Destination Upstate New York

UPSTATE NEW YORK


We left for our summer trip to upstate New York on Sunday, August 2, 2009. Bob and Milissa had rented a different motor home for this trip which was a new experience for them. The first day of travel was uneventful. We spent the first night at Lei-Ti Campground in Batavia, New York. Up early the next day (Roy’s birthday) and headed for Clayton, New York which is on the St. Lawrence River. We arrived at Merry Knoll Campground around 5 p.m. on that Monday. We had very nice campsites and the owners of Merry Knoll were more than helpful. The campground overlooks the St Lawerence River, and one can stand on shore and watch the lake and ocean freighters go by. That evening we had a very nice dinner to celebrate Roy’s birthday at a restaurant sitting on the patio overlooking the river.

We knew there were several things that we wanted to do in this area and one of them was to visit the antique boat museum, so on Tuesday we headed there. The boats on display were really awesome. All that gorgeous wood!! We found that we could take a ride on one of the boats and took advantage of that. Wow! The boat was a replica of one of the old Garwood boats that was powered by a 454 Chevy engine and would hold six passengers. The ride was great even though a couple of us got our second shower of the day! The captain took us around and told us about some of the islands. The river has a VERY rocky bottom, so one really has to know where the channels are.

On Wednesday we took a boat tour of the 1,000 islands. The history of the islands was interesting and we ended up at Boldt Castle which was another item on our agenda. It’s difficult to imagine that any one person could have that much money!!

Upstate New York is such a beautiful area! We are very thankful for the digital world. It would cost a small fortune to have all the pictures we felt we needed to take. Now we will edit them on the computer and delete the ones we won’t need. The scenery is so gorgeous that we were afraid that we would miss something, so there were lots of duplicates.

On our final day in Clayton we drove south to catch a ferry to Kingston Ontario. We enjoyed dinner on the Canadian side then drove on enjoying the sites of the area, returning via the bridge returning to the USA.

Thursday was another day of travel heading for Wilmington, New York. We took a side trip to the Eisenhower Lock. Pretty neat to see the water rise (or lower) 40 feet in 8 minutes; however, this lock wasn’t as impressive as the Soo Locks in northern Michigan. The trip went well until Millie (our GPS ) took us to county road 26--- nine miles of a mountain road that should have been one lane. Driving a motor home towing a car was definitely a challenge for both the driver and passenger!!! Talk about interesting!!! The fastest way wasn’t so fast!.

We finally arrived at North Pole Campground which is at the base of Whiteface Mountain. It was just 11 miles from Lake Placid. The campground was very nice and clean.


The weather has been great with some threat of rain but lucky for us it was just cloudy. Our days have been full taking in the sites. High Falls Gorge was an awesome half mile walk. It is truly amazing to see what Mother Nature has created over thousands of years. Man just cannot duplicate the beauty!

We traveled on to Lake Placid to check out the different shops. A very busy little town ! Lots and lots of tourists!! We got back in time to get a nice campfire going, and using the Baby Q to grill steaks. Just relaxing around the campfire was enjoyable.

The next day was back in the car heading to Lake Champlain, to take the ferry to Burlington, Vermont. It was a beautiful day and the ferry ride lasted an hour. We then drove around the area to view the sites, and stopped at a winery. We didn’t taste any thing we couldn’t live without, but did buy a dinner wine and got “free” wine glasses. We drove south from Burlington to cross the bridge back to New York and visit Fort Ticonderoga; however it was too late to get into the Fort. Back to the campground for a great meal and another enjoyable campfire.

Whiteface Mountain has an elevation of 4867 and this climb was our challenge for the last day in New York. It was a steep climb for the Malibu and the clouds took over a lot of the view. Once we reached the parking area near the summit, we took an elevator ride inside the mountain to the top! Just can’t imagine those workers building the road and blasting out the elevator shaft out of the granite! On a clear day they say one can see as far as one hundred miles. Our day we may have seen as far as five miles.

Monday was our departure day and we decided to come the Canadian route hoping they had better roads than Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Once we got to Cornwall to cross the bridge into Canada, it was hurry up and wait!! It took us an hour to get through customs!! I would say we did have better roads most of the way. Toronto had LOTS OF TRAFFIC ! We spent the night in Milton, Ontario which is west of Toronto. A very nice campground and the worst part of our trip was behind us!
Coming back into the states wasn’t too bad--- they boarded our coach, and ended up confiscating our limes and one apple that had a tag saying it was from Chili. We told them we didn’t buy anything in Canada, but it didn’t matter. Oh well maybe they were hungry! Back to the lovely Michigan roads. So much for our tax dollars! Now it will be time to plan for our next excursion in the Adventurer. We truly enjoyed the time spent in upstate New York and were amazed at the beauty. When we think of New York, guess we always thought of a huge city. Pictures just cannot capture the true beauty that Mother Nature has created.