Visiting Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty

September 2022

In September 2022, we were parked in a campground near Marathon, New York. Located in the middle of the state, we were able to explore from one end to the other. I wrote about Niagara Falls in this article.

This day we planned to drive to Liberty Park, New Jersey and get on a ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I recommend purchasing tickets online at Statue City Cruises, but plan ahead for traffic delays. Better to be there early than show up late and miss your ferry. Park in the Liberty State Park Parking Lot and walk into the building. Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty are both only accessible to the public by ferry.

The ferry office is located inside the abandoned Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal. This waterfront transort hub has been turned into a museum. It is a beautiful building and the ferry boats are docked outside. If you have enough time you can explore certain areas inside this building.

Once you walk outside and head to the ferry boat, it is the New York skyline that catches your attention. Rich kept telling me to watch where I was walking. He worries about me tripping and falling. I couldn’t stop taking photos of the skyline. We have never been to New York City.

The name of the boat we boarded was the Miss Freedom. There is a small shop on board where you can purchase souveniers or drinks and snacks. The boats were clean and had plenty of seating and standing room. There are restrooms on board also.

Ellis Island is fabulous to view from the water as the ferry boat approaches it. I was excited to visit. My father’s father, my grandfather, came to America as an immigrant from Germany when he was a boy. I had been told that their boat landed in Boston, but I wanted to look it up here in the Ellis Island records. And I did find his name and his parent’s listed in the records here. How exciting that was.

There was no record of Rich’s family name. I kind of think the spelling has been changed over the years. There are so many ways to spell our last name that someone could have simply misspelled it somewhere along the line and his ancestors are harder to find.

The Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration is full of artifacts and passenger records that tell a story of the first immigrants to this nation and how they were processed in this building.

If you keep track of the National Parks that you visit, don’t forget to go to the gift shop and get your stamp and sticker. There are two of them available, one for Ellis Island, and one for the Statue of Liberty.

This museum is wonderful. We had plenty of time to walk through all of it. The journey begins as far back at 1550 telling the story of the first Americans. Don’t miss any of these areas. They were all interesting.

The Registry Room is the room that all immigrants would have been processed in. You can view each room they would have went through for inspection and processing.

Ellis Island is located in New York Harbor in the waters between New York and New Jersey. It was the busiest immigration inspection and processing station in the United States. On the south side of the island is the Hospital, but it was closed the day we were there. The hospital is only accessible by guided tours.

The ferry runs on a regular schedule all day long every fifteen minutes, so when you are done exploring the Ellis Island Museum and Island you can head back to the dock and wait for the next boat.

The first ferry we took was the Miss Freedom and we rode on the bottom deck. This one was the Miss New Jersey and we sat on the top deck.

As the boat backs out of the dock and turns toward the Statue of Liberty, the view is amazing and you just can’t take enough pictures. At least, I couldn’t. Seeing it for the first time is an experience you just can’t explain. I wonder how those first immigrants felt as their long boat voyage from across the ocean finally reached the harbor and they saw this statue for the first time.

Liberty Island is not very big and you can easily walk all the way around it in a short time. There are remains of the 19th century Fort Wood behind the statue. There is a Statue of Liberty Museum filled with immersive displays of the monument including paintings, quilts, rubber duckies, and legos, plus a lot more. There is also a gift shop.

Rich walked up in the statue to the base of her feet. It was quite a few steps and is pretty steep so I stayed at the bottom. He said when he looked up he could barely see some toes and would have been able to look up her skirt.

Our boat ride back was once again on the Miss Freedom. We will definitely go back to this area again sometime as there is still so much to see in the area. We didn’t get to Governor’s Island which is on my list. We will make it back someday.

I want to stress how simple and easy this trip was. Rich was always worried about driving in the traffic, and I was always worried there would be too many people and it would be easy to get lost. There are signs everywhere and we weren’t worried in the least. Don’t be afraid of the crowds or anything. I am so glad we went and have no problem going back to the area someday soon.

Once we got back to Liberty Park and departed the boat we explored a little more around the park area. There is a New York City Skyline viewing area and a plaster resin statue of a Reclining Liberty.

Don’t miss the Empty Sky Memorial Monument honoring New Jersey residents who perished in the 9/11 disaster. Walking through and seeing the amount of names listed on the walls is humbling.

I hope I have given you a nice taste of visiting this area without showing you everything. You simply must see it all for yourself. I hope this is on your bucket list. It was always on mine. I can’t wait to go back and explore more of the area.

We don’t take a lot of selfies, but I did take one of this, and then I cut off her head.

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