-Escape with us on a sensational journey along America's Hudson River.

From the brilliant fall colors of the Adirondack Mountains to the glinting skyscrapers of New York City through wild and spiritual landscapes.

-It is sacred ground.

It's the most joyous landscape I've ever found.

Whoo-hoo-hoo!

-Tackling whitewater, drifting past nature, and riding beside tugs.

-Now I got to keep an eye on that wake, right?

It's throwing a pretty good sized wake.

-We'll explore a vibrant river flowing with history and culture, and meet the people who live, work, and play on this mighty waterway.

-Winds picking up.

We're going to ride this.

-From peaceful mountain valley to the Big Apple.

This is one of the most scenic river journeys in the world -- America's Hudson River.

♪♪ ♪♪ The Hudson River is one of America's most important and diverse waterways.

Known as the Mighty Hudson, it weaves for 507 kilometers through some of New York State's most stunning natural landscapes, a river that helped shape the history of a continent.

For centuries, it has been a vital economic superhighway linking the Atlantic Ocean to the interior of North America.

♪♪ Our journey starts here in the Adirondack Mountains of Upper New York State.

We have arrived at the perfect time of year.

The leaves are changing in an explosion of color and it is a breathtaking sight.

The headwaters of the Hudson are up here and in this remote wilderness, the best way to travel is by canoe.

We are going to tag along with Brian as he explores.

-There is something almost supernatural about the way so many kinds of beauty come together right here.

I've been playing here and exploring and hiking for 25 years, and I feel like I'm still just trying to get my mind around how the chemistry of all this fits together.

♪♪ When I need to center myself, when I need to find some quiet, I come to these mountains.

I come to the headwaters of the Hudson River.

And it is sacred ground.

It's the most joyous landscape I've ever found.

-From the piece of Henderson Lake, our journey along the Hudson will take us through a spectacular gorge to the historic town of Fort Edward, past Schodack Island and into the Hudson Valley, where we'll call in at Saugerties Lighthouse and a presidential estate at Hyde Park.

Following the shipping lane through Poughkeepsie, we will visit the famous military academy at West Point, sail through the Hudson Highlands, and end our journey with a bang in New York City.

Back at the river's headwaters, Brian finds solace from his busy job as a national radio reporter.

But as his paddle passes through the water, he can't help thinking of the bigger picture.

-I love thinking about the way this river is kind of a story.

The seed of the story is in these big, raw, wild mountains, and the water gathers here in Henderson Lake.

But then as you followed down through the Hudson River, you find so many of the things that make us American.

This river that starts right here, um, in many ways shaped American history.

♪♪ -We have arrived at the eastern end of Lake Henderson.

This dam marks the spot where the Hudson officially becomes a river.

♪♪ And on the banks, we come across the remains of a once booming mining settlement called Tahawus.

-You can imagine this very different landscape a century ago, where there would have been workmen.

There would have been horses pulling cargoes of logs and iron ore.

This area would have been churned up by industrial activity, and the river was a big part of that.

♪♪ The Hudson River allowed New York City to exist in the way that it does, Because of the raw materials that came from right here, the iron and the stone and the wood.

♪♪ -But the mining industry here has long since shut down.

And as Brian paddles south from Tahawus, he can enjoy the wilderness that has reclaimed the entire watershed of the Upper Hudson.

-The idea that a place this quiet and this serene can be the seed of the Hudson River, this noisy, industrial, historic river.

It's such a crazy contrast.

Every time I come here, I think about being in New York Harbor and water that started here, like, that's under my little canoe right now.

This is connected.

And, uh, I don't know, that... that's a magical thing.

♪♪ -The fledgling Hudson continues, shallow and unnavigable in parts on its journey downstream.

As it twists and turns through the wilderness.

It settles into a steady rhythm until it reaches the spectacular Hudson River Gorge.

We're about to get back on the water, but now it's whitewater.

We have arrived at one of America's top rafting destinations.

Our rafting guide today comes from a family who have made their living on the Hudson River for generations.

-And my grandfather was in charge of the log drives on the whole Hudson Basin for roughly 40 years, and raised a family of six right on the river.

So, it's pretty cool that my kids are doing this, too.

How old were you when we got you on the river?

-I don't know.

Old enough to strap on a life jacket.

-When the kids are old enough to strap on a life jacket, we got them on the river, and, um -- and ever since, they have been intertwined with the Hudson River as well.

-Together, Pete and Cassandra run a rafting tour company.

