Ben and Sue Day 27

Wednesday, October 3, 2007, Day 27

. . .Today Ben and I took the rental car and drove to the Statue of Liberty.  Our friend Marianne printed directions for us from mapquest.  Ben asked me if he drove if I would navigate.  You need to imagine a very loud buzzer going off just now.  I have great difficulty navigating a 711 store.  How was I to accomplish such a feat as getting us from Windsor New York to Liberty State Park in New Jersey?  The only other alternative was for me to drive and Ben to navigate which, you MUST believe me -- would have been much worse.

. . . We set out well for a long while . . . the directions were really quite good.  We encountered several toll roads and were on our merry way.  At one point though the road split just before the toll booth.  Cars that had already purchased a windshield scanner pass were supposed to go left.  All others to the right.  The choice came so quickly -- road divided so quickly that we made  a wrong decision and went left.  After a long  while we realized we took a wrong turn or missed an exit or something so we attempted to get off the t oll road to ask directions.  We stopped  to pay and the ticket agent asked for our ticket which we did not have.  He said "How the hell did you get HERE?"  We hardly knew how to answer and so we had to pay the  total toll from the beginning rather than just  from where we entered the toll road.  It is a very complicated system of toll roads.

. . . Only one mistake  though and we made it to Liberty State Park which is where one parks to take the ferry to Ellis Island to see the Statue of Liberty.  When I first saw her my breath truly was taken away for a moment.  I wanted tp stand up and sing "God Bless America" loudly.  Oh how proud she stands in New York Harbour.  Perhaps it is a bit sad that most of America's immigrants arrive by plane these days and don't have that wonderful experience of being welcomed to our great land by that torch of freedom shinning brightly still.  We went thru three different security checkpoints -- very tight -- very secure -- and finally arrived at the statue itself.  There is a wonderful museum there explaining about the original statue -- a gift from the people of France in 1866.  I began to wish I knew more about my own family tree -- perhaps some of my relatives came to Ellis Island during  the great time of immigration when America was still quite lient about allowing immigrants to come to populate America.  I know only that  my paternal great grandfather came from Ireland during the great potato famine there in about 1855.

. . . One thing this entire trip has done is to inspire/motivate me to learn more.  Every place we visit I'm so curious about and want to know more and more.  Hopefully when I get home I will be able to set aside some time each day to learn more about all these places.