A Chilly Day on the St. Lawrence River

Yesterday we arrived at Robert Moses State Park in the Thousand Islands area of the St. Lawrence River. This is the back of our lovely site. We are actually looking south here, as the campground is on an island that was made when they constructed the Wiley-Dondero Canal for the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Like the site at Darien Lake State Park, there is no pad and no water, but the site was level and the surroundings are nice.

This little guy kept Matey entertained while we set up camp. He’s a bit larger than the squirrels here, so I think he’s a groundhog.

There are two locks on the Wiley-Dondero Canal, one on either end of the eight nautical mile canal. Our site looks out at the upstream end of the canal and the entrance to the Eisenhower Lock. This sailboat was tied up at a floating dock on the outside of the entrance/exit to the canal and lock last evening. I think they may have spent the night there after coming up through the lock. In the morning they were gone.

This morning we went to look at the lock. An ocean going ship was just entering from the downstream side. This is a panoramic picture of the ship in the lock before the water was raised. On the far left you can see the white superstructure and on the far right you can make out the navigation lights on a tower at the bow.

And here’s the ship sitting 42 feet higher.

This gives you a sense of just how big it was.

And here she is, the Algoma Harvester, through the lock and heading up to her home port of St. Catherines.

In the afternoon it quit raining, so even though it was still cloudy and only about sixty degrees out, we decided to take a walk.

We walked about a mile and a half on a nice loop trail.

This view of the river was pretty, even without sun.

As we finished our walk it started drizzling again. We drove over and saw the marina, then came back to our nice warm camper.

Not a bad day in a pretty nice place.