September 16-17, 2009 Thousand Island, upstate New York
Wednesday morning saw us heading east again towards the St. Lawrence Seaway and the 1000 Islands area (yes this where the salad dressing was 1st created). Along the route we stopped in Seneca Falls to see the Women’s Rights National Historic Park. It was located at The Wesleyan Chapel where the first meeting of the women’s equality was held in 1848. This was one of our favorite stops so far. Great exhibits and an awful lot of information that we hadn’t remembered. We arrived in Alexandria Bay about happy hour time; do we know how to schedule our days or what?
Thursday morning we went down to boat harbor and joined a cruise to see the 1000 Islands, along the St Lawrence Seaway. This is an amazingly big body of water, some 2,300 miles long from Duluth MN to the Atlantic Ocean going through all of the Great Lakes. Our cruise took us up the recreational lane seeing both the N.Y. side and some of the Canadian. We saw 50 or more islands of the 1,800+; some so small that only a tree stood on it, and many quite large with incredible “summer homes”. Many of these mansions were built in the late 1800’s, a time of amazing grandeur and WEALTH. The last stop we made was Heart Island, home of the Boldt Castle. The Boldt family were hotel tycoons that started the, Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia and worked with the Aster family to build the Waldorf –Astoria in N.Y.C. Built in the 1898 the castle looks like something from Europe or maybe Disneyland. The boat-house which now houses a dozen or so antique boats was on a separate island; what amazing wealth some of these people had. All of this is now owned by the 1000 Island Bridge Authority and they are working to restore it, the castle lay in disrepair from 1904 – 1977. This is one of those places it would be nice to see again in 10-15 years just to see the progress being made. Another great experience for the Wraight Adventure Book.