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Saturday, 16 September: We loaded the car and left Old Quebec about 7:30. The other car had left earlier. We stopped at a McDonalds just before crossing the bridge that would take us out of the city. We avoided Montreal as we headed south and west. We stopped at the border to collect the rebate of the 14% tax we had paid at our hotels. As we left Quebec Province, the sun came out, and we had beautiful weather for the rest of the trip. We got to Larry's house in Glen Ridge, NJ, in the late afternoon. Our plan was to use the next couple days to let Jean and Ozzie see some of New York. Sunday, 17 September. After breakfast, Jean, Ozzie, Jane and I caught a bus that took us to the Port Authority in Manhattan. There we bought tickets for two different bus tours of Manhattan, one Downtown as far as the Battery, the other Uptown. The Downtown tour (Lower Manhattan), on an open double-deck bus, was very informative and enjoyable.
The Uptown tour, on a small shuttle bus, was a fiasco. We got caught in a colossal traffic jam caused by a parade that closed the streets. Due in no small part to the driver's "clever" attempt to bypass the jam, we must have spent two hours and driven miles to get to a point one block away from where we first got caught in the jam. Notwithstanding the long delay, the bus was back at the Port Authority at the regularly scheduled time, making us wonder what they had skipped. That evening the four of us took Larry's family to dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant.
Monday, 18 September. After breakfast, the four of us drove to the ferry terminal in
Liberty State Park (NJ) and took the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We spent a couple of
hours on Ellis Island and had lunch there. We didn't get off the ferry at Liberty Island because
Jean and Ozzie didn't want to do any climbing. However, the view of the Statue from the ferry is
much better than it is from the island. We got back to Larry's about 3:00 p.m.
Tuesday, 19 September. On the way home, we planned to stop and see our son Kevin, wife Karen and family in Eldersburg, Maryland, just west of Baltimore. Jean and Ozzie hadn't seen them since their wedding in 1997. We left Glen Ridge around noon and got to Kevin's after four. We stayed for dinner and left about 7:00 p.m. It was 10:30 by the time we got to our home in Massanutten. Jean and Ozzie stayed with us another day, giving our son Randall the opportunity to drive over from Culpeper with his family to see them. Jean and Ozzie left for Atlanta early on Thursday. General Observations. In spite of the terrible weather in Quebec, we enjoyed the trip. We always have fun on the sibling reunions, and the family history visits to our ancestors' villages were frosting on the cake. We could see at the time, though, that we would have to limit our physical activities on any future trips. Some of the group already found a moderate amount of walking to be a strain. As it turned out, some of them have suffered serious physical setbacks over the following year. That undoubtedly will further limit our sibling reunions. We hope and pray that we can keep them going in some form or other for many years to come.
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