Day Trip to the North Shore of Long Island

Catherine and I took the opportunity to explore the North Shore of Long Island on Saturday. We visited a few state and county parks as well as some fantastic historical sites.

We started by driving to Sands Point. This is a village located at the northernmost tip of the Cow Neck Peninsula on the North Shore of Long Island in Nassau County, New York. Wikidedia says; "Sands Point is made up of turn-of-the-century mansions and sprawling 1960's ranches. Many properties are on waterfront with beautiful views of the New York City skyline and Long Island Sound. Others have private beach rights. Sands Point currently has the most expensive suburban real estate and the highest income per capita in New York state."

We visited Sands Point Preserve which is "perhaps the most impressive of the North Shore’s early-20th-century estates, Sands Point first served as the home for railroad heir Howard Gould and was later purchased by Daniel and Florence Guggenheim. The 216-acre preserve, located by the Long Island Sound, is dominated by the massive Hempstead House but also includes a second mansion, “Falaise,” that was built by Capt. Harry Guggenheim around 1923. (Guggenheim was the founder with his wife, Alicia Patterson, of Newsday.) In addition to the properties, Sands Point provides access to beautiful walking trails, wooded areas and shoreline." as decribed by the Nassau County website.

Next we drove to the "Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, Long Island’s premier public arboretum and historic site located in Oyster Bay New York. A former Gold Coast estate, the arboretum is comprised of over 409 acres of greenhouses, rolling lawns, formal gardens, woodland paths, and outstanding plant collections. The original historic estate buildings remain including the 65 room Tudor Revival mansion, Coe Hall, which is open for tours spring through fall. The grounds, landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts, are spectacularly beautiful year round." http://www.plantingfields.org/

Finally we visited the historic site of Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, NY which was the home and farmland of former President, Theodore Roosevelt.
For more information, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagamore_Hill