Walk Along The Waterfront

It was another one of those cool and cloudy days, so we drove over to Burlington Vermont. They have a spectacular waterfront area, and while Dave took a bicycle ride, I did some walking.

I even came upon on a small wedding that was just finishing...happy bride!

There's also a fairly new skateboard park, and what fun to watch everyone doing tricks and maneuvers.

The Coast Guard Station is in a perfect spot and they are at the ready to go anywhere on Lake Champlain. Notice the "Dragon Boats" in the foreground. Rowing races are held during the summer.

Kids sailing camp was underway. The Burlington Sailing Center will soon be moving to their new facility that is being built. The kids and instructors had a hard time getting away from the dock with no wind. We should have brought our kayaks up, but it was 'supposed' to be windy! It figures...

The sailboats are set on their moorings for the summer. What a great spot to watch the 4th of July fireworks. However we won't be here, we will be up in the Thousand Islands viewing both Clayton and Alexandria's Bay's displays.

More from the St. Lawrence...stay tuned!

Greetings From...

Vermont and New York at the same time! To celebrate the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer, we walked across the windy Lake Champlain bridge. Hopefully the summer solstice will be the start of drier and calmer weather.

Steam and Gas

Steamy conditions with 90 degree temps and 70% humidity didn't keep us away from the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Gallupville Gas-Up. It was bigger than ever before, including some army vehicles. Below are just a few of the tractors and equipment we saw (featuring our friend Lisa on her Farm All!):

Next year we may have to bring some of our fun vehicles up to display and drive around. We have enough that we could just about have our own gas-up in our backyard! 😉

Brrrr! He's Crazy!

We had a couple of gorgeous days on Lake George this past week. Moxie is running perfect and we cruised down to Hewlitt's Landing. Dave used the excuse that he had to dive and secure the anchor when we stopped for lunch, but I think it was more that he couldn't resist jumping in the now 64 degree water...twice, and survived to to tell about it! He wasn't in very long though.

Day number two started out with a one way kayak trip down the LaChute River. Once again I told myself not to bother to bring my camera since we've done this trip so often. Wrong. We saw muskrats, tons of birds, turtles, and more. With all our rain, the river was flowing nicely, and the weeds weren't bad yet, so we could get close to shore once we were in Lake Champlain under Fort Ticonderoga.

That same afternoon, we decided that we would tempt the weather gods and launched the Sea Doo for a blast around the north end of the lake. As the storm clouds built, we headed back to the launch ramp and arrived just as the 20 knot north wind started blowing. We beat the odds!

We headed south to home and discovered that tragedy had hit our fish pond. We thought the goldfish were hiding in the rocks, so Dave removed them and found one dead fish stuck in there and none of the other eight. We drained the pond and down in the bottom were three small fish from last year. Now we have cleaned and refilled it and have a screen on top. We think it might have been a heron since there was no sign of any fish. One gulp per fish and they were gone. Several years back I found a heron at the pond and we put the screen on, but lately I guess we became complacent. We feel guilty and will start looking to replace the 'fleet of fish'. That's our next quest.

Let Summer Begin

Yay! We finally made it out on the water...not in it (water temp was 57 degrees), but at least we were on it in Moxie. This time of year is still so quiet and we barely saw any other boats at all. Come the 4th of July, this will will all change until Labor Day, when we can take back the lake. For now we'll advantage of the serenity.

In our travels, we found a few new large camps being built. We also saw these turtles basking in the sun on the rocks and we idled by them quietly so they weren't disturbed. We all needed a bit of sun after the wet, cold spring.

We came upon this weather/data station moored off of Anthony's Nose, across from Roger's Rock. We have seen them in the southern end of the lake, but this is the first year one has been stationed in the north end. It is all part of the Jefferson Project which monitors the conditions of the lake, all to help keep the water the most pristine in the country.

What a perfect day to rediscover Lake George. After all the rain, we had a clear blue sky and no wind. "Serenity now, insanity later!"