Tuesday, July 16: Canal Opens Tomorrow as We Resume Our Trek North

Date:                           July 16, 2013

Day on the Cruise:      92

From:                          Kingston City Marina, Kingston, NY                                            

To:                              Kingston City Marina, Kingston, NY

Statute Miles:              0.0 SM

Time:                          0.0 Hrs

Cumulative Miles:       1,874.5 SM

On Board:                  Susan, Chuck, Maggie, Trooper, Peanut

We got confirmation last night that the Erie Canal will open TOMORROW (Wednesday) MORNING at 8:00. Sooo, our plan is to leave Kingston tomorrow and go about 38 miles up to a marina at New Baltimore, NY, which is about 20 miles from the start of the Canal at Waterford. On Thursday, we will go through Lock 1, also called the Federal Lock, at Troy, NY, then spend the night on the wall at the Visitor's Center in Waterford. Friday, we will enter the Canal. We are three weeks behind our itinerary, and need to make up some time.

Over the past several days, we have been busy provisioning for another 6 weeks on the boat. We will not be returning to Alabama at the end of July as we had originally planned, so we have to do the provisioning up here. This mainly involves getting food and supplies for the pets as well as getting a supply of consumables. We then have to break all of these supplies down and put them into containers and cubby holes.

We are also doing planning for the Canal and Lake Erie. We have tabbed and indexed our charts and cruising guides and refined our itineraries to select marinas and places to stop. The long delay in Kingston means that we will expedite our trip through the Canal and across Lake Erie. We will travel every day until we get to Brewerton, NY where we will stop at a yard for some maintenance for a day or so. We will then go every day through to Buffalo. I hope we can cross Lake Erie in 4-6 days from Buffalo, then proceed up the Detroit River and Lake Sinclair to Lake Huron. We will be very happy if we can start Lake Huron by August 10.

In the last four days, we have taken one trip around the area. Yesterday we drove up to Woodstock, which is the area where the famous rock concert was held on a nearby  farm back in the 60's. It was held in the summer and attracted 10's of thousands of young people and big name bands. I remember the pictures of the muddy fields and the torrential rains from afternoon thunderstorms. At the end it was a mess of muddy humanity that joined together to celebrate the great music of the era.

Well, I have to say we were underwhelmed by the town of Woodstock. It is a small, older, quaint town out in the country that now has turned itself into a collection of artist galleries that cater to tourists. Parking is difficult to obtain on the street. We really did not see anything of interest to us there, so we passed up the big tie-dyed tee shirt shop and headed to another town up in the Catskill Mountains called Phoenicia.

Phoenicia is touted as a getaway in the mountains for folks from New York City. Susan has a friend from our former town where she was Director of a Red Cross Chapter, that knows Phoenicia well and suggested that it was a place worth seeing. So, we can now say we have been there, done that, and really, we must not have gone to the same place that Susan's friend John was thinking of.

Next, we continued higher into the Catskills to a place called Pine Hill. We were really looking for mountain scenery and back roads experiences, so we took a narrow back country road up and over the big mountain range to the West of Kingston.

Bingo! This was beautiful drive. It rivaled our travels in North Carolina. The mountain streams, lush forests, and out of the way mountain lakes, were all very scenic. We went through a number of small settlements with old houses, especially old stone houses that had big trees surrounding them. We saw "camps" in the woods that were clusters of several wood houses that are used in the Summer and Fall. Everything was green and lush. And those orange lilies! They are everywhere and we loved seeing them. We were a million miles from New York City, yet only an hour or two by road. What a great treat as we rode through rural New York State.

We rode by a large lake called the Rondout Reservoir. This lake was formed by damming Rondout Creek where we are tied up. The creek has a large earthen dam across it well up in the mountains. The dam forms a large body of water that is about 7 miles long. This reservoir supplies water to New York City. The water flows through a big tunnel or aqueduct that is 85 miles long, making it the longest tunnel in the world! This tunnel stretches from the reservoir all the way to the City.

The beautiful Rondout Reservoir

Rondout Reservoir looking back to the Catskill Mountains

A big home place on the shores of the Rondout Reservoir

In retrospect, we really lucked out that the Erie Canal closure slowed us down here in New York. This has been pointed out by several readers of the Blog. We would never have spent the time in and around Kingston and gotten to see the sights that we have. We would never have gotten to the ancestor's town in Connecticut, nor would we have seen West Point and the mountains and the areas around Albany. So, we are most fortunate to have had a great place to stay here in Kingston and to have had these opportunities.

Now it's time to continue the slog North on the Hudson. Are you ready? I know we are!!!
       
Thanks for Reading!