St. Lawrence: By Sea

Say what you will about scenic overlooks and roadside pullouts, but honestly, the only way to experience the St. Lawrence is to get out on the water and be there. So that’s exactly what I did one lovely Saturday morning…

There’s an antique boat museum in Clayton and apparently they take some of those craft out on the river, both to keep them in working order and to provide tours to patrons. This little one flew by our tour boat and it looked like a really fun boat to drive. That’s Wellesley Island in the background, where I stayed for the week.

That’s the tour boat I was on. Obviously not a speedster! But it had a glass bottom and so we could see shipwrecks and old piers, or just look at the water speeding by under our feet, so to speak. There was a whopping total of 10 people on our cruise, so plenty of room to spread out or move to a better view as the tour continuted. The captain and tour guide were both very knowledgeable about the area (our tour guide grew up on Grindstone Island) so I learned some history as well as some tall tales and cool trivia.

There’s only one way to get off and on Wellesley Island, and this bridge is it. It was great to see it from the water and realize just how long it is. And when you’re driving it, especially with a trailer in tow, it actually looks much more “way up, then way down” than this picture!

This might be the cutest post office I’ve ever seen. It’s adorable. And only available by boat, since it’s on an island. Oh, well…

Many of the islands have private houses on them, most of them summer homes of rather preposterous sizes. This boathouse looks long abandoned, but the house on the island its attached to looks fine, and I wonder why they let it go. It’s beautiful stone and the views must be amazing. I’d live there if it was a cottage for rent. But I’d need a boat to get out there and back, so perhaps not.

One of the big attractions of the Islands tour I took was that you didn’t stop at Boldt Castle (since I’d already seen it) and you do stop at Rock Island Light, the second smallest State Park in New York. And yes, it was just us and two state park employees, making for a very private visit and a guided tour of the lighthouse.

A little lighthouse trivia for you: it’s was actually built in two parts, at two different times. The original lighthouse is the top part, ending at the black band. It was built in a different place on the tiny island, next to the lightkeeper’s house, which, as it turned out, blocked the view from the lighthouse and that didn’t work out too well for the shipping traffic. So they built a bottom part closer to the channel and then somehow moved the original lighthouse on top of that. No one knows how they actually did that feat of magic because there are no records of the process.

Many of the smaller islands seemed to have room for just one house and some kind of a dock for the required boat access. This house, though, was my favorite because the owner commissioned a gargoyle to sit on their roof and look out at the water. I mean, if you have enough money to buy an island and then build a house and dock and maintain a boat, why not add a gargoyle into the mix? I like their style.

Any time I have the chance to get out on the water, whether in my own kayak or onboard someone else’s boat, it’s a very good day. Seeing so much of the St. Lawrence by water was definitely a highlight of my stat in the Thousand Islands region.

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I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.

Roman Payne (from Rooftop Soliloquy)