They've both been rafting the Hudson for decades.

As professional guides, it's a course they both lead tours on regularly.

But today will be different.

-Today will be the first day we've been in the same raft in I honestly don't... -At least 10 years, probably.

-At least 10 years.

So... -We'll see who's in charge.

Every time that I go down the gorge as a guide, it's different from the day before.

You really never know what you're going to get, except you know that someone's here to have fun and see this beautiful section of waters.

I mean, we're within four hours of Manhattan.

And I think it's incredible to think that this, like, huge, vast tract of wilderness is here and it's public and it's available for everyone.

-But touring this part of the river is not just a scenic cruise.

Once the whitewater starts, the river drops almost 1,000 feet over 21 kilometers, which makes for a thrilling roller coaster ride of sustained class three rapids.

-Whoo-hoo!

We're going to be looking for the waves and avoiding holes or hydraulics, which can hold or flip a raft.

There's a number of rapids at certain water levels.

You have to be in the right spot.

If you're not in the right spot, calamity will ensue and you have to be there and be on your game to do it.

[ Both laugh ] -It's a dynamic environment.

The river ultimately is the one who's calling the shots.

After 27 kilometers and about four hours paddling, we emerge from the gorge.

Everyone still aboard -- A promising sign.

-I think we could boat together again.

I don't know, I think it was a success.

I only was reprimanded from the back one time, whispered in my ear, "I think you should be pulling right now."

Don't tell me what to do.

-For us, this will be our last trip of the season.

So to get to spend it together was pretty, pretty good.

It was a pretty nice day out there today.

-At our next stop on the river, we leave the excitement of the whitewater for the thrill of history.

-"Don't sleep beyond dawn, dawn's when the French and Indians attack."

-We are making our way through the wilderness to New York City on the winding Hudson River.

The river here is navigable only in sections.

It cascades over a number of dams and waterfalls along the route... ...until it finally straightens out into a sensible channel south.

We have arrived at Fort Edward.

It may look like a quiet town now, but once upon a tumultuous time, this was the third largest settlement in America, and we can still find its history right along these riverbanks where the water laps over into people's backyards.

-This arrowhead is just one of many artifacts that I found.

I have a couple more in my pocket.

I have a hand-carved, bone-handled utensil that was most likely one of the French and Indian War soldiers had that in his meal kit.

And then I have a couple of musket balls and a British crown button that came off a uniform jacket, I'd imagine.

This is thousands of years of North American history right here.

And it all came from my backyard.

-In 1755, the British were fighting the French for control of the colonies.

They built a fort here to protect access to vital portages and waterways north into Canada.

-And it doesn't look it now, but in the mid 1700s, having 16,000 people around us with tents and campfires and officers hut, it was a city in itself -- the third largest on the East Coast after New York City and Philadelphia.

-Beside Fort Edward, encircled by the Hudson, is an unassuming island that holds an even greater claim to fame.

It is the birthplace of America's original Special Forces, a group of Army Rangers founded by this fellow, Major Robert Rogers.

-This man interacted with Native Americans, took a lot of their tactics, and incorporated them into his own force.

He was the original guerrilla warfare specialist in America.

-Rogers Island is sacred ground to modern special forces because it is here where Rogers wrote his rules of ranging.

And they are still used by American rangers to this day.

-"Don't sleep beyond dawn, dawn's when the French and Indians attack.

Don't stand up when the enemy is coming against you, kneel down, lie down, hide behind a tree."

That is radical for the mid 1700s that you would do that in battle.

"Let the enemy come till he's almost close enough to touch, then let him have it."

[ Laughs ] If this man didn't exist, we'd be speaking French right now.

We wouldn't be speaking English.

♪♪ -Moving downstream, the Hudson becomes an industrial powerhouse.

Passing Albany, New York, we find ourselves on a major shipping highway.

-How big is that?

-I don't know, but it's like a city.

Look at that thing.

-It's a highway shared by freighters and pleasure boats alike.

And given the choice today, we are joining the little guys.

-Let's go fishing, bud.

I love water.

I've been fishing since I was four years old.

Fishing is one of my favorite things to do.

-Derek Hallquist is a busy filmmaker, but he chooses to live upriver from the hustle and bustle of New York City precisely because of the wilderness lifestyle the Hudson can offer him and his son, Jack.

-I can quickly access all kinds of fishing on the Hudson, whether I want salt water or fresh water or fly fishing.

It's great.

-The Hudson here is an estuary.

