Filippini Pond

Unfortunately Ted and I didn’t sleep so well because, as awesome as this hotel is, the beds are way too soft and I woke up with an annoying backache. Today was a bit of a longer drive so I collected our breakfast from the reception area - even though it was bagged, there were still plenty of options.

The weather was a bit overcast again today but fortunately, with very little rain. After stopping in nearby Margaretville for some supplies, we continued onto Bethel. I had been disappointed previously about the lack of autumn colours but today we had some colour on the drive which was great.

When we finally arrived in Bethel we noticed two things - the amount of signs written in Hebrew, and how the town didn’t have much else! We headed straight to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, better known as the site of the 1968 Woodstock festival. We actually thought the place was closed as there was a huge car park area, and only a handful of cars.

Just like our visit to NASA in Houston, this place exceeded our expectations. We purchased an entry to the museum as well as the iPad audio tour “Meet me at Woodstock” which we did first. This was a guided, multimedia tour of the Woodstock historic site which involved walking around to seven different locations outside, in the area where the festival occurred. At each location, the tour showed a 3-D model of the stage, with pop-up photos and videos highlighting landmarks around the historic site. It also played music of that era whilst attendees would give their memories of the concert. It was great.

The museum was just as good. The exhibit included films, interactive productions, artefacts on display, and photographic murals. It showed fashion of the 1960s, music from the era, and original footage featuring the people, stories, sights, and music of the Woodstock Festival. It reminded me slightly of the Beatles museum in Liverpool - even though I wasn’t around during that era, it helped you to appreciate and understand it.

After taking a lot of photos, we continued on our way. As we still had plenty of driving to do, we settled on another McDonald’s drive thru meal (ugh) so we wouldn’t need to stop. We even crossed the border into Pennsylvania for two minutes, but the drive kept on going!

Fortunately our hotel in Mount Morris is quite good, although we have really noticed how rundown some of the towns we drive through are. I managed to do an enormous (seemingly) amount of laundry too at the hotel laundry, meaning we have clothes to wear again! I was hungry and tired by the time we went to dinner, so Ted suggested we go to a nearby Denny’s.

It seems like the shortage of workers we saw at Roxbury is prevalent here too as the waitress needed to turn us away as she was the only one working. It was then we noticed how virtually every business seemed to have a “help wanted” sign, indicating a similar problem here. I ended up getting Subway and Ted bought KFC for dinner. We were disappointed but it’s understandable.

We were exhausted after the drive today so decided to go to bed around 9.30pm. We have no definite plans yet for tomorrow but are so glad we have two nights to relax here.Read more