Visit to Hyde Park text

I had a meeting last week at West Point where I am a member of the Board of advisors for the Geology and Environmental Engineering Progeam, and Mom went with me. We visited Franklin D. Roosevelt's home and libreary and one of the 43 van der Bilt mansions (the smallest one, actually), both located in Hyde Park, NY, about an hour from West Point. We had a great time. Unfortunately, my camera battery was almost dead, and I forgot to bring a charger, so I didn't get many pictures, but the leaf colors were gorgeous! They told us the peak color day occurred the day before we arrived, and the day we were there was cloudy and rainy but they were still pretty. The pictures don't do them justice. See the trees reflecting in the Hudson River, the Roosevelt house, and the Mansion in the pictures (posted before this without text, due to technical difficulties). The mansion reminded us of the opulence of Crazy Ludwig's Linderhoff Castle in Germany. The guide told us the mansion was representative of the Gilded Age in America. There was no real Royalty in the US, but the van der Bilts and others of their ilk felt that they were the substitute for it in the US, and they lived like it. The mansion was amazingly ornate and oozed wealth, being furnished with antiques from all over Europe. The mansion had electricity before the town of Hyde Park, and the townsfolk would come out in droves on Friday evenings and party along the road and fence line at dusk to watch the electric lights come on in the mansion and on the mansion grounds.