Tides push saltwater, an incredible 217 kilometers upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, creating a vibrant habitat for fish.

-The Hudson, it starts getting active in April, and that's when all kinds of fish species come up the river from the ocean to spawn.

So this river is teeming with life and boats.

Right now it's autumn, which is beautiful, so it's a little more relaxing.

The fish have broken out of their summer patterns.

They're sort of eating before they slow down for the winter months.

Oh, you got one!

Keep it.

Keep it.

Don't pull it out of its mouth.

Did you set the hook?

-I lost it.

-That's okay.

-Ugh!

-Jack is seven now, and he started fishing right around the same time I did, around four years old.

Sooner I train you to be captain, buddy, the more I get to fish.

That's how that works.

What do you do to stop the boat?

-Um, pull that all the way back.

-Till it's centered, yeah.

Pretty fun, huh, Jack?

-Yeah.

-Derek is taking us downriver to Schodack Island.

Here, the gorgeous landscape appears untouched, but looks can be deceiving.

In fact, this entire area was dramatically reshaped in the early 1900s.

The river was too shallow to accommodate large cargo ships traveling to and from Albany, so a channel was dredged, and as we motor along the island, we see where all that riverbed mud was dumped.

-So at low tide it becomes very obvious that this is actually a manmade structure, this whole island.

Because over and over you'll see these old pilings that they drove into the ground to create a wall, to hold back all the sediment in the silt that they dredged up from the Hudson.

And now, most of this peninsula, Jack, is going to be preserved piece of land for all of the wildlife like the birds, bald eagles.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Our Hudson journey continues with a love story on the river.

-What originally drew me to this place was not only the charm of the location itself, but I fell in love with the lighthouse keeper.

♪♪ -We are on an epic 507 kilometer journey down the Hudson River.

As we enter the Hudson Valley, the river widens and we take a little side trip up a tributary in a kayak.

♪♪ -I love to kayak here.

This is a perfect place.

It's a soulful place for me.

I feel that my spirit does get replenished by being out here on the water.

-The aptly named Hudson Talbott is an author and artist.

And there is a reason we've hitched a ride with him up this quaint creek.

He is taking us to Catskill, made famous by 19th century landscape painter Thomas Cole.

His home here is now a National Historic Site.

-I feel so lucky to find myself here.

I came up here because of a curiosity about a river that's got the same name as I do.

I pretty much stumbled on to Thomas Cole once I was here, and I find it so inspiring that what mattered to him matters to me.

Cole love to paint the Catskill Creek.

He sort of used it the way Monet painted water lilies over and over again.

It was the earliest vision that Americans had, very idealistic vision, of their new country.

And this is the way he was painting it.

That could be me right there.

I know this little turn in the creek very well.

-Painting these idyllic landscapes, Thomas Cole was the first real superstar of American art.

His work launched a movement known as the Hudson River School.

But Cole was living and painting in a time of great industrial development, and as he saw his beloved landscape changing, so did his art.

-Here you can see there's little smoke plumes in the distance of early factories.

There is a woodcutter in the foreground.

With an axe in his hand, he's taken down a tree, and all this is being cleared away.

And now we have trains going all the way to the foot of the mountains.

They're all telling a story which is a warning about losing our wilderness, losing nature, losing our environment.

-Cole was an early environmentalist ahead of his time.

The century following his death saw the river overly industrialized and polluted.

But his message resonated through, and in the last 50 years, environmental groups have fought to return it to the Hudson Valley that Cole originally fell in love with.

-This was all industrialized at one point.

This whole bank along here was nothing but factories and smokestacks.

The conversation about environmentalism was begun right here in Catskill 150 years ago with Thomas Cole.

♪♪ -We are now two thirds of the way through our journey along the Hudson River.

We have traveled from the Adirondack Mountains through wilderness, towns and nature preserves to the Hudson Valley.

Further downstream, we will stop off at a presidential estate, a tug spotting capital, a military academy, and enjoy a sail through the Hudson Highlands before reaching our final destination of New York City.

But for now, we are still 160 kilometers from the sea at Saugerties.

This little harbor seal has swum a long way to say hello.

And we come across another unexpected site so far inland -- an historic lighthouse offering the best views of the Hudson around.

-You know, I probably don't come up here as often as I should, but every time I do, I think, "Wow, I live in a unique place."

We're right here looking over the channel, which extends to the north and to the south.

In here close, it shallows with just a few feet of water.

That's why the lighthouse is here.

To warn the ships away from those shallows.

