Travel with Snowbird and #1 Son

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Travels with Snowbird and #1 child, June, 2018

Hello all.

Yes, I know, strange time to be hearing from me, but the urge to write is on my fingers and in my brain, and I have nothing but time right now.

Before I start, note to my kids. You know those great pictures I took of you all sitting on the grass near Shirley's grave? They are in a 'motion' format. This app, travelblog, will ot accept that format. I have sent them to Kristine to see if she could convert them to regular jpg format. Here's hoping, because they were beautiful pictures.

You all should note that there are 28 pictures or so and might need to click the button to get to the second page where the last few are located.



Now, where to really start. The beginning.

My step mother, Shirley McGrath, passed away a few days short of her ?96? birthday while I was on my 2018 Snowbird trip. I was ready to fly home from FL for a funeral, but my step brother, Cless, who is a reader of this blog, advised me Shirley would be cremated. As the ground was somewhat frozen, and she couldn’t be put into her niche in the ground, why didn’t, we just wait until springtime to bury her ashes. That sounded like a fine idea, Albany is cold and snowy in January, and I sure was happier waiting. We all talked, me, my kids, and Cless, and we agreed to set aside June 9 as Shirley’s Memorial Day.

As time got closer, my son, Tim, who lives near me in Wilmington, and I started looking at flights to Albany. Good thing we confirmed the details with Cless before we booked, as the cemetery is in Newburgh, NY, approximately 90 miles south of Albany. We looked at flights to Stewart, Newark, and finally LaGuardia, which has 3 non-stop flights to Newburgh a day. All prices were comparable. Tim was able to secure a hotel and rental car with his travel rewards points. Jeff would drive from Harrisburg, and Kristine would drive from Rumson, NJ. We agreed to meet at 11:15 am at the Cedar Hill Cemetery, In Newburgh. Our 6:15 am flight landed at 7:30. We took a car rental shuttle to the airport shuttle waiting area and then a second shuttle to the terminal. Nightmarish. Construction, more on that later. Tim selected a lovely Ford SUV with lots of room, gizmos and gadgets, and we headed north up the Palisades Parkway. I remember from my youth that there are beautiful scenic overlooks on The Palisades, and we pulled into 3 for beautiful vistas and photos.

We arrived at the cemetery at 11: 15 and heard from Kristine that she was 10 minutes off her schedule, she had to stop for baby Lucie. Tim went into the office to find the plot number, and at the same time, Cless and his wife, Jean, drove up, saying Jeffrey was at the grave already.

Up the road we go, with a brief turnaround for an urgent bathroom call, which gave us time to look around the beautiful cemetery. Rolling hills, lots of trees, green grass. We wandered over to the grave and Kristine pulled in. She said she found us by finding me on the Find My Friends iPhone app. Cool.

We gathered around Shirley’s place. She is buried next to her second husband, Zach Rogers; they had bought this space while he was still alive. Her headstone has not been placed yet, her earth is covered by a piece of plywood. We laughed. My dad is buried in the same cemetery as my relatives in Goshen, NY. It made sense at the time, for them to do it this way.

At my idea and request, Jeff brought glasses, ice, Seagrams and coke, and we all toasted Shirley with her favorite drink and poured the dregs of our glasses into her space. I will eventually post a picture of my 3 kids sitting in the grass when I can convert it to a format this app will accept. If you look closely you will see said piece of plywood. We brought pictures of Shirley and Tom and had fun reminiscing and talking about our first memories of Shirley, and old family legends.

I had googled for a restaurant, and settled on the Raccoon Saloon, up the road a bit in Marlboro, NY. It got great reviews in trip Advisor, Google, and Yelp. When we drove up we were dismayed, a very old sloping building with decorative mansard roof. Inside lots of old rooms, creaky floors, antiques, and a gorgeous view of a woodsy waterfall (another oe of those pictures with the wrong file type) and stream with the Hudson River in the background. The building appeared to be hanging off a cliff, which some attending asked us not to talk about. Cless is a Hudson River historian, he even has published a book. He filled us in on the types of barges we saw going up river

The menu was bistro like, almost gourmet! We asked the waitress what the people mostly ordered and were told burgers, salmon, mussels. For a place 100 miles from the ocean. Salmon and mussels.? Jeff had the mussels which indeed were glorious, and he needed his whole serving of bread to sop up the garlicky wine buttery sauce. Others had burgers and crab cake, and I opted for the grilled salmon served with salad. The dressing was awesome, and the salad was warm……just how I like it; I do not like cold lettuce. Sides of French fries and fried onion rings were superb. Lemoncello cake for shared dessert. Lucie was content to feed from her mom and sit in her car seat, a real sweetie. Cless told us Shirley was paying for dinner from her checkbook from the beyond, and we all had a good laugh over that. Thanks, Shirley.

