ALBANY, FIRST STOP[1]
We had intended making Syracuse our first night’s stopping-place. It can
easily be done, but as we were so late starting—it was nearly half-past
one—we decided upon Albany instead. We felt very self-important; it even
seemed that people ought to cheer us a little as we passed. A number
of persons, especially boys, did look with curiosity at our unusually
foreign type of car—solid wheels and exhaust tubes through the side of
the hood always attract attention in America—but no one seemed to divine
or care about the thrilling adventure we were setting out upon!
For about thirty miles outside of New York the road grew worse and worse.
Through Dobbs Ferry and Ardsley the surface looked fairly good, but was
full of brittle places. Our chauffeur says that the word brittle has no
sense, but it is the only one I can think of to convey the sudden sharp
flaked-off places that would snap the springs of a car going at fair
speed.
I was rather perturbed; because if the road was as bad as this near home,
what _would_ it be further along? But the further we went the better it
became, and for the latter seventy or eighty miles it was perfect.
The Hudson River scenery, the lower end of it, always oppressed me; I
can never think of anything but the favorite fiction descriptions of the
“mansions where the wealthy reside.” Such overwhelmingly serious piles
of solid masonry, each set squarely in the middle of a seed catalog
painter’s dream of pictorial lawn! Steep hills, steep houses, steep
expenditure, typify the lower Hudson, but the scenery a hundred miles
above the river’s mouth is enchanting! Wide, beautiful views of rolling
country; great comfortable-looking houses with hundreds of acres about
them; here, though many are worth fortunes, one feels that they were
built solely to answer the individual need of their owners, and as homes.
Out on a knoll, with the river spread like a great silver mirror in the
distance, we christened our tea-basket. It took us five minutes to burrow
down and unpile all the things we had on top of it, and five more to find
in which compartment were huddled a few sandwiches and in which other box
was the cake. For twenty minutes we boiled water in our beautiful little
silver kettle, but as at the end of that time the boiling water was
tepid, we gave it up and ate our sandwiches as recommended by the _Red
Queen_ in “Alice” who offered her dry biscuits for thirst. Then we spent
fifteen minutes in putting everything away again.
[Illustration: LEAVING GRAMERCY PARK, NEW YORK]
“When we get out on the prairies, where _can_ we get supplies enough to
fill it?” I wondered. Our “chauffeur” mumbled something about “strain on
tires” and “not driving a motor truck.”
“It is a most wonderfully magnificent basket,” said the lady who was
traveling with us, rather wistfully, as she braced all the heaviest
pieces of luggage between her and it.
Not counting the time out for tea, which we didn’t have, it took us five
hours and a half from Fifty-ninth Street, New York, to the Ten Eyck at
Albany.
The run should have been one hundred and fifty miles, but we made it one
hundred and sixty because we lost our way at Fishkill. We had no Blue
Book, but had been told we need only follow the river all the way. At
Fishkill the road runs into the woods and the river disappears until it
seems permanently lost! We wandered around and around a mountain in a
wood for about ten miles before we discovered a signpost pointing the way
to Albany!
Fortunately we had telegraphed ahead for rooms at the Ten Eyck, or
they would not have been able to take us in. The hotel was filled to
overflowing with senators and assemblymen, but we had very comfortable
rooms and delicious coffee in the morning before we left for Syracuse.