-Patrick has been keeper of the Saugerties Lighthouse for the last 15 years.

-This is where the original lamp and lens stood.

Originally fueled by whale oil and then by the second half of the 19th century, kerosene.

And until electricity was brought out in the 1940s and then nowadays, solar powered LED goes on automatically.

-Today, the Coast Guard maintains the automated light, so the role of keeper has changed somewhat since the lighthouse was built in 1869.

Restored from ruin by a local conservancy, today the lighthouse functions as a bed and breakfast.

-I'm called lighthouse keeper, but the emphasis is more on the house nowadays and taking care of house guests.

So it's keeper, but you can call it innkeeper, housekeeper, uh, groundskeeper.

-For anyone wanting a rustic getaway on the Hudson, there are two welcoming guest rooms at the lighthouse.

Visitors arrived by boat or by foot along a 1.5 kilometer trail.

But they will want to plan the time of their check in around the tides.

-And that always comes as a big surprise for people that the river is tidal this far inland.

We have a average four-foot tidal fluctuation from high to low.

And if you aren't thinking about the tide, well, you're just going to get wet.

[ Chuckles ] -About a decade ago, I was due to come to the lighthouse.

I was running a bit late.

I knew that there's the tide to be concerned with, so I was corresponding with the lighthouse keeper at the time, and he gave me the warning that this would happen.

I came walking through the reeds at sunset, water just about up in my boots.

I expected a grumpy, elderly old man.

-[ Chuckles ] -And there he was, sitting in the sunshine.

What originally drew me to this place was not only the charm of the location itself, but I fell in love with the lighthouse keeper.

-Now the lighthouse keepers wife, Anna runs the property with Patrick.

-It's a challenging job.

It's a very unique lifestyle.

It sometimes makes us feel like pioneers out here in the middle of the river.

Looking out onto the Hudson River, it is just breathtaking with its scenic colors throughout all of the seasons.

There's not a day where we don't appreciate this gorgeous view.

♪♪ -Our Hudson journey continues with an unusual, high-adrenaline hobby.

-It's always thrilling when something this big is moving by you with so much power and so much force, and you're just in this little boat.

-Our journey down the Hudson River has brought us to the Hudson Valley.

As we drift steadily south, we start to see some of the grand old estates that make this region famous.

This was the playground for many of New York's elite families, including its 32nd president and avid sailor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

-FDR had always had this passion for the river and for sailing.

Even when the river froze over, that didn't stop him.

He would break out his ice yacht.

Ice yachting was a huge sport on the Hudson River, and they would race the trains up and down the Hudson.

Breakneck speeds.

Terrifying thing.

You have to imagine, there's no brakes on these things.

And it was a very scary sport, but he was addicted to it.

-FDR's relationship with the Hudson was lifelong.

He grew up here at Springwood, now a 900 acre National Historic Site right on the banks of the river.

-This house is where he was born, where he was raised.

It meant a great deal to him.

And he would come back here time and time again as governor, as president, he would entertain world leaders here.

This house meant absolutely everything to him.

-FDR served the longest presidency in the history of America.

He saw it through the Great Depression and World War Two.

-This presidency essentially took his life.

He was devoted to it, so coming back here was a recharge.

You don't really know who he was until you've been to this place and you've walked these grounds.

As FDR so bluntly said, "Everything that's with inside me cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson."

This is his world.

There was something in his blood that, almost like the river, the Hudson River was running through his veins.

♪♪ -Six kilometers south of Hyde Park, we arrive at the busy city of Poughkeepsie.

The huge barges pushed by hard-working little tugs passing under the city's bridges are an exciting sight.

Maybe not so much for these guys, but definitely for this guy.

Jeff is a tugspotter.

He spends many hours on the Hudson chasing down tugboats.

-Tugspotting can be dangerous.

You do have to be very careful, especially when you're close to these massive, monstrous tugboats that can absolutely crush you.

They've got no brakes.

They've got the right of way.

And if you're in their way, you're toast.

-Having tugspotted for 30 years, Jeff is extremely experienced at sailing so close to such large vessels.

-There's a tugboat coming.

Here comes the Saint Emilion .

Hey, good afternoon, Captain.

This is Jeff in the little boat ahead of you between you and the railroad bridge.

We're gonna start getting a few photos.

I'm going to take a few photos here from the channel and then when you get a little bit closer, I'm going to move over to the green side of the channel on the west side and be out of your way.

Okay with that?

- Sounds good, Captain.

There's no problem.

