June 30, 2008

June 30, 2008

Cooperstown, NY is a small town with a very popular tourist draw, the Baseball Hall of Fame. As a result the small city has a parking problem and we have to park outside town and take a trolley in. We arrive early to find there is already a crowd waiting, including a group of little leaguers. Besides the small room with all the Hall of Fame plaques, most of the facility is devoted to the history of baseball. The Hall of Fame is located in Cooperstown because Abner Doubleday is supposed to have invented the game here in 1839. It is probably untrue, more of a fable attributed to a local Civil War hero by the influential Hall of Fame founder, Albert Spalding. What is true is that American Baseball is very old and was very popular by the Civil War. We move pretty quickly thru the museum. I can’t say I am much of a baseball fan anymore. I mostly just follow my St. Louis Cardinals who incidentally are the second most winning team in baseball with ten World Series Championships and 17 NL Pennants.

Afterwards we drive east to the Albany area and visit the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook, NY. There we watch a film about his life and then tour his house. Van Buren, our eighth president, was the first born as an American. This stop actually was interesting and goes a long way to helping Aimee and I remember the chronology of presidents.

We spend the night at a private park in Averill Park, NY.