Selkirk Shores State Park

Hi Blog! On Saturday, August 23, 2014, we decided to leave the truck in camp and ride our bikes over to Selkirk Shores State Park. Tonight is "Halloween in August" at the campground and the place is filling up fast. We were afraid if we moved Great White there would be no parking left when we returned, so we took our bikes. Don't worry, we intend to be back in time for all the festivities, but we'll save all of that for another blog. Here is a recap of our adventure.

Just after leaving the campground, we crossed over the Salmon River, one of the best salmon fishing rivers in New York. We are looking downstream toward Lake Ontario. We'll be spending the next couple of days on the Salmon River, one day to kayak the estuary and the next to do a little fly fishing, but we'll save all that for another blog or two.

While the flow on the Salmon River is high at this time of year due to dam releases, this section is very wide and braided making it a great place to poke around via kayak.

Lucky for us, New York State parks don't charge visitors who arrive by bicycle.  We'll have to remember that for the next time we visit a New York state park.  Here is the view as we approach the beach area where the Grindstone Creek empties into Lake Ontario.  If you look really closely, you can see the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generator.

Here is the view up the creek from the beach.

The current from the creek rushes into the lake, making a really cool ripple pattern on the surface:

Unfortunately, the beach at Selkirk Shores State Park is no longer open to swimming. The state decided to save money by not maintaining the beach area. All of the sand has since been washed away by various storms.

However, you can still fish from the jetty.  Here is the view from the jetty, back toward our campground.

Here Kathy poses with the Selkirk Shores logo painted on the jetty.  Out there on the far side of the lake is the home of Sir William and his family.

We cycled all through the park and the campground.  We stopped at the Pine Grove boat launch. Here is a picture of the Selkirk Lighthouse.  This area of the Salmon River is known at Port Ontario.  However, a commercial port never really developed here. There is just a small village and private boat dock.

We were really intrigued by the lighthouse and figured out a way to ride our bikes over and take a closer look. The Selkirk Lighthouse is located at the mouth of the Salmon River. It is one of only four lighthouses in the United States that retains its original bird-cage lantern.  It happened to retain it because, while it and other lighthouses were scheduled to be refurbished and the bird-cage structure replaced, this lighthouse was decommissioned before the refurbishment was done and therefore escaped the change.

Commerce was booming at the time the lighthouse was constructed. Two piers were built at the mouth of the Salmon River to improve the harbor. A canal was proposed to connect the Salmon River to Lake Oneida and the Erie Canal. Unfortunately, the canal was never built, and Selkirk faded in importance. With an official beacon no longer justified, the lighthouse was deactivated in 1858. Port Ontario is now a sleepy little fishing community.

This photo is south across the Salmon River.  If you look closely in the center of the photo, on the far bank of the river is the Pine Grove boat launch that we visited.

We finished our bike ride in plenty of time to attend the costume contest and get ready for the Trick'or'Treaters.  More on that in the next blog.

A Morning Walk Around Brennan Beach RV Park

Most mornings we like to take a coffee walk after our stretching, running or exercise.  On our first morning at a new campground, the coffee walk is almost always about exploring the campground.  We always have to scout out a place for Eddie and George to wake up.  We like to see what types of campers stay there - be it full-timers, seasonal vacationers, snowbirds, weekenders, just-passing-through'ers, or, like us, full-timers exploring the area.  And we have to identify likely attractions for Baxter the Cat to explore on his daily outings.

Our stay at Brennan Beach RV Resort started out inauspiciously on several counts.  First, the desk staff was nearly incompetent.  They seemed unable to comprehend the size site we needed.  They forgot to give us a gate key card.  They tried to recharge us after we had paid the fee in full when we made the reservation.  As we pulled the rig down the camp road to look for our site, we were pretty sure the omens were negative.  Sure enough, when we got to our site, it was too short to park our truck.  There was a mudhole right in the middle of it where the truck wheels had to run and the trailer wheels would sit.  The ground was so wet and soft that, due to the mudhole, our truck couldn't get enough traction to reposition the rig - although we figured out how to compensate for this.  The campground roads are very narrow with some tight turns - not too accommodating for big rigs, even though the campground is billed as "big rig friendly."  Sure enough, as we discovered when we focused on it, the campground is an Encore Resort.  We've run into Encore before, in Florida, and both campgrounds share similar features:  important maintenance items don't seem to be attended to, apparently not the best staff training, too-tight accommodations for larger rigs, and small roads due to too many sites.  And, of course, in this case, grass sites.  We kicked ourselves for not having noticed these features before we made reservations.  But we got in and figure we'll get out.  As our friend, Lee Ann Nachstheim, asserted, "I don't see the problem. You're in & no damage to man nor beast."  In other words, "Put on your big boy pants!"

