From Southcentral Pennsylvania, we drove Northeast to a West Point Military Academy annex, Round Pond Recreation Area. The campground was remote, the waterside campsite was private, quiet, shady and had a shallow bank with a rock that served as Charlie’s stepping stone into the pond. Since she lives to swim, this was Charlie’s favorite campsite of the trip to date – maybe ever!
The weather was pleasant and there were few bugs. We had poor cell coverage and no WiFi, but our Starlink antenna worked pretty well. We had a quiet evening as we prepared for a 90-minute trek to New York City the next day.
The Garrison Station train station was a 20-minute drive. There we boarded a Hudson Line commuter train to Grand Central Station where we caught the 4-line subway to Wall Street. From there it was just a few blocks to the 9/11 Memorial Fountain and Museum where we spent several hours remembering and honoring the lost and learning more about what it was like to be in Manhattan that day. The most surprising thing I learned was that there was a volunteer flotilla that evacuated 500,000 people from the Island that day.
After the attack, police blocked the bridges and shut down the subway. The only way off the island for all the commuters was over the water. When the Coast Guard realized that people were lining up along the River, they put out a call for volunteers to ferry people off the island. More people were evacuated over water in 9 hours than were evacuated from the beaches of WW2 Dunkirk over nine days (338,000).
It was cool to hear audio recordings of family members telling life stories of the lost loved ones. It was very striking and heart-wrenching to see the mangled first responder vehicles and artifacts.
Some facts about the World Trade Center from the Museum:
- The original World Trade Center was a 16-acre complex that housed seven buildings and the five-acre Austin J. Tobin Plaza.
- The World Trade Center contained almost 10 million square feet of rentable office space. This size equaled nearly three Disneyland Parks.
- In 2001, the World Trade Center housed more than 430 businesses from 28 different countries.
- The World Trade Center had its own zip code: 10048.
We had a quick meal (NY Style pizza slices at a stand-up restaurant near the museum) and headed back to camp, where Charlie had been waiting patiently for her afternoon swim.