Time to leave. Cless had packed up his car with treasures from Shirley and Tom’s house, hand made bookshelves and chairs, artwork, photos, some of Shirley’s needlepoint, and a whole box of fiestaware, which Kristine promised she would photo and catalog and share with me and Gretchen. She better.

We said our goodbyes to Cless and Jean, and me and the kids headed south to Goshen, NY to find my dad’s and relative’s graves.

St. John’s Cemetery does not show up on any google search or google map search. There is no record of it anywhere. I switched google map view to satellite and zeroed in on where I thought it was, dropped a pin, and hit the directions button and we got there. Whew. We all had to wander the rows looking for his flat stone, which I had a vague idea where it was, and found it a little discolored and in need of edging. We should have had another drink for Tom, but we cracked some jokes, took selfies, and just laughed with him. We found Aunt Alice (my dad’s sister and her husband) and Uncle Sank’s grave nearby and said a prayer there.

Next stop, down the road 2 miles to Sank and Alice’s farm. At one time the Jessup brothers had a thriving egg farm with 20,000 chickens and 100 acres. They were the best eggs. I spent many a summer there feeding chickens, grading eggs, and just being a kid on a farm. I have memories of Tom letting baby Jeff drive down a dirt farm road on his big wheel which went out of control and Jeff got his face beat in. I might be able to post a picture of that. My ‘cousin’, John Jessup, my age minus 2 months, and his wife, Betty, live in the farm house now, with their son, John. Johnny, as I remember him, was nephew to my Uncle Sank by his brother, Ed. He came out to see what was up when 3 cars drive in, and he knew me once I started to speak. Somehow another son of theirs, Ed, who I am facebook friends with, forgot to mention to them we would be in town….Ed is also a reader. We reminisced, shared family memories, and talked more about beloved family members. The chickens are gone, some of the hen coops are gone, the property is down to 4 acres and still gorgeous. It looked to me like they were doing some beautification projects, and I wondered if they are getting ready to downsize. Godspeed to them.

All in all, a bittersweetly sad day, but good to relive some fond memories and reinforce them in my kids to give them a better sense of McGrath history.

We parted for good now. Jeff was on his way to Wilkes Barre/Scranton to watch a Yankees farm team game, I think he said. Kristine and Lucie headed home to Rumson, and Tim and I headed to our glorious Marriott in Pearl River. We landed at the on site Irish Pub at the Marriott just in time to see Justify sail to Belmont and Triple Crown victory. Gosh what a glorious horse. I remember betting on jockey Mike Smith at Monmouth Park back in the day.

Several drinks and appetizers later, I was ready for bed and slept like a rock. Tim woke up before me and snuck out for a workout in the gym, God bless him. His advanced Marriott status gave us complimentary breakfast and we were on our way to LGA by 10……for our 1:20 flight.

LaGuardia is a construction nightmare. One bus driver told us it was Joe Biden’s fault, as when he flew thru 9 years ago and described it as a hell hole, construction started then and hasn’t quit and won’t be done for another 9 years by the looks of it. We dropped the car off and boarded the car rental shuttle bus. The driver asked where we wanted to go, and Tim told him, “The Hamptons.” The driver didn’t get the joke, and took us to the Hampton Inn. The driver was confused, Tim was humble, I just nodded my head and smiled, I think. The driver regrouped, then took us to the airport shuttle bus stop, then we waited for that shuttle to take us to terminal C, which was 2 blocks from National Car Rental. No way we could have walked due to the construction, but that trip took us over 25 minutes, but we had plenty of time.

The security line at terminal C was outrageous. Fortunately I got TSA pre approved for this leg, Tim has permanent TSA pre approval, and it only took us 25minutes to get thru that. I can’t imagine what it took those who are not TSA PreCheck to make it thru. On to the gate with about 45 minutes to spare.

On the plane I immediately get a flight time change text message. The doors did not close. The pilot made an announcement, they were recalculating weight. Doors still open. A supervisor gate attendant came onboard and announced the plane was overweight, he needed some volunteers to take a later plane and accept $800 travel voucher. Nah, not enticing enough. Overweight plane? WTF?