Okay, so this morning, after putting on our big boy and big girl shorts, we headed out to explore the campground.  It's huge, and, as you'll see, one major feature favoring it is that it perches right on the shore of Lake Ontario.  Another benefit is that it sits between the Deer Creek Marsh Wildlife Management Area, to the north, and Selkirk Shores State Park to the south.  Just to the south of the RV park is the Salmon River, which flows out into Lake Ontario from an interlaced region of wetland waterways that will be perfect for kayaking once we find a place to rent them. More on those opportunities in later blog entries.

The whole area has had extraordinary rains this summer, with the consequence that everything seems permanently soggy.  The ponds on the property are full.  Apparently, run-off from some source has fed too many nutrients into one of the ponds and, while it is very picturesque with its graceful willow and birch trees, the surface of the water is solid green:

Nature has enjoyed some minor recreation here along the shores of Lake Ontario.  We found some trees with the most interesting burls --

-- and some of the most unusual fungi we have ever seen: 

Many residents have small manufactured homes or altered RV's with funky additions, which serve as permanent cottages.  It appears that, in some sections of the park, residents own their lots.  The result is that some homesteads have been here for some time.

Each trailer home has its own unique ambience.  See how many flamingoes you can find on this property:

This gazebo, for example, has acquired a rich patina of moss and looks like it was set in the woods by a family of elves or fairies:

Another benefit of the adjoining wild area is that, just off the outside walking trail, Kathy spotted some blackberry bushes.  A few minutes later, all that sweet fruit was filling the large coffee mug she had just drained:

As we turned the corner of the property along the beach of Lake Ontario, another pleasant surprise awaited us.  Vicki's Sunset Grill serves up a mean breakfast of sausage, egg and cheese on a bagel, accompanied by smokey iced sun tea!  The little cafe is perched right above the beach --

-- so we took our breakfast out to the large deck and surveyed the shore of Lake Ontario as we munched placidly and contemplatively.  To the south lay the inlet to the Salmon River, guarded by a small harbor light on a jetty, with some lifeguard stands in the foreground:

To the north, we could see geese and seagulls hanging out around the inlet to Deer Creek.

The beach is gravelly but clean, and the water is crystal clear.  After introducing ourselves to the shorebirds, we strolled south toward the inlet of the Salmon River:

Looking back, we could see our RV park peeping out from the trees:

Two curious ducks swam out.  Kathy thought they were looking for a handout.  David thought they just wanted to be featured in this blog entry:

Other lakeshore denizens floated by:

After hopping the boulders out to the end of the jetty and looking around, we walked back up the beach, which was the very picture of a vacationer's paradise, waiting for people to wake up and begin their enjoyment of the lake:

We have a couple of days of forecast rain. By Monday, we're supposed to have a stretch of rainless, sunny days.  We're hoping to take maximum advantage of this little outdoor paradise before we move on to Canada again.

Eddie & George Wake Up Across From Toronto

Eddie and George are enjoying the shores of beautiful Lake Ontario, at Brennan Beach RV Park:

That's Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station in the background, located about five miles northeast of Oswego, New York, on the shore of Lake Ontario.  To the right, off somewhere in the mist, is Toronto and the home of Sir William and family!

