I’m traveling around the great state of New York with a group of 40 people from southern Georgia. They miss their sweet tea and no one is sure about eating mussels and everyone figures I can see the Empire State Building from my home in Lakewood.

All misgivings aside, they are good people because most people really are good.

When their flight arrived in Albany, we went right to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s house on the Hudson River in Hyde Park just over an hour away and south toward New York City. It’s a beautiful property, but the house is looking a little tired. It needs a coat of paint. The park rangers told me there is no money for sprucing up these days and it’s not the first national treasure I’ve seen in the last ten years that is going by the wayside.

The Presidential Library and Museum next door is far more captivating. Franklin and his wife Eleanore still remain an enigmatic couple in people’s minds. There are relics of their marriage behind the curated glass in the museum and people love hearing about the terse triangle between Franklin, his domineering mother Sara, and Eleanore.

Dinner that evening was at the perfectly positioned Shadows On The Hudson restaurant with its astonishing view of the Hudson River and the Hudson River Valley. But the real treat for me was a visit the next morning to the Culinary Institute Of America. In my next life, I will be a student there, making sauce in my crisp white uniform and tall hat. If you ever head to Hyde Park (and well you should), include this stop.

The school is housed in an old Jesuit monestary along the Hudson and it’s stunning. But never mind the outside, it’s what’s inside that counts. Inside, at any given moment, are some of the 2,800 nervous cooking students stirring pots or sliding trays into the oven. Visitors can watch an ongoing class from an observation window and I stood there mesmerized. There were about six students in one class poised around a stove where one was stirring a pot but no one was just truly standing there. They were all standing very upright and engaged with the pot–even the ones who weren’t stirring. And there was also motion: they all moved tiny steps around the stove dance-like, so as to show their chef instructor they were truly engaged with the pot and not just hanging around doing nothing while someone else stirred.

At one point, the chef instructor walked up with a big spoon, dipped it into the pot, took a sip of whatever was in there, stood for a minute to truly taste it, and then just shook his head no.

No, nope — not going to cut it — whatever it was they were stirring.

What a tiny moment I caught in that kitchen. It’s one of those little snippets of travel I’ll take home with me.

There was a West Point Academy visit and a trip to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall Of Fame, but what I will remember is a little corner restaurant where I had lunch. The people in this kitchen knew how to cook, but to me the sign of a good restaurant is one that knows how to make a good salad dressing. Some chef’s skills are judged by how well they can make a simple omelette, but for me, it’s all about putting together a good dressing or vinaigrette.

The chef wouldn’t give up his recipe, but from what I could figure out, it had an olive oil base, with white balsamic for the acid, garlic for complexity and a bit of honey for sweetness. You see this a lot in the fall — especially in New England — dressings sweetened with either maple syrup or honey.

And try as I might, I’ll never be able to reproduce that dressing when I get home. It’s hard to get a vinaigrette exactly right, but I vow to do it over and over until it’s close.

After two nights in the Thousand Islands, we’ll head to Niagara Falls for the weekend, which was a major draw for many of the people who signed up for the tour. At the end of the day, Niagara Falls remains a popular place for tourists, outshining quite a few other attractions like the Finger Lakes and Hyde Park or good vinaigrettes in Cooperstown.

It will be nice to see the falls again. It’s been a while. I forget what a natural wonder it truly is. Sometimes you have to see it again to remember how lucky we are to live nearby.

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