Monday October 9th
I left fairly early, around 7.30 or so, headed for the RV park in Jersey City, about four and a half hours away. This involved driving through New York City, which I was a bit nervous about. I was going south, so I didn’t need to go through Boston, and I didn’t have trouble with traffic.
I headed inland on I-93, before getting onto I-95, which was where most of my trip was spent. I entered the small state of Rhode Island, and drove through the capital of Providence. This was the only state I visited that I didn’t set foot in, I just drove through it. The highway went towards the coast, and entered Connecticut. I drove straight through except for a brief stop part way along.
Eventually I entered New York State, leaving the coast and I-95, and got onto Manhattan Island, going across to the Hudson River. The road seemed to go over bridges and through tunnels, and then onto smaller streets. There was a stretch that went along the edge of the river for quite a while. In one place, the lines between the lane I was on, and the next one, disappeared completely. I assumed that lane was going away, and started to get across to merge, and someone tooted me. After a while the lines appeared again. It seems that they had just completely worn away. I’ve never seen that before.
After going a fair way along the river, Google directed me through the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River to New Jersey. It got a bit quieter on the New Jersey side. I had marked out a service station to fill up the van, not far from the RV park. There was another van parked at a pump on the other side of the lane when I went in, and I just squeezed by, going over the kerb next to the pump a little, to get in. I didn’t want to wander around trying to find another service station. This was my last stop for the RV, and I was keen not to drive in New York and New Jersey more than necessary!
After filling up I drove along an increasingly quiet road down to Liberty Harbor RV park. I was surprised how quiet it was. Monday was a public holiday, at least for some people, and so perhaps that was why traffic hadn’t really been a problem on any of my journey, but that road never seemed to be very busy. I think the New Jersey side was just less busy in general. I checked in, and they gave me some useful information about how to catch the subway into New York, and some information handouts.
The RV park was almost just a large parking lot. The spaces were fairly decent in size, because it was designed for much larger vehicles than mine, but everyone was just parked next to each other, and there was no privacy. But it was a great base to explore New York from, just five minutes from the subway, and most people seemed to stay in their vans rather than outside. Though it was by far the most expensive RV park I’d stayed in, at US$150 a night, even a bed in a shared dormitory in New York City was going for $120 a night, so it was good value.
I wasn’t sure what to see first. I got to New York about 1, and decided to look at Central Park. I found the subway terminal near the RV park. The train ran under the river, and went fairly slowly and a bit uncertainly it seemed. I knew when we were going under the river because there had been two or three stops, then quite a few minutes without any stops, when we went under, then more stops. A few stops later I had to get off, at 42nd street, and change trains. The subway under the river was run by a different company to the one on Manhattan Island, and I think this was the end of the line for that company.
I had bought a card that I could use on the train turnstiles, and put some money on it. I could transfer between trains on Manhattan Island and that service, but I had to pay two fares, one to take the subway from near the RV park, then the subway on Manhattan Island itself. The card worked on both services, but there was no transfer.
I Googled what train to take to get to Central Park. I found the right platform and caught the train with the right number, but the next stop wasn’t what I expected. I got off and realised that the train services had “uptown” and “downtown” routes. Uptown was going north I think, and downtown going south. Google had actually said to take, I think it was the uptown route, but I hadn’t noticed the distinction. Another train came pretty quickly, and I got to the stop at the southernmost end of Central Park.
Exiting up into New York, I was struck by how noisy it was. People were continuously tooting their horns, and there were often sirens. The city seemed to be in permanent gridlock. There were a lot of food trucks at the entrance to the park, and I got a philly cheesesteak for lunch and ate it at the entrance. The day was partly cloudy, with bursts of sun sometimes.
Then off into the park I went. It was quite large, about 2.5 miles (4km) long, though only about 0.6 miles (1km) wide. There were a number of streets intersecting it, but most of them seemed not to have any cars on them. I’m not sure if this was just because it was a public holiday, or if they had permanently closed them to cars. There were people cycling on them, and some horse-drawn stage coach type things going along. There were still traffic lights at the crossings. The crossings at traffic lights in New York had a button to press, as Australian lights do, but I’m not sure if it activated anything. Once pressed, there was a stern voice saying, “Wait!” every so often until it went green.
I have to admit to being a bit underwhelmed by Central Park. The autumn colour really hadn’t started yet, which I found a bit surprising, and there weren't many flowers. There were mainly large ovals, trees, a couple of lakes, and areas for playing sports. It was truly amazing to have an area that size in the middle of Manhattan Island, and I think if I lived in the city I would probably appreciate it a lot, but having been spoiled by the autumn splendour of the Adirondacks, and Butchart Gardens, this left me a bit flat. But it was nice to explore it, which I did for around three or four hours.
There was a large oval where people were eating, with the skyscrapers of New York in the background. Further along I found one of the lakes, which some people were boating on, and a fountain in front. The lake was pretty with the trees surrounding it, and the reflections, with peeks of skyscrapers here and there. There were a lot of deciduous trees everywhere, and I think the park would be a spectacular place when they changed colour.
A bit further along was a lake, with a small castle in the background, called Belvedere Castle. I climbed stairs inside the castle and looked out at the view below.
Further north again were basketball courts, with plenty of people playing on them. There looked to be areas for golf too, and baseball. Towards the northern end was a large lake, called Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. I walked along one side of that, then got to the northernmost section of the park. There were less and less people as I got further along. After a while I came to a stream and small waterfall.
I was looking in vain for a toilet, and eventually found a single one, which seemed to be occupied and stayed occupied for a while, so I moved on. I did eventually find a toilet block. They were not very plentiful. I realised after a while that not having many people around, though peaceful, might be a disadvantage. I was at one spot where there were a few people who looked a bit unsavoury, and one wanted to know if I had a cigarette. I didn’t feel entirely safe there, and was glad to get back to areas with more people around.
I walked across out of the park to a nearby subway stop – there were plenty of them – and went back south to the area where the Empire State Building was. It was interesting to see it towering above. As I walked around the city, one thing I noticed was that there were large heating vents every so often under the footpaths, pumping out warm air. It wasn’t especially cold, but they were going nonetheless. Manhattan Island has a huge steam heating system running through it, so perhaps they were something to do with that.
I took the subway back under the Hudson. The New Jersey station was near a mall, and I got a couple of donuts from Dunkin Donuts for snacks – they had donuts in the colours of the local football teams – then walked back to the RV park around 6.30, a little after sunset. I passed a marina on the way back, which was pretty. The park was close to an inlet off the Hudson River, with a large car park next to it, which I think was for people taking some kind of cruise from there, or for people parking to use the marina. I never noticed it very full. It wasn’t possible to walk very far along the bank of the inlet, so I walked back and set about making dinner, trying to use up the remaining supplies I’d brought.
It was remarkably quiet there at night, especially considering how noisy New York City was, and I slept pretty well. There were tall buildings around, which looked nice lit up at night, and the Statue of Liberty was just visible from some spots.
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