Historical Mystical Seaportal

Hi Blog! We had a wonderful week of adventures with Maggie the Wonder Puppy. Now, it is time to get back to our regular retirement activities. We had a couple days after Katie's return from her conference before leaving the New Haven area. We needed at least one full day to get RV chores done. So, it wasn't until Wednesday, August 20, 2014, that we decided to go and visit Mystic, Connecticut. We had thought about staying in the Mystic area around the Fourth of July, but those plans were changed when we volunteered to babysit Sir William when Weina went back to China to bring her Father to Toronto for an extended visit.  Now was our chance to explore the area that we missed earlier.

When we woke Wednesday morning, it was "foggy withal." Undaunted, we grabbed our rain gear and headed out.  After making a few stops along the way, we noticed the fog started lifting.  Soon the sun was shinning brightly as we arrived at the entrance to the seaport.  Here is Kathy doing what all good tourist do - pose in front of the big red tugboat.

Mystic Seaport (a/k/a Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea) is the largest maritime museum in the world. It is notable for its collection of sailing ships and boats, and for the re-creation of the crafts and fabric of an entire 19th-century seafaring village. It consists of more than 60 original historic buildings, most of them rare commercial structures moved to the 17-acre site and meticulously restored.

The Museum’s exhibition halls have both permanent and changing exhibits that offer rare glimpses into other eras and cultures, including restored vessels, figureheads, ship carvings, vintage photography, and the acclaimed “Voyages: Stories of America and the Sea.” 

The Wendell Building houses the Museum’s collection of figureheads and ships’ carvings. These figureheads, billetheads, and catheads also demonstrate the extraordinary skill of their craftsmen. Unfortunately, many can't be identified since ship builders didn't keep records of who actually carved them. The lighting inside the exhibit hall was very dim to protect these wonderful works of art. Here is the best photo we have.  She was from a ship called the Rhine.

In ancient times, figureheads frequently depicted supernatural beasts and deities adopted from popular mythology. This tradition persisted into the 19th century, when patriotic figures and national heroes were also introduced. Modern vessels, for the most part, carry little if any decorative carving, as hull design and traditions have changed.

After lunch at Schaefer's Spouter Tavern, we wandered through the exhibit galleries learning lots of cool stuff about life in and around the sea. While we didn't need to see the video of the hunting and killing of a whale, the producers paired an extended narrative from Moby Dick with old historical film to show the entire process, from spotting a sperm whale to the final rendering of the blubber. It was very educational, but we are glad that most countries now outlaw whaling. However, we can't ignore the fact that whaling was an important industry back in the day.  

We also toured an exhibit on music aboard sailing ships.  We learned that there are various types of sea chanteys.  Examples are:

Pumping chanteys (an example is the song, "Cape Cod Girls")

Capstan and Windlass chanteys ("Paddy Works On the Railway")

Short-Drag chanteys ("Haul Away Joe")

Halyard chanteys ("What Will We Do With a Drunken Sailor?")

While Dave wasn't willing to get enough sheets to the wind to try out a sailing chanty, he did get the feel of rowing a whaling skiff:

The Mystic Seaport museum was established in 1929 as the "Marine Historical Association". Its first fame came with the acquisition in 1941 of the Charles W. Morgan, the only surviving wooden sailing whaler. The seaport was one of the first living history museums in the United States, with a collection of buildings and craftsmen to show how the work was done. The seaport now receives about 400,000 visitors each year. As we toured the Morgan, Kathy got to try her hand at the wheel.

The buildings you see aren’t replicas–they’re actual trade shops and businesses from the 1800s that were transported to Mystic Seaport from locations around New England. The village is made up of many bustling maritime trades, from shipsmiths and coopers to woodcarvers and riggers. Here is the view from the bow of the Morgan looking down the row of shops.

A catboat, or a cat-rigged sailboat, is a sailing vessel characterized by a single mast carried well forward, generally the beam is approximately half the length and a catboat generally utilizes a gaff rig. The hull is typically light and shallow draft. A typical New England iteration has a very long boom that extends over the transom and may have a bowsprit to support foresails and mast.  Here is the Breck Marshall, a 20-foot Crosby catboat design that is open for public sailing tours. It wasn't built by the famous catboat manufacturer Crosby, but is a reproduction that we inferred was copied from a Crosby catboat in the museum's collection.  Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to take a catboat ride, because it would have been fun to take a sail around the harbor.

