We left Cape Vincent as fast as we could, which turned out to be a little after 8:00 am. The weather had cleared, and we left in light winds to head east (down river) on the St. Lawrence River. Our trip for the day was only 26.1 miles, but we planned a fairly long stop at Clayton, NY (14.7 miles) to visit the Antique Boat Museum. ...and have lunch! Let us not forget about lunch. As we approached the dock at the museum (picture at right), a fleet of 7 (small) steam launches was just getting under way. Several of the museum's modern buildings are also visible (center and right).
The museum houses a large collection of antique boats from rowing, sailing and paddling small boats to speed/race boats to skiffs to larger pleasure craft. They restore boats in workshops on site, and they also have classes where you can learn to build a wooden boat from scratch. It is a boat lovers delight!
The picture at left shows a restored steam launch that is temporarily on display outside. These early steam powered boats were a wonderful advance, but given their propensity to explode, you can see how dangerous it might have been to ride in this launch.
They also have a fleet of three speed boats that they use on a daily basis. The photo at right shows one of these boats passing Lucky Us just after we departed from the museum. The beauty of the varnished mahogany is amazing, but of course, they require quite a lot of maintenance.
At the museum you go from building to building, and during one such traverse, we took a break and had a nice lunch at a new pub just across the street from the museum.
One of my personal favorite exhibits was this reproduction Captain's Chair. The Admiral found me in this chair several times... It was not as comfortable as my chair on Lucky Us, but during the long walking tour of the museum, it felt pretty good.
Lastly, we got a small taste of the Boldt Mansion when we toured La Duchesse, which was part of the fleet of boats at the Boldt Mansion which is just across the channel from the town of Alexandria Bay. La Duchesse is actually a large barge that was towed by a tug boat, but mainly it was moored at beautiful locations to entertain guests. There are two fireplaces, an original Steinway piano, guest and owner's quarters, dining room, lounge and spacious decks for viewing. The "boat" is currently being restored at the museum after many years of neglect. The original wood hull was replaced at some earlier point by a steel hull, but much of the interior was intact although modified by a previous owner.
We left about 2:00 pm to head for our final destination at Riveredge
RESORT in Alexandria Bay. Yes, I did mean to put emphasis on the word resort. After a bad experience last night, we were looking forward to a little "pampering".
We followed the St. Lawrence Seaway channel some of the time, but we also went out of the channel to go around several islands. To be "officially" counted as an island, there must be one living tree. We passed several islands that barely qualified as islands, such as the one in the picture at the right.
We also passed several beautiful lighthouses, such as the Rock Island lighthouse shown in the picture at the right. Almost everywhere you look it seems like a post card view. So far, this side trip to the Thousand Islands has definitely been worthwhile!
As we began to approach Alex (short for Alexandria) Bay, we began to see both modern and old (early 20th Century) mansions with huge boat houses. The photo at left shows a "new" one... Tomorrow we hope to tour around the Alex Bay area on both the American and Canadian sides of the boarder so there will be plenty of pictures of "Millionaire's Row" in the next post.
I had not known what to expect about water depths, but depths outside the channel were often over 100 feet. The depths in the channel were variable, but they were occasionally over 200 feet. They did have to build several dams and locks since Lake Ontario is about 246 feet above sea level, but the river had naturally eroded its channel to great depths in between the rapids where they built the locks. It was truly amazing to be going 200 feet off a rocky point and see the depth gauge read 180 feet. Of course, there are some shallow areas where extreme care is necessary.
The last picture is of Lucky Us docked at the Riveredge Resort. The hotel is at the right and the Seaway channel is about a quarter of a mile out from Lucky Us. Speaking of depths, the depth finder read 164 feet just a short distance beyond the hotel. The hotel has both indoor and outdoor pools and hot tubs. Whoop!
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