Staycation - West Point

Yesterday I went on a senior bus trip to the Culinary Institute of America for an excellent lunch and then we headed over to West Point.

We arrived at the CIA early so we walked around the main building and then we had lunch at 11:30…

We had an unbelievable salad and for the main course of pork tenderloin followed by desert.

After lunch we headed over to West Point and the bus driver’s GPS lead use all around the narrow streets of Highland Falls where a bus shouldn’t really go. We ended up at the main gate where we shouldn’t have been and the civilian guard told us to turn around and go back to the Bradley tank… Um… it wasn’t a Bradley Tank but a World War II Sherman Tank.

We then picked up our tour guide who was a nice southern woman who husband was an officer at the point doing his two years as an instructor. Next stop was the Chapel.

You can see that the American flags are different flags that the Army has fought under and the other flags are the regimental flags.

After we left the Chapel we drove around to the Battle Monument to the West Point graduates who fought for either side and died in the Civil War.

Then we drove by the General Tadeusz Kosciuszko monument, General Kosciuszko was a Polish officer who fortified the Revolutionary War defenses at West Point, Fort Clinton to block the Hudson River to the British.

What made it so important was the bend in the river. Back in the colonial days, sailing ships had to tack to make the bend in the river. They would come to a complete stop in order to make the turn bring the ship within the range of the fort's cannon and they also floated a chain across the river.

We left the post and went back to the visitor center and left our tour guide off and headed home.

It was a great bus trip, I had great company and my new friends.