To give you the idea of sailing in Mystic Seaport harbor, here is a link to a video of some small sailboats maneuvering on the water.

Here is the prow of the Joseph Conrad.  The figurehead is in the upper right corner.  The ship is now used as a dormitory for the summer sailing camp.

Here is a replica of Brant Point Lighthouse. As you walk inside, there is just enough seating for four people.  There are six flat screen TVs side by side showing videos of the various lighthouses across the globe and the history of lighthouses in the U.S.

Many sailing vessels carried freight along the coast of North America from colonial times until World War II. the Australia was a shallow-draft schooner of a type that was useful in the coastwise trade.  Built in 1862, the 70-foot, two-masted vessel spent her last years in Chesapeake Bay as a yacht for the duPont family. The family donated her to Mystic Seaport in 1951 for use as a sail education vessel. For 10 years she was used as a dormitory in the Museum’s sail training program. In 1961 she was hauled out for restoration, but the decay was too extensive to make rebuilding worthwhile. The Museum  decided to preserve Australia as an exhibit of ship construction. Following a narrow catwalk, we could crawl through and around this beached vessel, examining her “bones” as you might examine a skeleton.

Now that you know what a wooden sailing ship looks like from the inside out, you, too, can take a turn at the John Gardner Boat Shop and build your own. There, for a very modest fee to cover the cost of materials, shipbuilders young and old can try their hand at building model ships.  There are so many materials available, that it is possible to make some sophisticated models.  Here are some fine examples.

One of our favorite exhibits was the Mystic River Scale Model. This spectacular model, over 50-feet long, is built to the scale of 3/32 inch=1 foot, or 1/128th. It provides a dramatic bird’s-eye view of 1870's history. The model features more than 250 detailed dwellings, shops, barns and lofts, as well as five local shipyards, as they existed in Mystic, Connecticut at that time. Mystic was a very busy area back then.

It still is today.  The work to restore and keep all these wooden sailing ships is never ending. Here are some folks working on the hull of the Emma C. Berry.

At the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard, we were able to watch several smaller boats being restored.  From the visitor's gallery above, we could look down on carpenters’ shops, an 85-foot spar lathe, a rigging loft and a large, open area where the Museum’s vessels are brought indoors for repair.  The shipyard also includes a paint shop, a metalworking shop, documentation shop, lumber shed and an old-fashioned saw mill full of rough-cut logs.

We really enjoyed our trip back in time. As Captain Picard once quoted John Masefield:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

#maggievacation - Maggie Wakes the Sleeping Giant!

Hi Folks.  It's Maggie again. Remember yesterday, when we hiked up West Rock Ridge?  When we were all the way at the top, we could see all the way to Sleeping Giant State Park. Today, we got to climb all over the Giant. According to the Quinnipiac Tribe, the giant stone spirit Hobbomock, a prominent wicked figure in many stories, became enraged about the mistreatment of his people and stamped his foot down in anger, diverting the course of the Connecticut River. To prevent him from wreaking such havoc in the future, the good spirit Keitan cast a spell on Hobbomock to sleep forever as the prominent man-like form of the Sleeping Giant.

Here Grandpa and I pose at the trail head sign. I finally get it. Before hiking anywhere with Grandma and Grandpa, we must pose for a photo.  It's just what they do.

I, on the other paw, prefer to make my memories by using my nose. So many people and dogs visit this park, it is hard to keep track of them all.

In case you were wondering, these rocks are old, really old. There was a bunch of old lava under the surface. Glaciers came through and took away all the surface material, leaving the old lava exposed creating the form of the Sleeping Giant.

Conservation of the Giant began in 1924 with the creation of the Sleeping Giant Park Association (SGPA) by a group of local residents concerned with ongoing traprock quarrying on the Giant's head. They were led by Arnold Dana who, as a teenager, fell from a precipice into the quarry in 1875.  A plaque in his memory is mounted along the main trail in the park up to the watchtower.

