Category: Venturing Out and About

We took the ferry from Highlands to 34th street in Manhattan on Saturday morning after dropping the pups off at a doggy day care called Dogs on the Farm off of Navasink River road.    It was only a 10 minute ride to the ferry landing in Highlands.   We bought our round trip tickets and boarded the boat once it arrived and disgorged its passengers from NYC.   It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, but was a bit brisk in the wind on the water.

It had been many years since I saw NYC from this vantage point, I was maybe 10 when my father and I took his little Chris Craft up the Hudson and then around Staten Island on the Kill van Kull River.   Other than the view of Manhattan, the only other notable thing was me sitting on the bow watching for telephone pole sized timbers floating down the river.   They would have probably had us swimming if we hit one of them.

Anyway,  the boat was very fast over the water.  It looked like a catamaran when it pulled up to the dock.   We got to the 35th Street pier in about an hour, and after getting off we headed up 35th to find the Empire State Building and maybe something to eat for breakfast.

We found the entrance to the building and proceeded to walk up to buy tickets..  Geez,  $105 bucks later and we were off to the elevators, first to the 80th floor where we had to walk all the way around the building and then wait on another line for the elevator to the 84th floor.  At least there we could go outside the building for a bit where it was a lot cooler and a magnificent view, but then we had to get back on another line for another smaller elevator [one like the olden days in the movies with the scissor gate] that took us to the 102nd floor observation floor.   It was a really spectacular view!!  And we had a gorgeous day to do this.   I guess there has been a bit of inflation as I think it cost $5 the last time I was there back in the late 70’s.

We made our way down, again lots of lines for the elevators, but did finally make it to the street again where we walked around the corner to the Chipolte we had seen prior to going in.   By now it was lunch time.. so much for breakfast..

Afterward we headed outside to catch an Uber to 42nd street to get on a Big Bus for the uptown tour.   After checking out the schedules, we should have had time to do the uptown and then take the downtown tour and get out on Wall Street to catch the ferry there.

We found a great seat on the upper deck of the bus to see the sights.   A few stops later and there was a waiting list for the top floor, so we did good.   The traffic in Manhattan had other plans for what we were going to see.  For some reason, there was a Labor Day parade,  a week late from my POV, but it snarled the whole city that Saturday afternoon and we couldn’t even finish the uptown tour.   We did see some wonderful things:  Times Square, part of the theater district, central Park , the outside of the Cathedral of St. John the divine, Grant’s Tomb, Apollo Theater in Harlem, and drove by the Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and had many of the stars’ homes pointed out by the tour guide.  A funny one was the actual storefront of The Soup Nazi from Seinfeld!!! But  3/4ths of the way thru the tour route, we had to bail to catch a taxi toward 35th Street.   More unbelievable traffic, but the cabbie did get us near our destination, 2nd Ave & 35th.

There was no way he was going to get us to the ferry in 8 minutes, so we jumped out of the cab in the middle of the street there and ran down 35th.   About 1/2 way to the pier, I felt my knee pop and the ensuing pain of some pulled ligament.   We had to make that ferry if we were to get to the doggy day care before they closed.  The next ferry would get us there more than an hour after closing time.

I yelled for Kathy to run on and hold the boat [ha, ha] and I hobbled on at a slow pace.  The pain was bad, but I had no choice.   I made it because the boat was a few minutes late, and as I hobbled up to the pier, we were the last passengers to make it before they took off.  I was able to limp on and find a seat.  Kathy then brought me 3 Bourbon and 7s to ease the pain.

When we got back to NJ, it was even more painful to get to the car.   I guess the Adrenalin had worn off and now the real pain was poking me.   It took me a long time to hobble the 100 feet to the car.

But we made it with plenty of time to pick up the pups.

The following morning it still felt pretty bad, so I went to the urgent care.   They took x-rays.  The doctor figured they wouldn’t show anything, but they would be needed prior to getting authorization to do an MRI from my insurance co.

I left there with some anti-inflammatory meds, a knee brace, and crutches.  I hobbled over to my brother’s for a later dinner than originally planned.  Sorry Jeanne…

 

 

 

Made our way into Boston looking for the Commons, once there, noticed an underground parking garage right underneath the park.  Couldn’t have been easier to park in downtown Boston.   Came up near the Frog Pond and headed off to find the visitor center and hopefully a good map.   There were a lot of people in the park.   You’d think we were in Balboa Park on a Saturday morning.

We parked and walked up the stairs to the surface and headed toward the visitor center to pick up a map of the trail.   While we were over there a walking tour was starting and after buying a map, we followed them out toward the state house.   When the lady leading the tour started shouting at the top of her lungs in a very shrill voice, we decided to get as far away from her as possible.

We made our way to the state house, putting some distance from the screeching.    After taking a couple pics there, we walked over to the Granary Cemetery.   There were lots of extremely old headstones there, quite a few appeared to be buried too far down in the dirt.  Almost all were made from a brown stone that was difficult to read in the shade of the big trees there.   There were some very surprising things on a few of the headstones I stopped and looked at.   Winged Sculls was an odd theme on quite a few of them.  Not sure what that was all about yet.  Something to look up when I get time.

Not far down the trail from there was the King’s Chapel and another old cemetery with similar headstones, again the winged sculls on quite a few.     Passed the old book shop and the old meeting house and picked up some Chipotle takeout and had a short picnic on the corner of School and Washington streets where there were some tables and chairs set up in a small town square (in the shape of a triangle).

After the respite we headed toward the old state house building and the site of the Boston massacre.  There was a large round marker on the massacre site.  Next on the trail was Fanuel Hall, which to me was just another chatchky shop, only on a much grander scale.  Out the back and we walked thru the Quincy market.  There was a lot of very nice looking produce stacked in all the sidewalk stalls.

Across the street from there was an unexpected park.  It wasn’t on the map we had.  Turns out it was very new.  They had under-grounded a highway and made a park on top.   Just past there was the north end of Boston,  where the Italian food smells were everywhere.  I kept thinking about the old Prince Spaghetti Company commercials from my childhood as we walked thru there to the Paul Revere House, then on to the Old North Church where “one if by land, two if by sea” became famous.   [Crazy to think I stood in the actual church where that happened!]

Just before getting to the church, there was a large statue of Paul Revere riding his horse on a wide promenade.   We walked by another cemetery and then over the rickety Charlestown bridge, heading toward the Bunker Hill monument.   I had seen pictures of the monument but never of the statue in front of it.   A very elegant and dashing portrayal of the commander from the battle.

After getting a few pics there,  it was nice to be going downhill toward the USS Constitution.   Once there, I walked over to see if we could get on the ship, but the line was a couple hours long and my feet were already barking at me.  So I snapped a couple pics and we took an Uber back to the park to get the car.  [Thank God he was OK with taking the dogs in the car because I couldn’t walk another step!!!]

When we drove out of the garage, I noticed my Fitbit said we had walked 7.5 miles, but I had read somewhere the trail was 2.5 miles long.  I am not sure why we walked so much farther, but our feet were sure tired!!

Before we drove back to the campground, we headed over toward Cambridge to see the area Harvard resides in.   It was much nicer than I expected.   I don’t think I have ever seen so much brickwork.

A couple days later we drove back to the same garage and walked thru the commons to another Mexican place for lunch where I asked if we could bring in the pups and they said yes, we could.   Afterward we headed over to the Boston Public Garden for a stroll.   The pups went nuts as there were lots of squirrels to bark at while we watched the swan boats in the lake.   I thought it was pretty nice there with all the trees, flowers and geese.  It was a beautiful place to relax and enjoy the scenery.   I hadn’t known the swan boats are pedal powered by the operator sitting in the back of each boat.  They must get a good workout every day!

We found this very oddly worded sign all around the Boston area.   Thickly Settled…   So we finally took a picture of one.

 

After a couple days of unplanned downtime due to a nasty bit of food poisoning, we were back on the road Thursday afternoon, this time heading south toward the Cape.

We drove down to Hyannis Port looking for Camelot, and after some wrong turns I pulled over and looked at the map.   Then we headed over to the correct spot.   It’s pretty well hidden from the regular roads, but there wasn’t a gate on the private road till it was way back on their property, which was very close to the house.    I drove down it with Kathy telling me not to, but I had come so far I wanted to see it.  For all I knew, the family didn’t even live there anymore.   But as I got close, a man got out of a red Mercedes and motioned for me to clear the area.  I snapped a couple of pics from what I presume is the back of the main house and then proceeded to back up the car on that narrow private road.

From there we needed to find a tree for the pups and headed over to a park in Hyannis Port.   NO DOGS!   They wanted $20 to park but didn’t allow dogs.  The gal at the gate shack told us we would have to drive out of town to another park about 10 miles away.   Kind of odd, but we listened and drove off.   100 yards further up the street was the JFK Memorial Park.   The pups found their trees and all was well with the world again.    We assumed it was our California plates that said we were foreigners…

 

 

 

After that we proceeded toward our real destination for the day, Provincetown

We drove all the way out past the town toward the lighthouses,  stopped in the National Park to walk the pups on the beach and then headed back into town to find out if Provincetown was dog friendly.   Turns out it is.  We were famished by the time we found parking out on the wharf and wandered onto the main drag.   That word did double duty here.   Its a cool little town with the huge historic marker on top of a hill back from the waterfront.   That main road is barely one lane wide.  I think it was called Commercial Street, but mostly it was people just walking on it and occasionally a car poked on by.   I saw what looked like a decent pizza place with an outside deck and asked the guy if they allowed our pups.  No issue he said and we climbed the stairs up to the deck.  The pizza was pretty good.   Not Brothers (Red Bank, NJ) quality, but better than most.

Afterward we needed to walk off the food and took off down the street till it started thinning out on the south end, so we headed back to the car for the long unfamiliar drive home in the dark.    I will leave off the story of that ride, but let me say it was eventful.

 

 

 

We drove down Hwy 1 till we could get on 295 south.  We started hitting toll booths again in New Hampshire.   Time to refill the ipass.

We made good time considering we took the 495 around Boston after experiencing a lot of traffic on 95 in New Hampshire and MA.  (and it was a Sunday)

On Monday we bopped on over to Plymouth to check out the rock.   I was pretty amazed how small it was.   It was maybe 3 feet square.   The docent said it had been much larger originally but due to everyone coming by and taking a piece it was now just a shadow of the original.  They must have taken a lot of pieces.   He indicated it had been about 20 feet square in 1620, the size of the enclosure it was in now.

We walked around the waterfront and the town,  lots of extremely old buildings, and lots and lots of museums.   There is a passenger ferry to Provincetown but it appears to only go once a day.  Leaves at 10am comes back at 6pm.   We also made our way over to the Old Grist Mill.  It was a reproduction.  It had burned down after a couple hundred years of use, and that was a couple hundred years ago.  How time flies.

Upon leaving Plymouth, it was time to find the dog food store that I had ordered a bunch of freeze dried chicken and turkey from while we were in Bar Harbor.   I had unsuccessfully attempted this back in Niagara Falls, and luckily this time it worked…   The wallet now being $500 lighter,  all was well with the world again.    We headed back to the coach, which is just south of the town of Carver Mass, in a campground called Shady Acres… Can you imagine my first thought when I entered a barren field to find my campsite… not a tree within 400 feet.    Deceptive marketing can be taken too far!

We drove down to the harbor after deploying the coach as it was still fairly early in the afternoon.   We drove around the downtown area and then drove out to Spruce Point.   What a picturesque place.   After we got out to a point where the roads appeared to be private, we turned back and stopped at a small memorial I noticed on the side of the road on the way out.   It was a memorial for all the fishermen that died while at sea.    Right across he street was a Catholic Church with the brightest gold crosses I’ve ever seen.

After we walked the pups around, we headed back to the harbor area, found a parking spot and started exploring the waterfront.    The town appears to be built on a hillside so the streets and sidewalks are up and down.   Boothbay seems to be a really pup friendly place, lots of water dishes outside businesses.  I walked over to a restaurant to ask about eating with our pups.  They said no problem,  they had a deck.    Then we walked out a long wooden bridge to the other side of the harbor.   The pups got spooked by a seagull wing poking up thru the wooden plank walkway.   At first I thought it was a crab claw poking up there.  But upon further inspection there were some birds under the boards and occasionally a wing slipped up thru the spaces between the boards!

The next morning we headed out toward Hendricks head lighthouse.  It was gated and marked private.  I guess someone lives there now.   But there was a pretty little beach with kids playing on the sand and kayaks plying the calm waters around it.

The next day we decided to drive out to Ocean Point.  There was supposed to be a very scenic spot out there.  And we were amazed by how beautiful it was.   The large homes were set back from the very small road that followed the shoreline with occasional parking areas that were just a few lines on the same narrow little road.   I wasn’t even sure they were parking spaces, but people were parked and a sheriff drove by and talked with a few folks milling about.  Nobody had to move, so we kept driving and eventually turned around to find a few spots to get some pics.

Off in the distance on an island maybe half a mile out was a small lighthouse.   Must need a boat to get there.  I later looked it up and it’s called, of all things, The Cuckolds Lighthouse.   And it appears to have been converted to an Inn.    The shoreline there was just amazing.   I don’t think I could ever get tired of the view,  except maybe during a nor’easter.    The rocks along the shoreline were like nothing I had seen before.   I would guess they were carved out by glaciers.

That night I drove over to Damariscotta to find a small truck selling Mexican food.   It was pretty good considering what we had been trying lately.   Something was missing but it was much better than all we have tried since the bus in West Yellowstone, Montana

The following morning we set out for Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, quite a long drive as there were no bridges and I had to drive inland again thru Damariscotta to get on a road that went out that peninsula.   It was a really, really small lighthouse with the most narrow of stairs and a final ladder to get thru another even narrower opening into the light floor.  It was so small they only let 4 people up at a time.  The stairs were so narrow there wasn’t room for a railing.  Thankfully it was only 20 or 30 feet up to the light.   I am still amazed how many of the little lobster buoys are everywhere along the shore, bobbing in the swell.

Not too far down the road was Fort William Henry.  A peculiar looking fort as it was round on the outside.   Most of the other forts I have seen were either squarish or star shaped.     We drove off looking for the town of Wiscasset.  It was just past the turnoff we had taken with the coach to get to BoothBay.   Another small town with big churches and lots of older homes and buildings.  There was an intriguing place to eat but we had already planned on a spot on the harbor for that evening.    There was a long line outside, and the next morning on our way down to Boston there was another long line outside.  It was Red’s Eats, just a small, little shack on the corner.  [Reminded me of how people line up for Kono’s in Pacific Beach!]

We ventured back to the harbor for dinner on the water.    We had the pups and went back to the place that said we could bring them in the first night we were in town.   Sure enough they lead us thru the bar and dining room to the deck overlooking the harbor.    There was a gal playing guitar and singing,  and the pups seemed to like listening to her so all was right with the world.   I had the lobster mac N cheese and Kathy had chicken and lobster with mushroom sauce.  Both were really good.   I was not sure what to expect as I could not find any ratings for the place when I looked them up on my phone while sitting on their patio.  I guess I should put in a rating for them.   I would go back.

For the next few days we explored the Island and Acadia National Park.   Once you get out of the Bar Harbor, the roads are way less crowded.   It seems like 98% of everyone on the Island is in Bar Harbor.    We headed out toward Bass Harbor and the Lighthouse.   When we found it, there was a very small parking lot and very full, but we were lucky and someone pulled out of a spot as we were nearing them.   Wandered down to the lighthouse for a peek.   They don’t let you inside except one day around Labor Day weekend so we were out of luck.  It was a very small lighthouse and kind of plain, but it appeared to still be in use.  Most of the others aren’t used anymore from what we could tell during our visits.   Took some pics, talked to the docent for a bit, and heard we could walk down in front of it from the other side of the parking lot.  We walked over there and the path was a mud bog, so we went back to the car and left.  By then there were about 10 cars waiting to park in this small parking lot.  Held maybe 15 cars…  I was guessing the last guy in line would have a long wait.

On the map was a place called Seawall and we drove in that direction.   The coast up here is breathtaking.  When we arrived at Seawall, there wasn’t much there but a stone seawall and we kept going till Southwest  Harbor came into view.  It was another cute little village with lots of boats tethered in the harbor.   Not much in the way of beaches up here,  the coastline is very rocky.   Must be hazardous to your boat if you lose power.   

We walked around and snapped a couple pics, then off on a drive way around an inlet toward Northeast Harbor. They are not very creative with the naming up here.  On the way we found Sargent Road right along what the sign said was the only Fjord in the US,  with some spectacular ships moored there, the type we saw in Monaco the day after the Gran Prix.  Then we found the spectacular waterfront estates.   Kathy was in awe with all the trees and the inlets,  nothing like what you find in San Diego at all.

It was another picturesque village with another cute harbor full of moored boats.   Something I hadn’t mentioned yet are the scads of buoys all around the shoreline.   I am assuming they are attached to lobster pots below them, but as I had not seen anyone pulling them up,  I don’t have any empirical data to prove that.  🙂   I have not seen anything that looked like it was a commercial lobster growing area, so I am guessing all these Maine lobsters are harvested right off the rocky shore.   And there is a lot of shoreline here.

We then drove over to Seal Harbor and found a dock to park on, a perfect spot to walk the pups and take some more pics.   Some of the boats tethered here were small fishing vessels.  Very cool.   When I moved to San Diego, there was a huge tuna fishing fleet and I looked into working on them, but speaking Portuguese was a requirement so I crossed that off my list.   Now there are almost no fishing vessels there.   Kind of sad.

The following day we did Acadia National Park.   Checked out the Park Loop Road first thing in the morning.  Found some really great overlooks, then we found a beach, out in the middle of nowhere among the rocks and trees.  Truly amazing.  It was so amazing to hear waves like the ocean.  My Cuz and family are at or traditional Beach Week in South Mission Beach, so it reminded us of it.   Then more overlooks and lunch at a place I had noticed the afternoon before.  Then off to hike around Cadillac Mountain.   Not much of a mountain compared to what we spent the first couple of months on the trip around.    Pretty view from the top though.

A funny thing happened in the traffic on the top o the mountain.  Some arrogant prick cut me off so he could get a parking spot ahead of us.   But as karma works,  just as he passed a parked car, its backup lights lit and I got a spot.  I noticed a little while later he was still circling the parking lot.   Some things just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning we headed over to check out Bar Harbor and to get a lobster roll for lunch.   I popped my head into a local barber shop and asked where to find the best one he knew of.  (I was told to ask a local. Who better than the local barber, I say)  I asked him where he would go, and he said to his house, that he makes the best one.  We didn’t get an invite but he mentioned a place right up the street that he said makes a pretty good one.

We walked over and had lunch.   It was good,  I didn’t know it was a lobster salad put on a roll for twenty bucks.   Now I know.   Afterward we got the pups out of the car.. (It was cool and rainy when we got there) and after a bit, the rain stopped.  There are a lot of chatshky shops in Bar Harbor,  and there were a zillion people there on this Friday afternoon.   One store owner told Kathy it was very unusual to have so many people there.  Said it was due to a motorcycle rally or something.  Plus there was a Holland America cruise ship in the harbor, so that probably didn’t help when it offloaded another 2,000 people into downtown.

We headed down to the wharf area where I saw a lobster boat offloading its catch right into a truck via a winch on a mast.   They must have had about 200 huge plastic containers full of lobsters stacked up on the deck,  and the stack was at least 10 feet tall when I first got there.   The winch was taking two bins at a time right up to the truck bed where the truck driver just pulled them into the back.   I could not see what was going on in the back as his truck opening was even with the edge of the wharf over the water.   Wouldn’t have wanted to back that up any more as it was a good 20′ drop to the boat deck or the water.

It was very low tide, and it appears the difference from high to low tide here is quite a bit.   It looked like 10-12 feet or more.   That seems nuts to me.  It’s maybe 4 – 6 feet difference in San Diego, so I am not sure how it could be so much more here.

Arrived late Sunday afternoon after a nice drive from the seaway west on 37 to US11 to I-87 south.   We are in a campground about 15 miles south of Schroon Lake and about the same north of Lake George village.

We took off early this morning to find the old cabin we spent some time at back when we were children.  I could not find it, but I believe I found where it used to be,  but the area is all newer log cabin McMansions now.   After that we drove out to Ft. Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain.   It was a very nice day, high 70’s and not too humid.   Toured the fort and then headed down toward the King’s garden.   They had a formal garden,  not Versailles but pretty nice for Upstate NY.   And they even had a few large vegetable gardens just outside the walls of the formal garden that they used in the restaurant and at the fort for the authentic food the soldiers ate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After touring the gardens, we started looking for Mt. Defiance following a fairly odd map from the historical society.   We actually got there, but I was not sure we would.   It’s a long drive up a very bumpy paved track,  not really a road, but like a wide driveway for a couple miles.   After parking we had quite a walk up a very steep walkway.  The pups had to pull Kathy up to the top!   From there we could see many miles in each direction on Lake Champlain,  and a good view of the fort probably a mile or more off in the distance below us.

Finding places to get lunch with two pups hasn’t been easy since leaving Cali, but we did go into one restaurant in the town of Ticonderoga and they told us about a restaurant called Wind Chill Factory.   We found it a few miles out of town and ordered lunch to eat on the patio,  actually the only place to eat was outside on the patio for everyone.   Wasn’t bad,  had a decent Philly Cheese Steak sandwich, and now I can’t wait to get to Philly for a real one!

After lunch we drove down Rt 9N.  What’s the N stand for,  who knows.  It’s quite a nice road that goes along the lakes all the way down to Lake George Village.  Beautiful drive, and Bolton Landing was a surprising little town that was really nice, and had lots of tourists flitting about.   I hadn’t seen any mention of that town anywhere.   It’s right on Lake George.

 

 

We needed to add to the stores for the weekend so I headed out to find a grocery store after an unexpected 3- hour blackout.   Since it was pretty muggy by noon when it started, we got to exercise the genny to keep everything going including both A/C’s.

Not far from the campground was an Aldi’s, kind of hidden way off the road down in a hollow, not sure how I was able to spot that.   I drove down there and went to pick up a cart.   That’s where it started to get odd.   All the carts were chained together.  I had just seen two folks grab carts not 25 feet in front of me, so I figured it must get real windy here so there’s got to be a trick to undoing the chains.  I looked and couldn’t find it so I relented and went inside and asked what the trick was.   No trick she said, just put in a quarter in the handle slot and the chain opens.   What an odd thing.   Anyway I headed back toward the car to see if I could find a quarter in the cup holder or under the seats, but before I could get there, the lady in the car next to me had her door opened so I couldn’t get to mine.  I mentioned I needed to find a quarter to get a cart and she said to take her cart, then she got in her car and drove off.

Now I had a cart.  I went inside only to find it’s one of those places that hems you in with all the crates and boxes so you have to walk all the way to the back of the store first.  The food was different, everything, even the produce, was in plastic.   Nothing about the veggies left me with the impression that they were fresh.   Most of the food was Aldi’s brand,  not a lot was any name brand I had ever heard of.

I loaded what I could find and headed for the checkout.   That went OK until I got out to the car and noticed nothing was in bags.  She had just put everything in the bottom of the cart!

I am not going back to an Aldi’s anytime soon.   Probably ever.

Got it back to the coach and then headed back to find a real grocery store.  On the way out I saw a few turkeys on the side of the road,  had to stop and take a picture.  You just don’t see them wandering around the roads in San Diego.

There was a really nice grocery store almost across the street from the odd one.

I was able to find everything I needed except for fresh carrots,  I have not seen fresh carrots since we left CA.   Everything is bagged.

Friday night we had another thunder storm move thru.  Thankfully not much wind so I just made sure we were fully battened down and went back to bed.  Kathy said she couldn’t sleep, there was too much lightning and thunder.  Baxter crawled up toward us and hunkered down under the cover after one particularly loud thunder clap.

On Saturday we took a ride around the area and found a ghost bridge.   It looked like it was a fairly substantial bridge, but the entrance on both sides was boarded up and overgrown.

We also found a nice town park in Massena right on the river with lots of Canadian Geese wandering around and diving for fish in the river.   The boys just watched them and started wagging their tails when they took off and landed in the water.

 

 

 

Geez,  the weather radio just squawked with another severe thunderstorm and hail headed toward us.   This weather crap is starting to get old!

We are heading out toward Schroon Lake in the morning!

We drove another 300+ miles today and arrived at Robert Moses State Park on the St Lawrence River around 4pm EDT.

Kathy asked me to figure out how many miles we had driven so far on this trip.    It was 5,245 miles as of Robert Moses State Park campsite, we are here till Sunday, and that doesn’t count the miles we have driven in the car sightseeing.   And I just calculated we have driven it 7,875 miles since we bought it in January.   We drove about 1,500 miles on our 4-week shakedown cruise around California back in April.

We had to drive thru a tunnel that goes under the Eisenhower Lock that was marked at 13’6″.  Tunnels are always an E-ticket ride in this very wide (8’6″) and tall (12’7″) vehicle.  I think the tunnel must have been a bit taller than written up as none of the antennas hit, which when they do hit something, it’s a real attention grabber.   And it was also a surprise tunnel as the app I use to look for low bridges and tunnels did not show it.   I sent the developer a message with the coordinates so it could be added ASAP.

I know that it surprised another camper because when I was unhitching the car last night to back the coach into our spot, a guy walked up and asked me if I had gone thru the tunnel.   I guess he thought there might be another way in…   I told him I had, and he asked how tall the coach was.  I told him it was 11 inches less than it said the tunnel was.   He mentioned his 5th wheel trailer was 13’6″….   That would be a dilemma to me..  But my guess is that sign means you can fit a 13’6″ vehicle thru it.   Not sure what he concluded..  I haven’t seen him in here again,  but it’s a very large campground.  This is a beautiful park right on the river.   On our walks last night some of it looks like a well kept up golf course!

We drove around the park on Thursday afternoon.  It’s a big place indeed.   There is a beach and marina in one area, then we drove out to what appeared to be a curved bridge only to find out it’s a large dam.  I remember seeing a lot of power lines off in the distance on the way in yesterday, but they were not around this dam, so it’s not generating power.    Unfortunately there was a gate preventing us from driving on the dam, so we turned around and went east on the road only to find another much larger dam where all the electric lines started…  It was also blocked off, so we headed over to the Eisenhower Lock as I could see there was a ship coming down the river on the marine traffic app.

At the lock visitor center they have two levels of viewing decks above them, both with lots of chain link fence, presumably for security.   It’s really just to prevent you from taking good pictures.   It’s incredible that the government thinks that chain link gives them any security.    100 feet from the viewing deck is a tunnel that goes right under the lock.  Need I say more?

It’s very cool to watch the ship go thru the process.   But the odd part in the beginning was the ship drove over to one side of the entrance and appeared to be using the braille method to get into the lock.   The ship was two feet narrower than the lock itself, so it was slow going, almost imperceptible movement till it got further into the lock.   Then it started moving a bit quicker so you didn’t have to focus on a spot for a while just so you could tell it was moving.

It literally crept into the lock, taking a lot longer than I imagined it would.  I didn’t time it, but I seemed like 30+ minutes to get fully up to the forward lock doors.   There was a large red gate with a thick cable that looked like it was locked in place on the opposite side to prevent the ship from hitting the lock doors.   I bet that would be a wild ride if they did as the water on the downstream side is 42′ lower, although it didn’t appear to be that much lower to me.  They had to open that gate so the ship can inch forward to the lock doors as they cannot close the rear lock doors till it’s within a couple of feet of those front doors.   I guess they didn’t expect the ships to get that large back in the ’50s when it was built or they would have put that gate much closer to the lock doors.

Once they were finally in and the back doors were closed, the lock crew just popped the stopper so the ship would drop to the lower level.  That took all of five or ten minutes and then front doors opened, some lines were winched back onto the ship, and they were off, just in time for the next ship coming up river to get into the lock.   You can see it sitting right outside the lock in the pic of this ship heading out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We didn’t stick around to watch the second ship as the part where they inch their way in was akin to watching grass grow.   We headed out to see the local town of Massena, NY.   There was a mall not very far from the park, so we headed there first.   It was a ghost town.   Huge mall,  most of the stores looked boarded up.   Maybe this was a poor spot to put a mall.   Seemed like the middle of nowhere to me.   Then we drove into the little village.  It appeared to be a sleepy place.   Not much going on during a Thursday afternoon.

On the way back to the campground, I stopped for a pic of that second ship traversing the roadway above the tunnel.   It always amazes me when I see big ships above me, like when I was in the garden district of New Orleans and saw a large ship steaming up the Mississippi River many years ago.