On The Road With Denis & Starr/Day 18 - Long Island

Sunday, October 18

Long Island

We spent a very productive morning catching up on laundry, accounting, and Denis filled Gloria's digital frame with a multitude of photos from 2009 events.

It rained on and off today but it did not keep us from heading east again, this time to a hamlet called Baiting Hollow.

In the 1960's, families living in the more urban boroughs of New York like the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, often escaped the hot summer in the city by vacationing on Long Island.  During the time we lived in Flushing, we were one of those families.  Our place was called Baiting Hollow Lodge, a colony of 30 cabins nestled in the woods with a private beach on the Long Island Sound that was accessed by the steepest and longest flight of stairs that you can imagine.  For years, I have longed to return to that enchanted place of my childhood.  Thanks to my darling Denis and our trusty GPS, named Louise, we found it with just a few clues from my memory.

No longer a summer haven for the working class, it is now a private community called Baiting Hollow Cottage Condominiums.

 Gone are all of the simple cabins, replaced by pricey bungalows and small houses.  Except for one little cabin, a throwback to those days when our hardworking dads would arrive on Friday nights for the weekend, leaving on Sunday to return home and back to work while the moms tended to the children for the remainder of the week.  I was amazed to find that this little relic, Cabin #23, was the one we rented during our last summer at Baiting Hollow.

Keenly interested to see if the staircase that would compel even robust children to have to stop and catch their breath was still there, we headed down the path to the beach.

Glory Days, there it was!

I  could smell the Coppertone just then....

Back to the Village of Huntington we went.  Our destination - Pancho Villa's.  Our quest - Margaritas!

And everything else that goes with them.....

That evening, we spent a quiet time at home.  Denis' new found favorite spot was in Gloria's Lazy Boy Recliner.  Gloria and I sat at the dining room table knitting and talking about everything under the sun.  Later, while watching Mad Men, Gloria got an exciting phone call.  Her nephew had just returned home after surprising his girlfriend with a weekend trip to Paris where he had proposed!  How romantic!!