The blasting away of what was a beloved landscape feature resulted in public outrage, well reported by local newspapers at the time. Under the leadership of James W. Toumey, a Yale University forestry professor, the SGPA undertook a ten-year struggle with the traprock operation. The property was purchased by the SGPA in 1933, during the Great Depression, for $30,000; the money was raised through private donations and the property became the Sleeping Giant State Park. The Sleeping Giant Tower was built at the top in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 as part of the Connecticut State Park and Forest Depression-Era Federal Work Relief Programs Structures.

The Tower is really cool.  You can walk up stone ramps from each level until you get to the top where you can see all the way to Long Island Sound.  Here Grandpa and I are taking in the view.

If you look real close, you can see the towers on top of East Rock, which was the first place Grandpa and Grandma took me hiking. To the right of East Rock is downtown New Haven.

Having made it to the top, it was time for our reward.  Here Grandma is eating her sandwich. I just want you to know that the wet spot next to me was not an accident. I spilled water on the rock floor on purpose because water tastes better when licked off the rocks.

I had fun exploring all the different rooms in the Tower. There were also lots of dog worshipers on the trail today.  I had to stop over and over again to let them pet me. It's all in a days work.

Before long, we were back in the woods working our way around the Giant.  We has already passed the the head and chin on the way up to the Tower.  As we followed the Blue Trail down, we passed the left hip and left leg.

The Giant is very lumpy. We were either going up or going down.  The Giant was not very flat at all.  This boulder field is on the Red Circle Trail which leads from the Left Leg to the Right Knee.

Once we got to the Right Knee, it was time to follow the White Trail up the Right Leg to the Right Hip.

All along the Giant's right side there are great views looking down onto the campus of Quinnipiac University. Here I am posing with Grandpa at one of the great view spots.

Here Grandma and I hike along one of the few level flat spots in the trail.  There were so many fallen leaves already littering the trail, that it felt like late Autumn!

When we reached the intersection with the Orange Trail, we met up with a family hiking to the Tower.  The older daughter picked up a little frog and showed it to me. It smelled funny.

At the highest point in the trail, Grandma added another rock to the summit cairn. Apparently, this is something humans like to do when they reach a really high point.  As for me, I just prefer to pee on it.

Here we are at the last viewpoint before we head back down to the car. If you look carefully there is a number 5 painted on the rock.

ACCORDING TO THE GUIDE TO THE GEOLOGY OF THE SLEEPING GIANT STATE PARK: This spectacular overlook affords an excellent view of Quinnipiac University and southward towards downtown New Haven. The series of hills just to the left of the New Haven skyline is a portion of the East Rock Ridge, another diabase intrusion with a geologic history similar to that of the Sleeping Giant (note: it is a common misconception that East Rock, West Rock, and the Sleeping Giant were formed as extrusive volcanic eruptions). The Long Island Sound is visible just beyond the New Haven skyline, and on clear days the shoreline of Long Island, New York, can be seen on the horizon across the Sound.

If you had been here approximately 15,000 years ago, as the Ice Age was giving way to warmer temperatures, you would have been able to see two large freshwater lakes in the Quinnipiac and Mill River Valleys that stretch out before you. These lakes were formed as glacial meltwater flowed southward. Part of what is now the Quinnipiac River drainage basin, seasonally visible in the distance as the tan-colored marsh to the left of the East Rock Ridge had once been filled by Lake Quinnipiac. What is now the Mill River drainage basin, located directly south, had been partially submerged beneath the even larger Lake Connecticut. This extremely large lake occupied all of what is now the Long Island Sound, downtown New Haven, and the southern portion of Hamden. These two lakes eventually drained away. Saltwater filled the Long Island Sound approximately 11,000 years ago. Long Island itself is largely composed of the loose rubble that had been pushed southward by the ice. It represents the southernmost extent of the glacier’s range.

I wish we had some photos from the steep cliffs we descended, but Grandpa was too busy being the "Grandpa-vator" lowering me down the rocks that were too steep for me to jump. We finished our hike by following the Tower Trail Road back to the car. The pets I received from the adoring public were too numerous to mention.

This will probably be my last blog for this visit. Granda and Grandpa have lots of chores to do tomorrow in order to get our apartment cleaned up and ready for Mommy's return. While it has been fun hanging with the Grands, I am so looking forward to seeing Mommy again.  Bye bye for now.