Playing Catch Up

HIT THE GROUND RUNNING:  It's going to take me awhile to catch up with words and photos of all of the adventures we had in NY and England, so I'll plug at it bit by bit as the days go by.  In the meantime, the meantime still happens!

We got home to Seattle last Thursday evening. By the time I went to bed at 11 p.m., I had been up over 26 hours straight. The kids made it to about the 24 mark, intrepid travelers that they are.

Friday morning, we were still tired, but had enough oomph to attempt the Washington State Fair, an annual outing for us. We did the fair 'lite' - only hitting the midway and a couple of bird barns. 

The weather was agreeable, and the kids had a blast on (most of) the rides.

They went hang gliding ...

and sliding ...

and swinging ... (CJ's in yellow, Annabelle has a white shirt and a ponytail and Christian is in a print shirt).

 

They did some spinning ...

and there was even some upside down action (I was so glad CJ wore a yellow shirt - it made it easy to pick him/them out).

And, of course, they did some Scrambling ... 

and some 'coasting.

We managed to avoid buying any fair food, though this booth was tempting ... (just kidding!) 

BYE BYE, BIG APPLE: Our last day in New York, we were catching a red eye flight around 9 p.m. from JFK International Airport to Heathrow.   We had to check out of our apartment at 11 a.m., and wanted to be to the airport by 6 p.m., so that left us with several hours to kill - with all of our luggage in tow.

We decided one way to bide the time would be to take a (free!) ferry ride from Manhattan to Staten Island, aboard the Staten Island Ferry. So, we made our way via subway on the Number 1 line down to the South Ferry station, and from there, the ferry terminal was a short, just a block or so.  We caught a 12:30 ferry over to Staten Island.

This was the view from where the ferry was docked, on its south side. 

That's the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance.  (One of our wished during the trip was to walk across that bridge, but it just didn't happen. The weather and our time constraints worked against us.)

Not long after leaving port, we noticed a sandstone fort on Governors Island.

Castle Williams, on the left in this photo, is a circular fortification of red sandstone. It's on the northwest point of Governors Island, and was one in a system of forts designed and constructed in the early 19th century to protect New York City from naval attack.

It was built between 1807 and 1811, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel (later Colonel) Jonathan Williams.  Williams was the Chief Engineer of the Corps of Engineers and first Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Here's William's signature. Pretty fancy. It makes me want to practice our penmanship!

During the Civil War, Castle Williams was used to house new recruits for the Union Army, and it served as a barracks for the garrison's troops, as well as a prison for Confederate enlisted men and Union Army deserters.
This photo of it (by a Matthew Brady), taken during the Civil War, is from the National Park Service Web site. 

Castle Williams is 40 feet high and 210 feet in diameter. It was constructed of sandstone walls which are 7 to 8 feet thick. It has four levels, each with 13 casements that could hold 26 cannons apiece. 

Here's a land side view of the castle a photographer was kind enough to share on Wikipedia. 

Also on the ride, we could see the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, a double-decked suspension bridge connecting the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn at the Narrows, in the far off distance.

The bridge is named after Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano who was the first European to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River, and for the Narrows, the body of water it spans.

It's  central span stretches 4,260 feet (1,298 m), and when it was completed in 1964, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. (That record was broken by the UK's Humber Bridge in 1981). Today, it's the 10th longest main span in the world, but still the longest in the Americas. 

The ferry ride also afforded us one last look at Lady Liberty.  Here she was, in the distance on the way to Staten Island.

And here she is on the way back, on the 1:30 ferry  I purposely did not try to enhance the color or otherwise 'improve' this photo, leaving it so that it reflected the actual smothering gray tones of the day.  The air was so hazy, my auto focus couldn't cut through the fog. 

Here's another shot of Lady Liberty, with another Staten Island Ferry crossing our path.

We also caught a final glimpse of One World Trade Center, doing its best to be gleaming on a gloomy day.

ELECTRA-FYING: On Saturday, we headed down to The Museum of Flight. Before we left, I had noted that the Museum would have its long-awaited fly-in of its newest acquisition, a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, on Sept. 20. 

I was happy were were back in town to see the spectacle. What a beauty she is!



The immaculately restored Electra is the same type of aircraft that Amelia Earhart piloted on her final flight.

This plane, NC-14900, was built for Northwest Airlines and began passenger service in 1935. It served in WWII and then went back to flying passengers for years. In 1996, it was restored to replicate Amelia Earhart's Electra. The plane flew round the world in 1997, with pilot Linda Finch reenacting Earhart's flight. Today there is only one other genuine Lockheed Electra Model 10-E in existence.
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And here's a 360-of the cockpit!
https://s3.amazonaws.com/MOF/Electra10E/Electra10E-Cockpit360-MOF.html