I woke up kind of early and just surfed the Internet while the rest of the house slept. I went back to sleep for a little while thinking that Allie had taken Sawyer to swimming lessons and there was no rush. Turns out Nolan was the driver for the morning and Allie had been up working on breakfast. We had planned to leave at 10 am after Sawyer's swimming lessons to tour the area and see more covered bridges. I urged Chris out of bed suggesting that it would give him time to finish the electronics set up along with Apple TV. Hopefully they will be set.
We packed the Jeep with all of our luggage, barely squeezing all of it in. We drove to more covered bridges in the area. We all had fun taking pictures, especially the older girls. They were having fun together. I loved the country side. We drove on two-lane roads that were lined with trees and lush greenery. We found two bridges to stop at and somehow passed right by a third without seeing it. Perhaps it had been moved.
Allie had made lunch reservations for us at Peddler's Village. It was a cute little shopping area with fun shops--the kids particularly made note of the Candy Store. We made our way to the Buttonwood Grill for lunch and enjoyed a delicious meal. Except for Sawyer who was the only boy among six girls, we all had a great time chatting. Polsons are just fun to be with. We wish now that we had planned more time to spend with them than just one night.
We had time for a little more meandering through the shopping village before we had to be on the road again. We said our goodbyes and started on the road to New Jersey.
We arrived in good time, grateful for Google Maps for directing us. Not sure we would have made it quite so easily following a paper map--especially not if I had had to navigate from a map.
We reached the Double Tree hotel in Jersey City around 4 pm with enough time to drop off our luggage, use the restroom, drop off the car at the handily hidden parking garage a mile away, get PATH cards to ride their metro system, and get to the World Trade Center stop for our 5 pm scheduled 9-11 Memorial Museum. As bad luck would have it, simply because I am not one to always think about carrying my phone, I left my phone at the hotel. It had the email with our electronic tickets. Chris tried to login as me on his phone, but he had security measures in place that would not allow him access. He was not very happy with me. I wasn't very happy with me. We finally thought that a last ditch effort would be to go to the Will Call office and see if they could find our reservation and print tickets for us. Yes, they did. What a relief.
We got in line waiting for our turn to enter the museum. We weren't the only ones using the free tickets. The museum closed at 8 pm, and we spent every minute looking at all of the displays. We could have spent even more time as we missed a few displays and a movie. It was a lot of sadness and gratitude for heroic men and women.
Kristen had not been born in 2001 and I mentioned to her that she probably watched the events of that day from heaven and welcomed these people home.
We took the ferry back to Jersey City where we stopped at a Chili's for dinner. Chris had read online that the ferry was $1, but it was actually $6 per person. Oh well, it was a beautiful ride across the Hudson River and much more pleasant than the transit. Our service at Chili's took forever, but maybe that was because we were exhausted and hungry and ready for a rest. We had a short two blocks until we reached the hotel room. A roll away had been brought to our room. We called down for more blankets and towels. Our room was much smaller and just divided by a semi wall. We made it work. And sleep.