Next offer, $1000 travel voucher. I thought but not enough, and again, no takers. He announced that if no one volunteered, people would be asked to get off based on those who purchased tickets last would be first off. Huh? Doors still open.

Next offer, $1500 travel voucher. I jumped up, was cheered by those around, kissed Tim goodbye, and got off the plane. This ticket supervisor dude never saw me, never counted me, and when I spoke up, he told me I was wrong, he had his 5 people, and I was escorted back on the plane to a confused Tim and crowd. Still no closed doors. Another gate agent boarded, looking for me, and asked me if I was still interested, and I got off the plane again, with happy passengers thanking me. I patiently waited listening to the process. They had to get all 6 of us removed from the manifest, get their luggage off as the party of 3 were splitting up and some travelled today, some tomorrow, groan. Once they got us off the flight manifest, doors could close and they could take off, which they did, over an hour late. The reason? This is a small plane…..only 3 seats across, 15 rows, 45 passengers. It doesn’t have a big fuel capacity. Stormy weather in the flight path required a rerouting which meant higher fuel usage. To decrease usage, they needed to lighten the load. I got a seat on the later direct flight from LGA to ILM. 7:59. If I insisted, they might have put me on a competitor flight to Charlotte then Wilmington. I opted for the direct flight and hope I did not make a mistake. The weather is rainy here, clear in Wilmington.

Of course, the next flight is in a different terminal. Go down a flight of stairs, get on another freakin airport shuttle bus in the rain, go to terminal next door, locate gate, find food. I could have walked this instead of shuttle bus, but I would have had to clear security again…….All the good food is outside security, and ain’t no way I was going through that again, so I opted for an Aunt Annie’s pretzel dog, Diet Coke, and Milky Way. I located a seat with an electric outlet and here I sit for 3 hours writing this blog.

The new gate was at the end of the terminal, down a flight of stairs. Boarding time 7:30 for 7:59 fight. I took a bio break, dumped my unused diet coke out of my Yeti cup to avoid spills and headed downstairs to a small room with lots of people, and many doors. I soon realized that these gates did not have jetways and looked out to the tarmac to see the small planes all parked there, and busses drove the passengers to them. As I sat, the flight to Columbus OH got cancelled. The flight to Charlottesville, VA got cancelled. The flight to Akron got cancelled. I was not feeling terribly confident. We were told they were all mechanical problems. These passengers got reticketed for Monday and put on another freakin suttle bus to a nearby hotel. Our flight held. In this room I saw 2 friends who are volunteers at Wilson Center where I also volulnteer. They, were on the same outbound flight as us and I didn’t see them. They were in the area for a memorial service of an old friend. We all made friends with a young couple also on their way to Wilmington. They were anxious to get there as Monday was moving day for them. They are relocating to the Raleigh area for his new job as Physicians Assistant at a large clinic in Roanoke Rapids, and she would be searching for a job as an Occupational Therapist. They are getting married in August. All cute. Somebody noticed they put out free water and wraps, we all took a sample, and the tomato mozzarella wrap was not bad at all. A yellow vested gate worker, I have learned that the supervisors wear yellow vests, announced the Wilmington flight was boarding. I swiped my Apple Wallet boarding pass on the gizmo (it finally got updated by AA) and boarded another freakin shuttle to our plane on the tarmac. In the rain. My seat was in the next to the last row of the 45 passenger plane, a twin to our outbound equipment. I settled in to watch Prime Video’s BOSCH which I had downloaded to my ipad and quickly got very engrossed in it. We took off on time with only a brief wait due to runway traffic, and landed in ILM after an hour and 20 minutes or so.

While flying, I remembered that I did not bring house keys with me. When we left my house early Saturday morning, I exited thru my garage door and Tim closed it with the remote he carries in his car. I prayed that he would come pick me up, but he was in bed due to his early flight Monday morning. Gretchen came in her car, without the remote; we made a quick stop at her house to pick it up, and I was in my driveway at 9:45 or so and in bed by 10:15 to continue watching Bosch.

A pretty awesome weekend, right? With lots of goonie adventures! Great memories were created. Uncles and step aunt and uncle got to meet a new Lucie. I got to visit long gone relatives graves and saw those still living in a family treasure house. I am blessed.

See you in January

Kat out

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Photos

My dad, "Tom", "Papa"
needs a bleach and trim around the edges.