Day 10 - Sleepy Hollow and travelling to Boston

Day 10 – Sleepy Hollow

For some reason, (5 chldren having nothing to do with it), we did not get started quite as early as we had planned. Loading the car took a bit longer, as we had to suck all the air out of our bedding and towels (for the space bags) so that it would all fit in the car top carrier. Finally, we got on the road, and set off for Sleepy Hollow. This was going to be our longest drive, so we were trying to break it up a bit with a fun stop for lunch.

We were driving on I95, so we passed close enough to New York to see the skyline. My children were very excited to realize that we were so close to New York. A’s comment was “What’s that smell??!!”

Answer: “That’s New Jersey!”

We crossed the George Washington Bridge (reviewing all of G.W.’s accomplishments), and pointed out the Tappen Zee Bridge. We discussed the Dutch influence of New York and touched on Sleepy hollow and Washington Irving. We aren’t sure that anyone was listening except ourselves. We stopped at the Vince Lombardi rest area, and realized very quickly that we were “not in Kansas anymore" (or at least not in the South). Many New Jersey accents surrounded us.
We arrived in Sleepy Hollow and pulled up at the Old Dutch church. M is somewhat tired of his mother's insistence on documenting every detail of our trip. Washington Irving is buried in the graveyard there, and AtlMom wanted to find his grave. The graveyard is much bigger than we realized and I gave up. I wanted to go find the bridge. P and C were back at the car, so we drove down the lane, and in about ½ mile, we came upon the Headless Horseman bridge. C wanted to get out and take pictures, but I knew that M would never forgive me if I left him out of the pictures. So we turned around, using the bridge (which made P really nervous). We arrived back where we had left the others, and they reported success in finding Washington Irving’s grave. They placed coins on it, just like Ben Franklin’s grave. We all piled into the car and drove back to the bridge. M, C, A, and J piled out of the car and started running across the bridge. M and C pretended to be running from the Headless Horseman. P exercised her right to stay in the car. She still was not convinced that the Horseman would not make an appearance.

We were all fairly hungry at this point and promised the children we would stop at the next acceptable restaurant for lunch. (McDonalds not being an acceptable restaurant at this point.) I am going to let AtlMom tell you about our lunch stop.
For some reason (again, 5 children with different bladder habits having nothing to do with it) we arrived at the Super 8 in Brockton, MA much later than planned. Thankfully, we did not have to make up beds, and no one was hungry after such a late lunch, so we threw all the children in bed as soon as we could. The hotel very nicely gave us adjoining rooms right off the lobby, so AtlMom and I were able to sit in the lobby after the kids went to bed and plan the next day.