was inclement weather. I was surprised at how good the museum was. There were exhibits not only about this particular lighthouse, but about Marconi and his work with wireless transmissions. He had a site at where the near the Navesink lighthouse site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi