Canajoharie 2

En Route on The Erie Canal
N 42 57.211 W 074 14.526

Saturday, 10:00
Sorry. I've been delinquent for not writing blogs for several days. My excuse is that we've been busy.

We returned from Vermont on Wednesday. The weather was still hot and hazy so we didn't get inspiring views of the mountains. On Wednesday evening, while Libby was away doing laundry, our friend Tom came down to visit at Lock 7. We knew Tom from the days when I worked for Digital Corp.

There were thunderstorms in the area, the air was very unsettled. Tom and I watched the boats cycling through the lock. After a time, we saw rain coming so we ducked inside Tarwathie. The rain didn't amount to much and it soon passed, leaving cooler weather behind. Surprise. The next morning I bought a newspaper and read that severe storms caused damage and deaths nearby to our north, south, east and west. It is remarkable how local and quirky those storms can be.

Friday, we spent the day visiting my sister Marylyn. She didn't know that we were near by so it was a surprise to her when I called. I took her to our favorite restaurant, Oliver's. Then we went to the boat. Then, Libby took her shopping and finally I took her bowling. It made a perfect day from Marylyn's point of view.

In the evening we got a call from John and Mary Ann and they invited us to their house for dinner. We haven't seen those two since sailing in the Chesapeake last fall. Their grandson Grayson was visiting from Phoenix.

Grayson

Friday morning, Mary Ann and Grayson joined us for the voyage from Lock 7 in Niskayuna up to lock 10 in Amsterdam. It turned out to be a splendid summer day and everybody had fun. Along the way, we got a call from Carmello and Diane, our sailing companions from last September. I invited them to join us too and soon we had six people on board.

We checked out the new boater's center in Amsterdam. They have a lovely spot with electricity, water, showers, laundry and [a broken] pump out. Unfortunately, they also want $1/foot for overnight stays. With so many other places along the canal offering free facilities I expect that they get very little business. Perhaps not enough to pay the wages of the person hired to collect the fees. The only worse place is Schenectady; despite all the free state money available for waterfront development, Schenectady has no facilities, not even a place to stop for an hour. Tsk tsk.

Diane and Carmello

We stopped at Amsterdam and Diane and Carmello treated us to dinner. That was fun. Thank you Carmello and Diane. It made quite a day.

Today, our goal is Canajoharie. They have a Winslow Homer museum there that we'd like to see. We may also be able to meet with my sister Nancy and her family. They are en route from Boston to Thousand Islands by car and their route should take them within a few hundred meters of us. We just passed lock 12 at 10:00.

Boy it sure is fun to return to our home territory to be able to see so many of our friends and family once again. When the time comes to decide finally to pass through the Panama Canal and set out for a five year circumnavigation; I'm sure that our emotional heartstrings will be tugging at us saying, "Don't go."

What about the scenery on the canal? It's so beautiful that I fear sounding repetitious if I say the same thing every day. Even in New York it is still true that 95% of the shore lines still appear to be undeveloped, wild and very beautiful. The other 5% shows evidence of man. The trees along the banks block our view of all low lying land around us so we don't see the buildings. The river appears mostly as it must have been before the white man came to America. Whoops, wait. Before all the dams, most of the river must have been shallow or white water. I withdraw my statement about the wild appearance.


Saturday 12:45
We just passed through lock 13. There are lots of signs of flood damage here. I asked the lock master how high the water got. He pointed to a spot just below the red light you see in the picture. Yipes! That is about 12 feet higher than the dam. The amount of water flowing down the river at that height must have been amazing.


This part of the river is snuggled in the cleavage between pairs of steep ridges. I love watching the hawks soar on the ridge up drafts. It makes me want to go soaring. Years ago in Vermont I learned to fly a glider and to soar the ridge lines. One flies along the ridge with the wing tip just a meter or so away from the tree tops. One flies on the windward side. As the wind it lifted by the ridge it in turns lifts my glider or lifsts a hawk. It is like getting a ride on an elevator. The hawk I was watching just slipped over t the other side of the ridge line and then he suddenly plunged like a stone. One tries to avoid that in a glider because the consequence is that you could be forced to land abruptly like it or not. It happened to me once. Luckily, I was able to reach a freshly mown hay field to make a nice easy landing. If there had been no field I could have been pushed down in to the trees. How does the hawk manage? I'm confident that the hawk had no trouble navigating to wherever he wants to go.


Now we're entering a region where the valley opens up more. It is still not the location for Libby's and my favorite painting, Peace and Plenty. We always try to identify the place when we travel the Mohawk Valley. Actually, we may never succeed in finding the scene because it doesn't exist any more. 200 years ago, New York and New England were 80% farm land and only 20% forests. It must have offered wonderful views of fields and meadows viewed from the hill tops. Today, the ratio is reversed and most panoramic views are blocked by trees.

Some years ago we were touring Fort Ticonderoga in New York. I was talking with a woman who was involved in the restoration work and who was very proud of what they have accomplished. However I could see paintings depicting the battles at the fort and they plainly showed that all trees for miles around were cut down to expose invaders to defensive gun fire. I asked the woman when they were going to finish the restoration by cutting down all the trees around us. "Over my dead body," was her reply. Chuckle.

Anyhow, I digress. Here, where the valley opens up a little, we have the New York State Thruway to port and we have the Amtrak track and New York Route 5 to starboard. I wave to the people I the cars and the trains but they move too fast to see if anybody waves back. The train passing by could be the famous Lake Shore Limited. A moment ago I got a call from Nancy. They are in Springfield Massachusetts and heading our way. We'll meet them in Canajoharie.

This is the season when day lilies are prominent in upstate New York. They are so beautiful and so hearty. They grow wild any place on the border between sunny and shady spots. Most of them are a beautiful orange. We don't see many day lilies in other states.

Every place there is a buoy in the water, there is a corresponding sign nailed to a tree on the shore. For example, on a tree near buoy 337 is a sign that says "337" The state workers remove all the buoys for the winter because they never would survive the ice floes. They can use the signs to accurately replace the buoys in the spring to their designated locations. What if the tree gets washed away? I suppose they could always fall back on the old fashioned method and use their GPS :)

I just spotted a corn field for the first time this summer. The corn is knee high, just about par for this part of the country. In Oklahoma the corn would be as high as an elephant's eye by the Fourth of July.

The weather is splendid today. The temperature is about 75F (24C), the sky is blue with brilliant cumulus clouds. There is a fresh 15 knot breeze that makes Libby and I just ache to be able to sail. Perhaps we can rig the sail on the dinghy?

Saturday, 16:20
Now I'm near the traffic circle in Canajoharie. We had a nice visit from Nancy and her family, Karl, Lena, Alexandra and the Kudra the dog. They met us at the river front park here and we had fun sitting in the cockpit and swapping stories.

When it was time for them to leave, I asked for a ride in to the town to find a hot spot. I'm sitting here under a tree, 20 feet from where I got out of their car and I find 3 WiFi signals. It's getting easier all the time to WiFi.

Canajoharie 1

En Route on The Erie Canal
N 42 57.211 W 074 14.526

Saturday, 10:00
Sorry. I've been delinquent for not writing blogs for several days. My excuse is that we've been busy.

We returned from Vermont on Wednesday. The weather was still hot and hazy so we didn't get inspiring views of the mountains. On Wednesday evening, while Libby was away doing laundry, our friend Tom came down to visit at Lock 7. We knew Tom from the days when I worked for Digital Corp.

There were thunderstorms in the area, the air was very unsettled. Tom and I watched the boats cycling through the lock. After a time, we saw rain coming so we ducked inside Tarwathie. The rain didn't amount to much and it soon passed, leaving cooler weather behind. Surprise. The next morning I bought a newspaper and read that severe storms caused damage and deaths nearby to our north, south, east and west. It is remarkable how local and quirky those storms can be.

Friday, we spent the day visiting my sister Marylyn. She didn't know that we were near by so it was a surprise to her when I called. I took her to our favorite restaurant, Oliver's. Then we went to the boat. Then, Libby took her shopping and finally I took her bowling. It made a perfect day from Marylyn's point of view.

In the evening we got a call from John and Mary Ann and they invited us to their house for dinner. We haven't seen those two since sailing in the Chesapeake last fall. Their grandson Grayson was visiting from Phoenix.

Grayson

Friday morning, Mary Ann and Grayson joined us for the voyage from Lock 7 in Niskayuna up to lock 10 in Amsterdam. It turned out to be a splendid summer day and everybody had fun. Along the way, we got a call from Carmello and Diane, our sailing companions from last September. I invited them to join us too and soon we had six people on board.

We checked out the new boater's center in Amsterdam. They have a lovely spot with electricity, water, showers, laundry and [a broken] pump out. Unfortunately, they also want $1/foot for overnight stays. With so many other places along the canal offering free facilities I expect that they get very little business. Perhaps not enough to pay the wages of the person hired to collect the fees. The only worse place is Schenectady; despite all the free state money available for waterfront development, Schenectady has no facilities, not even a place to stop for an hour. Tsk tsk.

Diane and Carmello

We stopped at Amsterdam and Diane and Carmello treated us to dinner. That was

Today, our goal is Canajoharie. They have a Winslow Homer museum there that we'd like to see. We may also be able to meet with my sister Nancy and her family. They are en route from Boston to Thousand Islands by car and their route should take them within a few hundred meters of us. We just passed lock 12 at 10:00.

Boy it sure is fun to return to our home territory to be able to see so many of our friends and family once again. When the time comes to decide finally to pass through the Panama Canal and set out for a five year circumnavigation; I'm sure that our emotional heartstrings will be tugging at us saying, "Don't go."

What about the scenery on the canal? It's so beautiful that I fear sounding repetitious if I say the same thing every day. Even in New York it is still true that 95% of the shore lines still appear to be undeveloped, wild and very beautiful. The other 5% shows evidence of man. The trees along the banks block our view of all low lying land around us so we don't see the buildings. The river appears mostly as it must have been before the white man came to America. Whoops, wait. Before all the dams, most of the river must have been shallow or white water. I withdraw my statement about the wild appearance.


Saturday 12:45
We just passed through lock 13. There are lots of signs of flood damage here. I asked the lock master how high the water got. He pointed to a spot just below the red light you see in the picture. Yipes! That is about 12 feet higher than the dam. The amount of water flowing down the river at that height must have been amazing.


This part of the river is snuggled in the cleavage between pairs of steep ridges. I love watching the hawks soar on the ridge up drafts. It makes me want to go soaring. Years ago in Vermont I learned to fly a glider and to soar the ridge lines. One flies along the ridge with the wing tip just a meter or so away from the tree tops. One flies on the windward side. As the wind it lifted by the ridge it in turns lifts my glider or lifsts a hawk. It is like getting a ride on an elevator. The hawk I was watching just slipped over t the other side of the ridge line and then he suddenly plunged like a stone. One tries to avoid that in a glider because the consequence is that you could be forced to land abruptly like it or not. It happened to me once. Luckily, I was able to reach a freshly mown hay field to make a nice easy landing. If there had been no field I could have been pushed down in to the trees. How does the hawk manage? I'm confident that the hawk had no trouble navigating to wherever he wants to go.


Now we're entering a region where the valley opens up more. It is still not the location for Libby's and my favorite painting, Peace and Plenty. We always try to identify the place when we travel the Mohawk Valley. Actually, we may never succeed in finding the scene because it doesn't exist any more. 200 years ago, New York and New England were 80% farm land and only 20% forests. It must have offered wonderful views of fields and meadows viewed from the hill tops. Today, the ratio is reversed and most panoramic views are blocked by trees.

Some years ago we were touring Fort Ticonderoga in New York. I was talking with a woman who was involved in the restoration work and who was very proud of what they have accomplished. However I could see paintings depicting the battles at the fort and they plainly showed that all trees for miles around were cut down to expose invaders to defensive gun fire. I asked the woman when they were going to finish the restoration by cutting down all the trees around us. "Over my dead body," was her reply. Chuckle.

Anyhow, I digress. Here, where the valley opens up a little, we have the New York State Thruway to port and we have the Amtrak track and New York Route 5 to starboard. I wave to the people I the cars and the trains but they move too fast to see if anybody waves back. The train passing by could be the famous Lake Shore Limited. A moment ago I got a call from Nancy. They are in Springfield Massachusetts and heading our way. We'll meet them in Canajoharie.

This is the season when day lilies are prominent in upstate New York. They are so beautiful and so hearty. They grow wild any place on the border between sunny and shady spots. Most of them are a beautiful orange. We don't see many day lilies in other states.

Every place there is a buoy in the water, there is a corresponding sign nailed to a tree on the shore. For example, on a tree near buoy 337 is a sign that says "337" The state workers remove all the buoys for the winter because they never would survive the ice floes. They can use the signs to accurately replace the buoys in the spring to their designated locations. What if the tree gets washed away? I suppose they could always fall back on the old fashioned method and use their GPS :)

I just spotted a corn field for the first time this summer. The corn is knee high, just about par for this part of the country. In Oklahoma the corn would be as high as an elephant's eye by the Fourth of July.

The weather is splendid today. The temperature is about 75F (24C), the sky is blue with brilliant cumulus clouds. There is a fresh 15 knot breeze that makes Libby and I just ache to be able to sail. Perhaps we can rig the sail on the dinghy?

Saturday, 16:20
Now I'm near the traffic circle in Canajoharie. We had a nice visit from Nancy and her family, Karl, Lena, Alexandra and the Kudra the dog. They met us at the river front park here and we had fun sitting in the cockpit and swapping stories.

When it was time for them to leave, I asked for a ride in to the town to find a hot spot. I'm sitting here under a tree, 20 feet from where I got out of their car and I find 3 WiFi signals. It's getting easier all the time to WiFi.

The Easy Life

Main Street Park, St. Albans, Vermont
No LL

Ah. Most people would say that Libby and I really live the easy life on board Tarwathie. True is it an easy life, but not the easy life. The easy life is out on Burton Island.

Yesterday we had an extended family group of 22 people, 12 adults and 10 kids. Our activities for the day were to eat breakfast, walk around the island, swim, play Frisbee, play volleyball, make 2, 343,568 trips to excort a kid to the bathroom, cook dinner, and then listen as John read the Jean Shepard story about Ludlow Kissel and the Dago Bomb that Struck Back, before going to bed. Now, that is the easy life. You might be able to tell from my writing that we like it on Burton Island.

Needless to say, Libby is in seventh heaven with so much family and children around us. Family contact is the one thing we miss most in our cruising life.

Today I'm on a mission. Besides coming ashore to post a blog, I have to buy missing items from the grocery store. It's not so onerous. I first drove to the library to use their WiFi signal, but alas, they didn't have any WiFi. Therefore, I walked to this park in the center of town, sat on a bench by the fountain and presto I found 14 WiFi signals. Ain't technology great.

Saint Albanians at the Park

Comments on this Blog

I enabled the comments feature on this blog. Some years ago, I enabled comments but 99% of the comments coming through were spam.

This time, I've enabled "moderated" comments. They appear only after I approve them, and I can do that only when I get real web access. I can't approve them via email on my ham radio.

But you, loyal readers, are invited to, indeed encouraged to post comments if you so desire. A comment, unlike an email, is visible to all the other readers of the blog.

Happy commenting.

Jenny's

South Burlington, Vermont
N 44.47 W 73.16


Yesterday morning, Libby had her debut as captain on Tarwathie. Believe it or not, even after all this time and all this experience, she had never taken Tarwathie anywhere without me on board.

The mission was to return Tarwathie from Scotia to Lock 7 along the stretch of the Mohawk that I thought so beautiful last week. She also had passengers. John and Mari, our friends from West Charlton, wanted to ride along because they too had never seen the Mohawk from the water. They also brought along their grandson, Adam, who had never been on a big boat before. It made a merry crew. They set off of their short voyage, while I drove ahead in our borrowed car to meet them at the lock. All went well and they arrived on schedule fresh with new appreciation of the hidden beauty of their own home territory.

We tied up Tarwathie to the lock 7 wall to leave her for a week. I'm confident that she should be OK there. Strangely though, I would have felt more confident had we left her swinging on the hook.

This afternoon as we were driving to Vermont, we passed over the crest of the ridge overlooking Ticonderoga, and suddenly the beauty of the Champlain Valley came in to view below us. Oh it was wonderful. It was a day of instability in the atmosphere, with huge cumulus clouds soaring 30,000 feet into the sky. The sunlight lit the white tops of the clouds brilliantly, against the deep blue background of the sky behind them. There was a intense thunderstorm visible in the distance over Camel's Hump. Below us was every shade of green imaginable in the forests and farm lands.


As you can tell from our blogs, we are lovers of natural beauty. We love upstate New York and Vermont in particular because they are such jewels of natural beauty. One thing I must admit is that the beauty in Vermont is best seen from hilltops, not from the surface of Lake Champlain. From the lake you can see the mountains, but from the hilltops you can see both the mountains and the valleys at the same time. Strangely, the lake itself is hidden from view from all but a select few vantage points in Vermont.

We spent the night with our daughter Jennifer and her s. o. Christian. It has been nearly a year since we've seen them so it was great reunion. Jennifer also had good news to tell us. She just landed a new job at Coffee Analysts. The job fits her very well and I'm sure that she'll do well at the tasks. Amazingly, she'll have her office at the spot I've always considered the prettiest I've ever seen for scenery out the window.


Decades ago, I brought my boat to Lake Champlain every October for vacation trips. Back then, as I approached Burlington, I admired the General Electric factory right on the shore in South Burlington. I thought, "Those G.E. managers must have the best view in the world." Looking out their windows, across the widest part of the lake and seeing New York's Adirondack Mountains on the far side. Years later, G.E. sold the buildings to Blodgett Oven Company, and fantastically, my daughter Jennifer got a job there. Now, Coffee Analysts took over the building and refurbished it, and Jennifer will work there once again. I'm very proud of Jennifer and happy for her good fortune.