Lynn & Sandy Watson

OK–Austin is a month old now but I’ve always been a “better late than never” blogger.  He was born on December 22nd and weighed in at 7 lbs 11 oz.  (That’s pretty big for a baby of Steph and Nick’s.) I’m just going to post some fun pictures.

Better late than never, here is the last entry from our fall New England/NYC trip. We took the subway to Wall Street and then to get tickets to the 911 Memorial, back to Central Park and back downtown to the 911 Memorial. I think if I lived in NYC I’d be in better shape and much thinner!

The most memorable was of course the 911 Memorial. We were so excited to be able to get tickets, get inside and walk around. It’s a must see for anyone who find themselves in NYC!

I was going to make one last post of our New York City visits but there’s just too much to cover. Lucky you—I’m going to do one more post after this one.

Lynn has never visited the Yale campus before (WOW–It’s hard to find someplace he hasn’t been!) so we stopped in New Haven, CT and walked around campus. It was pretty spectacular with those beautiful old buildings. We LOVED the “Y” hair-cutting sign–it was even in the right color! I’ll bet it doesn’t get as much use as the “Y” hair-cutting place we usually see, since having a short haircut probably isn’t a requirement to take a test at Yale.

Before we actually got into NYC we stopped on the New Jersey side to visit the Statue of Liberty. It’s much less crowded on the New Jersey side, so we decided to take the tour from there. We took the boat to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We actually got tickets to go up inside this time–we’ve never done that before.

Now it’s time to head through the candy cane forest, past the sea of swirly twirly gumdrops and through the Lincoln Tunnel and into that magical land called New York City. (If you don’t get the reference you might want to watch “Elf” again!)

I still have one more post to make! Stay tuned!

A couple of things the East has in plentiful supply, are trees (hence the leaf peeping) and old New England churches. Here are a few of the pictures we took.

Two of the things I LOVE to visit in the East are covered bridges and old cemeteries.   Much of the area we visited was also visited by hurricane Irene.   There was devastation everywhere and several covered bridges had to be closed because the flooding had left them structurally unsound.  In one place there were still cars in the river to be removed.  We were surprised at how many roads they had already repaved.  One wonders how hundreds of miles of roads can be repaired and repaved in a couple of weeks when it takes YEARS to do a scheduled small stretch of freeway or city road!!

The old cemeteries are interesting because the headstones seem to tell a story.  Also, you see so many families where several headstones of young children are placed closely to young mothers who passed.  For me at least it makes you want to know their stories.  So many generations have had such hard lives and we take so much for granted.  I also love that most of these cemeteries are right next to grand old churches.

We noticed that so many of these headstones had skulls and crossbones or skulls with wings and similar things engraved on them.  It seemed odd to have them on the markers of young mothers or children, but we found out they are a symbol of mortality (see here).  Hopefully this isn’t too boring for you–it’s fascinating to me.

1694!  You won’t find one of those in Idaho!

Winged skull

Notice how they put the word infant on two lines—don’t think you’d see that today either

Lynn thinks he’ll put this on mine–”She was useful in life”   Sweet!!

We thought the sign in front of a cemetery was sort of funny–

The turquoise colored flag holder was there for all the veterans of the Revolutionary War! Very cool!

Here are a few pictures of covered bridges—