A Day Around Albany, New York

 

The time has long passed for us to ever move back home. Even so, this place holds our families' history and it is where we feel most at home. Our brothers and sisters are still there and we make this journey home to reconnect with our roots. It is all about family...and food!

Albany was built on the Hudson River and was first claimed by Henry Hudson for the Dutch in 1606. It is the second oldest chartered city in the country. In earlier days it was surrounded by farmland and has mountains to the north (Adirondack), and south (Catskills). Because of its location on the Hudson River, many immigrants entering the country through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century came up the river and settled here. 

We arranged to picnic with my sister and brother-in-law at Thatcher Park on the Helderberg Escarpment. We had many family picnics here and we always loved hiking the Indian Ladder Trail. We decided to drive through the city on our way west of Albany so we could stop at Ragonese's Italian Imports on New Scotland Ave. to have sandwiches made. Boy, was I in foodie heaven! The sandwiches and salads were excellent as were the olives, cookies and candies. We followed New Scotland Avenue all the way through Altamont and on to Thatcher Park. The weather was cool and we needed sweatshirts to keep warm. It was refreshing and I was loving it. We ate under a picnic shelter and then walked through the woods and along paths. I could not get enough of the pines and their wonderful scent. The Helderberg Escarpment is a geological wonderland. Way back in time, it was the shoreline of an enormous lake, of which the Hudson River now flows at the very bottom. Over time, sediment layers fossilized and the area is now littered with prehistoric fossils of sea life. On this day, I bent down to pick up a round stone from a stream bed and discovered that it was not a stone but a perfectly fossilized clam!

A beautiful day for a picnic in the pines.

 

Sediment layers along the stream beds shed fossils.

We meandered along country roads on the way home to my sister's house in East Greenbush. Although lunch was filling, I still had room for a fish fry from Gene's. They don't have these where we live in Virginia so I try to have at least two or three while we are in New York. : ) It was a good day.

These fish fries were from Ted's Fish Fries, which we had on a different night. I prefer Gene's Fish Fries but I forgot to take a photo of my fish fry at Gene's. Gene's has the best cole slaw, too.