Harbour Rats to River Rats

During the winter we are Hope Town Harbour Rats. Now we have become River Rats on the Hudson. We trailered the SeaDoo down to Catskill, and the plan was to go south to the Roundout Creek in Kingston. It figures that as soon as we arrived at the launch ramp, the dark clouds moved in and it started to rain a little. We decided to don our wetsuits and go as fast as we could to hopefully escape the weather. That wasn't the case, as the skies opened up on us as we arrived in Kingston. We took refuge under one of the highway bridges and ate our lunch, waiting for the rain to let up.

It finally eased enough so we could do some sightseeing along the Roundout Creek. This is the lighthouse at the junction of the creek and the Hudson River.

Tugs, barges, ships, and pleasure boats were all along the historic Kingston waterfront.

This tug is part of the maritime museum.

Gray but serene as we head up the creek.

We've seen trees growing out of rocks and now this one was growing on the deck of an old barge.

Ship's dry dock and lots of work being done.

These tugs are huge.

An old defunct scrap metal shredder in the distance.

Now the scrap metal is picked up with this claw, loaded up, and shipped elsewhere.

On the way back to Catskill, the wind died and the SeaDoo cruised right along.

The Esopus Lighthouse.

We quickly passed two tugs and barges that were southbound to New York City.

Dave's hand started falling asleep so he used our 'high tech' cruise control...one half of a clothes pin stuck in the thumb throttle. "Look Ma, no hands!" It kept us going at 41 m.p.h.! It's hard to believe that we were going that fast when I took these two photos.

Before we hauled the SeaDoo out of the water, we took a quick trip up the Catskill Creek.

We even got to see a mast being raised on a sailboat.

We're really glad we persevered and didn't let the weather deter us. Another great adventure!