West Point

Sometimes it’s easier to write about places you’ve been to than places you haven’t. However, there was an advertisement I recently saw online that really caught my eye. 

There’s a ferry boat called the Seastreak Ferry that leaves out of the Atlantic Highlands, about a half hour north of Asbury Park. This ferry takes you into the Hudson River and through the Hudson Valley to an Army football game at West Point Academy.

What I know for certain is you don’t need to watch or follow college football to have a blast at a game—especially if they’re serving liquor on the boat and at the stadium.

The reason this excursion heavily intrigues me has a backstory; two backstories, to be exact. Backstory #1: There’s a place near the front gates to the academy called the Thayer Hotel, for visiting families of students and instructors at West Point. I work for a food distributor company, and the Thayer’s executive chef is a big customer of ours so I’ve been there a bunch of times for work.

The security is pretty tight to get past the gates. Sometimes they’ll search the inside of your work van with a dog before letting you through. But once you’re inside, it’s like being in a miniature town. They have their own bowling alley, their own movie theater, their own roller skating rink, and you name it.

One time, just for shits and giggles, I took a lap around the campus in my van to explore and check it out after finishing my delivery at the Thayer. I figured if security says something, I’ll just tell them I got lost (even though the Thayer is right next to the entrance.)

Fortunately, they didn’t bother me during my self-guided tour, which almost came to an abrupt stop when I saw the football stadium. It was absolutely gorgeous, to the point where it puts NFL stadiums to shame. And it’s located right alongside the river. My jaw nearly hit the floor as I drove past it.

My memories of West Point go back further than that, though, which brings me to Backstory #2. When my brother Mike and I were in middle school, our grandparents took us to the West Point Museum—mainly because Grandpa graduated from the academy before joining the Army as a young man.

We were sadly too young to appreciate all of the history that place has. For example, it wasn’t till years later when I learned the academy was originally built as a fort to fight off British attackers in the Revolutionary War.

But at the time, we were bored stiff there. I remember complaining about wanting to go to McDonald’s halfway through the museum. May God bless Grandma and Grandpa’s hearts for having to put up with that.

Now that they’re both up above, I feel like I owe it to them to return to West Point sometime and make up for being such a brat when they took me there. And I literally can’t think of a better way to return than by cruising through the valley on a ferry boat to a football game. 

An experience like that sounds completely out of this world.