-Thanks, Cap.

Have a safe trip.

-It may look relatively straightforward, but tugspotting is a refined art.

♪♪ It takes a lot of planning for Jeff to get to this pivotal moment in his day.

Every morning he is up early, and with the help of antennas on his rooftop, he catches the signals of passing river traffic and pinpoints the approaching tugs.

-There are two headed northbound out of New York City.

There's one sitting up in Albany that might start moving soon.

And there's another one southbound from Albany that'll be here in the afternoon.

-Over the years, Jeff has taken thousands of photographs and even creates tug calendars.

-I find great joy in searching for these tugboats, photographing them, sharing the photos with the people that work on the tugboat.

So having this collection gives me a lot of pride and a lot of joy.

Sometimes I wonder about myself, why I have this passion about tugboats, and one day I was looking through some photographs that my mom gave me and I came across this old black and white photo.

Terrible twos toting a tugboat.

-Originally powered by steam, tugboats have been the workhorse of the Hudson for 175 years.

Today, there are as many as 100 tugs on the Hudson at any time.

With up to 8,000 horsepower engines, they can push six barges at once, carrying thousands of pounds of cargo like oil or scrap metal to and from the interior of New York State.

-The tugboats usually go between six, eight, ten, 12 miles an hour, so they're not exactly speed demons, but they are coming at you.

Let's have a little fun.

My boat with a 3.5 horsepower motor is not that fast.

I always got to think ahead and anticipate where that boat will be, and I will have to angle to get to it to be in the right position to make those photos.

Yeah, it's always thrilling when something this big is moving by you with so much power and so much force, and you're just in this little boat.

Now, I got to keep an eye on that wake, right?

It's throwing a pretty good sized wake.

I like this angle.

There's always seagulls following behind.

I suppose they're stirring up some fish and they're looking for a free lunch.

♪♪ Perfect.

[ Camera shutter clicks ] I've done it hundreds of times, and it never loses its appeal.

You never know what you're going to get.

Every day is different.

-As we enter the final stretch of our journey, we race to make an important cargo delivery under sail.

-It's about to be action time.

Start taking sails front to back, the jib and the stay.

♪♪ -As the Hudson carries us closer to our destination of New York City, we enter yet another stunning landscape known as the Hudson Highlands.

Technically, this is a fjord with forested mountains sloping into deep, deep water.

Here, where the river narrows and curves, the imposing towers of an American institution rise above the water.

This is the exclusive West Point, and we are stopping off for a quick poke around.

-West Point is many different things.

West Point is an academy.

A university.

It is a military installation.

It has been a military installation since 1778.

We have regular army soldiers stationed here and we do training here.

It is a memorial to American history.

If you walk around West Point, you are going to see cannon that were seized from the British during the American Revolution.

-Recognizing the Hudson's great strategic importance, George Washington established a fortress here during the American Revolution, and in order to stop British ships using the river, he hung a huge chain across it.

-These are the last known remaining links of the Great Chain that spanned the Hudson River and closed off traffic to the British during the American Revolution.

And each one of these links is 114 pounds.

-West Point was officially established as a military academy in 1802, 19 years after the end of the Revolutionary War.

-I think West Point has to be considered the heart and soul of the US Army.

Probably the brain of the United States Army is located in the Pentagon, but I think its heart and soul is located here.

Right, this is where Army football and Army sports are played.

This is where some of the best leaders in the United States Army have been developed.

So, many of the leaders in the Civil War, both in the North and the South.

Most notably Ulysses S. Grant, whose statue is facing south, as it always does.

During World War Two, we begin to hear names of leaders that we really recognize.

You have Dwight D. Eisenhower, you have Douglas MacArthur, you have Omar Bradley, and George Patton.

-In the footsteps of those military giants, approximately a thousand new second lieutenants graduate from West Point every year.

-Most of them are 18 and 19 years old out of high school.

And they volunteered to join the Army and go through what is the most strenuous, difficult college experience of anybody in this country.

♪♪ -The majestic Hudson River is carrying us closer to our destination of New York City.

And as we pass through yet another pristine landscape untouched by time, we continue our journey in the most natural and timeless way possible -- Under sail aboard the good ship Apollonia .

Her captain, Sam Merrett, is on an interesting mission to bring freight sailing back to the Hudson.

-The Hudson is a commercial waterway, and we like to talk about when the Hudson used to be a sail powered commercial waterway back in the 1800s.

And we like to think about, you know, in the next hundred years how it will become a sail-powered commercial waterway.

