Hudson River Valley, New York

The Culinary Institute of America, in nearby Hyde Park, the premier college in America for aspiring chefs, is closed for a student summer break.  This was a significant disappointment, because we wanted to attend a tour of the campus, and I might have even taken a class.  There are four restaurants on the site, all staffed by students, one of which we were planning to visit, but they were shut as well.  We did visit the campus, which is extensive and features some really impressive architecture.

Our plan is to return to the Northeast some upcoming fall season to see the New England color changes that are so spectacular, and to include a visit to the CIA campus at that time.

Also in Hyde Park is the former home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States.

The first-floor interior of FDR's home featured an impressive library, but the air-conditioning was on the blink, so we never got a look at the superheated second floor, which included a dumbwaiter contraption that allowed Roosevelt to move his wheelchair from floor to floor.

The Roosevelts were one of the great political families of their day.  (Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president, was a fifth cousin of FDR and an uncle of first lady Eleanor.)  Franklin was a prominent Democratic politician when he contracted polio and lost most of the use of his legs.  He was elected to the presidency in 1932 in spite of his disability, defeating Herbert Hoover in the midst of the Great Depression.  He was at the helm when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and he presided over the nation during most of the war effort, dying from a stroke in his third presidential term just before the Axis powers surrendered.

FDR's list of accomplishments is long.  Because it was the run on banks that had triggered the rapid collapse of the economy and led to the Great Depression (since bank accounts were not then insured, many lost everything), he established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which as an arm of the federal government insured individuals' bank accounts.  His administration also initiated many other financial reforms.

During the depression he tried everything he could think of to help American families survive, including the creation of huge numbers of jobs through the Public Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps.  Among the long-term changes he is credited with are the Social Security system and unemployment insurance.  Clearly FDR was responsible for greatly expanding the power of the federal government in our lives.  Your appreciation of his presidency will depend on your own political outlook, but historians consistently rank him as one of the top three chief executives of all time, along with Washington and Lincoln.

Roosevelt was the first president to establish a presidential library to house the papers documenting his time in office. Before that the preservation of presidential documents was haphazard.  The library facility is on the same grounds as his ancestral home and contains an office at which he worked when in Hyde Park.  As with all the other presidential libraries, we walked through rooms detailing all the important stuff that happened during FDR's years in office.  At the time we visited, there was also an interesting exhibition of World War II poster propaganda art promoting the war effort.

A really cute little town, Rhinebeck, with several good restaurants, is nearby.

I'm a fan of the architect Frank Gehry, and Bard University has a performing arts center designed by him in his monumental sheet metal style.  Unfortunately, no performances were scheduled during our visit.

The New York State Fair is scheduled a week for now, and Nancy loves her state fairs.  She's even a fan of county fairs like the one in Watsonville, and the New York State Fair should be a whole lot better.  But we'll miss it.

Obviously there's a lot going on in this area (although our timing wasn't good), and tomorrow when we move the motorhome on to a nearby town still in the Hudson River Valley, there's something else fascinating that we hope to see.