RI76 Wagon Tales: "A Date With Barnabas Collins", Croton to Lyndhurst Estate,Tarrytown,NY, Day 14, Saturday, June 12,1976 ....12 mi

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Journal Entry Saturday June 12 ,1976 ,Croton to Lyndhurst....12 mi


Sunrise at Croton Point Park

Some people slept in tents, we slept in our wagon. My sister Cathy slept in our horse trailer and Tom K slept under our wagon, we made a little tent for him with canvas.

Cathy came last night with Al & Ann Stone and Darleen & Pat Reynolds . Cathy will spend the day and go home on Sunday. When school is out she will join us for the rest of the journey.

Tonight Lee made an overnight trip home to drop off "KK" and pick up "G" ( our Quarter Horse mare, Gamble's Got It, who we had left in RI) . We came to the decision that after what happened in Newtown ,we did not want to take another chance with KK if we didn't have to. So while we were only a couple of hours from home it would be the best time to make the switch.

After leaving the park we again traveled on the narrow bridge.

Dawn and Darleen... twin sisters from RI are our outriders today.

(Dawn is our outrider Ranny's wife )

Dawn Tuchon and Darleen Reynolds

We stopped for a small ceremony in Ossining NY at which we were given a Bicentennial book about Ossining.

While in Ossining we met a man (Herman Bates- he was related to Neuner family on Rt 94... the old Smith Farm) who related the story about the elephant that Bailey(of Barnum and Baily) brought into Ossining (1^st elephant) & then went to Somers, NY & from there to Chepachet, RI I had heard the story about an elephant but did not know about the NY connection. Here is a link to a story about "Betty" Baily's famous elephant : http://www.chepachet.com/betty.htm

This afternoon lee rode on Thunder for a while " Conestoga Style" ... he liked to do this sometimes.

The original Conestoga Wagons were driven this way. They were the cargo wagons of days gone by and were all closed up , the driver usually rode the left rear horse. There was a brakeman riding on a small plank seat on the side of the wagon.

We went up and then down some “very” steep hills and we had to wait a long time for the big teams. They had a lot of trouble on the hills. Some kept falling on their buts. This was supposed to be a short day but now it is 12:45 and we still have quite a ways to go.

A Royal Welcome at Lyndhurst

We arrive at The Lyndhurst Estate at 2:30 PM. We will have a rest day here tomorrow.

Maybe we will try to find "Barnabas Collins" ! This is the filming site for "Dark Shadows " !!

Here is Stan's CT Journal entry for Saturday, June 12th, 1976:

I was up extra early today. Very nervous and excited. I am going to be by myself today driving the wagon and horses. Stub Brown who is my mentor, my friend and the man who recently taught me (in the past 4 months) how to drive a "4-up" team of horses, had to go back home to the Kriz Ranch in Bethany, CT to get ready to take the 8 Horse Kriz Hitch to some fairs. Johnny Kriz, (owner of the Belgian Horses on the CT Wagon), promised me he would have someone meet me tonight to go with us and help on the rest of our journey to Valley Forge. We were supposed to leave Croton Point Park at 8:30 am and head to Ossining, New York. However, we were being delayed by the police for some reason. Not sure if there was an accident along our scheduled route of if they didn't have enough patrol cars to escort the Wagon Train. We finally got going,
and it was turning out to be a much cooler day. All was going well and we stopped in Ossining, NY for a brief ceremony and lunch. Then we headed for Lyndhurst, NY where our next encampment would be. Now came some trying moments. We had to go up a very steep hill, which prompted Roger to decide to space out the wagons. Me being alone in the CT Wagon, I was nervous, but fortunately I had Geri, my outrider, who stuck real close on the near side to keep me calm. Well, we all made that uphill okay, but then we came upon a hill that went almost straight down for almost 1/4 of a mile! Now I was even more nervous than before. Well, Roger spaced out the Wagons a little farther apart this time (top to bottom) to go down this hill towards the Hudson River. As I started out going down the hill I noticed that my nigh horse (Colonel) was slipping on his rear legs. Roger saw it too, so he came over and told me to put a full brake on the wagon (we didn't use any drag tires this time like we did back in Connecticut). This worked well as it made the team have to "pull" the wagon down hill. Colonel stopped slipping after that and we made it the rest of the way down okay! Thank You Roger!!! We arrived at Lyndhurst on time. While we were getting the horses fed, watered and settled in, I checked Colonels back horseshoes. I could see the barium points (traction points) were pretty well worn off , his shoes so I asked Roger to have Lee Richie call Johnny Kriz to let him know that Colonel needed new shoes. (Brothers Johnny and Joe Kriz were both blacksmiths and did horseshoeing for a living.)