-Five years ago, Sam bought this 60-year-old steel hulled schooner and set about restoring her.

This is her first season on the water as an eco-friendly commercial cargo ship.

-Our mission is to move things with sailboats on the Hudson River, and by moving things, we want to connect people -- and that's both producers to consumers -- in friendly, safe, non-polluting ways, and also people to each other to remind everyone about where they live on the river, who else lives on the river, and that the river is more than just a beautiful backdrop.

It's a place you can ride your jet ski.

-Today we are carrying 2,300 pounds of malt and a shipment of hot sauce, both from local Hudson Valley manufacturers.

A brewery 30 kilometers downriver in Ossining is expecting the malt delivery this evening.

Sam is hoping to meet that deadline, but we're going to need some wind.

-There's very little wind, and it's mostly coming from the direction we want to go, which is the least useful.

We make the choice to sail and not run the engine.

We look at our engine as a means for safety and docking.

-The wind may not be cooperating this morning, but the tide is on our side for now.

Here on the Hudson, the tides switch every six hours, changing the direction of the river several times a day.

-The native term for this river was the Mahicannituck, which roughly translates into the river that flows both ways.

And so that highlights the utilitarian nature of the river to me.

It's very useful.

If you're patient, you can always have a favorable current.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Wind's picking up.

-Yeah.

Let's actually tack.

We're gonna ride this.

-23 kilometers from our destination, we sail under the Bear Mountain Bridge and past Dunderberg Mountain.

According to Mariners folklore, this is home to an imp that controls the winds around here.

-As everyone around here knows, you got to doff your hat when you get close to Dunderberg Mountain.

If you don't, the imp will scare up a storm.

Mr. Imp.

-The imp is suitably impressed.

The wind has risen, quadrupling our speed.

We are now approaching Ossining well ahead of schedule for our malt delivery.

A day that started out with just a whisper of wind has turned into a raging success.

♪♪ -It's about to be action time.

Start taking sails front to back, the jib and the stay.

We're gonna tie up starboard, too.

♪♪ Nice work.

You got to witness what I hope is what we just keep doing, which is finding new places with friendly people we can tie up, with things we can unload and distribute.

I am very, very pleased.

♪♪ -Up next, we end our journey in style with a champagne cruise into New York City.

-Manhattan skyline is nowhere better appreciated than from the water.

♪♪ -We have reached the final leg of our journey, and as we pass New Jersey's Palisades, we catch one last glimpse of the natural wonders of the Hudson.

Believe it or not, we are just 16 kilometers north of New York City and we are cruising downtown in style aboard the Manhattan , a replica 1920s commuter yacht.

She comes up here several times a day from the city to give classic Harbor Line tours of the river.

-We're just above the George Washington Bridge, the great monumental bridge, the only bridge to span the Mighty Hudson.

It was completed in 1931, and it brings a important sense of modernism to the city at the time it was completed.

Through that magnificent steel structure, we can see the particularly tall towers of Midtown and beyond that, the skylines, not only of Lower Manhattan, but of Jersey City in a remarkable, symphony of skyscrapers.

♪♪ Many people are not fully aware of the fact that New York is really a city on the water, that, in fact, it has 520 miles of waterfront, that that's more than the waterfronts of Boston and Miami and San Francisco and Los Angeles combined.

-As we cruise down the West Side of Manhattan, passengers enjoy a glass of champagne and take in a new perspective on an iconic skyline.

-I love the Hudson.

I love the calmness.

It's beautiful.

It has magnificent city views to offer.

-What many people don't know is that for a long time, the architectural splendor of New York was really overlooked.

But in recent decades, New York's contribution and America's contribution to world architecture -- the skyscraper, the symbol of American democratic capitalism, the built symbol of it, par excellence, have really come to be appreciated and savored.

And the view of Manhattan skyline is, I think, nowhere better appreciated than from the water.

It's amazing collection of buildings which says New York like nothing else.

-With the sun setting on a spectacular day, we arrive in New York Harbor.

What better place to end our more than 500 kilometer river journey than here at the Statue of Liberty, a monument to America, standing proud over her mighty waterway, staring out to where the Hudson joins the sea.

♪♪ We have taken an unforgettable journey on the Hudson through pristine wilderness, sweeping valleys, and breathtaking highlands.

Alongside the people who live on its banks and enjoy its waters.

We have witnessed how this diverse river feeds nature drives industry, inspires culture, makes history, and continues to shape a nation.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