Kingston NY a jewel on the HUDSON

Kingston NY a jewel on the HUDSON

Our museum dock in Kingston is next to the rowers’ dock so mornings were full of chants and the coxswains’ calls as the youngsters launched and retrieved their sculls. After our close up look at rowers in Chattanooga we have a lot of respect for this sport and enjoy the rhythms of their workouts – from a distance.  Besides, their clamor makes a better alarm clock than the traditional buzzer for sure. Anyway, as we move north, it is light these mornings early which suits our bodies long accustomed to early starts from our stint in Arabia. 

Taking advantage of the early wake up call we hiked up the hill to the old Stockade historic district of Kingston.  Come to find out, we are docked in the old village of Rondout which joined with Kingston in the early 1800s about the time the Delaware and Hudson canal was built. So there are historic districts in both places and some in between. We learned about the Rondout district in the Hudson River Maritime Museum in front of our dock. We had to hike a little to visit  the Stockade area of Kingston which was founded before the Revolutionary War. There is an intersection that boasts four stone buildings that all predate the Revolutionary War. This is apparently the only such intersection in the US and is even more remarkable since the British burned Kingston at the beginning of the war.  The old Stockade district includes almost a square mile that in the 1650s and 1660s was enclosed in a wooden stockade built to protect the settlement from the Esopus Indians. Many buildings from the early settlement and the boom years of the 1870s still stand and are home to a vibrant community of homes, shops, and public offices. Although this area was almost an hour uphill from the boat, we spent about three hours wandering the streets, shops and museums. The reconstructed Persen’s house was interesting because this restoration has been done to show the phases of construction from 1661 to 1920 that the building underwent according to the needs of the occupants. In another historic building, the Senate House,  the constitution for the state of New York was drafted, and it hosted the first government. We found a bakery, Deisling’s, to sustain us and a butcher, Fleischer’s, that bragged on their weekly shipments of “whole animals”.  The shopkeeper wanted us to hang around another hour to see the week’s shipment arrive – we opted for a couple sausage links and headed downhill to the boat for lunch at the Ship & Shore. There is an abundance of culinary talent in the Hudson Valley rumored to be the result of the excellent training at the Culinary Institute of America in nearby Hyde Park. The chef of Ship & Shore is a good example of a graduate who settled not far from the school.  It might also be that these culinary masters seek to remain close to sources of fresh and wholesome (i.e. organic) ingredients that seem readily available in this area. Needless to say, we are delighted to partake of their creations when the opportunity presents itself. Once again, it is tough but someone must suffer…. Oh, just to keep in touch with reality, we did spend a few hours doing laundry plus Steve scrubbed the swim platform – and let’s not forget the hours and hours of walking!

 Henry Hudson and his Half Moon