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Outdoor Life: This stuff's from New York City!
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Anonymous user Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
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0 responses 0 comments When Cheryl and I returned from the desert after Thanksgiving, we proceeded to begin our first real vacation in about 15 years.  We’d had plenty of days attached to the weekends, like a Friday or a Monday, but our family business always kept us near home.  This column’s format normally covers off-roading, outdoorsy, and camping trips, but this trip to the city was worth writing about due to its significance.  
With the sale of our family business, we had a few weeks before I began a new career and away we went.  First stop:  New York City and a couple of days doing the tourist scene via Gray Line Tour busses with our daughter, Shellie, who lives in upstate New York. I really thought I would hate the place, but it kind of grew on us in the 48 or so hours we were “in country,” to borrow a Marine Corps deployment phrase.
Our home base while in New York was the historic Hotel Edison — “just steps away from Times Square,” as the hotel brochure described it.  Not all families want the same experiences on  this type of vacation but given the time constraints and sequential considerations made for additional connections along the way, our method worked great.
The unique part of the Gray Line Tours is that you pay a given fee for unlimited travel on several routes through the city and nearby attractions.  That means you can jump on and off the double-decker busses almost at will.
There were also tour guides manning the busses who gave interesting tidbits of touristy information, like, “The movie Ghostbusters was filmed around the exterior of that building,” or “Here’s the Apollo Theater in Harlem where James Brown got his start.” Little did we know that Brown’s casket would be at the Apollo for one final gig just three weeks later.
In New York City, all of the historical places that I’d only read about or seen on TV or in movies were right there and we were living it. 
Here are just a few of the places we went and that I highly recommend seeing if you can swing it:  the Empire State Building — to the top or dang near the top; Times Square; Rockefeller Center;  Macy’s; the Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; Broadway shows galore; diners everywhere; Ground Zero; and Central Park.
We really enjoyed Central Park during the daytime, and probably walked about two miles within the park. Ice skating was going on. The place was crawling with people having fun and lots of police not necessarily having fun. 
We found a geocache while we were in the park.  The weird thing about it was that it was hidden by a fellow from Bakersfield who attended South High School but now lives in NYC.
We took a ride in a horse-drawn carriage through Central Park. Now I know how there can be 12,000 taxi cabs in New York City: most sane people don’t drive a car in that town. On our last day there, we rode a bus from the Port of New York Authority for about two hours northwest and then rented a car.
We also liked upstate New York, where Shellie lives. It was much like a flashback snapshot of what  America was like 60 years ago. I’ll say more about that neck of the woods in my next column. 
My hope for you and your families is a prosperous and safe New Year. Happy Trails!

E-mail Dick at: rdtusmc@msn.com

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