Days 42-46 – Poughkeepsie, NY to New Baltimore, NY

Note: Sorry for the delay in blogging. We’ve been quite busy, and our plans have been changing frequently. Watch for more details in the next blog. I’ll try to catch up this week!

We visit the CIA (Culinary Institute of America), and take a bike ride, a dinghy ride, and a train ride! We stop in New Baltimore, NY, just south of Albany, to prepare the boats for the Champlain Canal portion of our trip.

Day 42 – Thursday, 7/6- In Poughkeepsie, NY – 00 miles, Travel Time: 0hrs 0min

Thursday morning, Tim and Brenda snuck out early for a bike ride across the Singing Bridge and the Walkway over the Hudson. Brenda and I watched the tugs and rowers on the river.

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At 11:00, we took an Uber to the CIA for lunch. It’s a fantastic campus! They have three main student-run restaurants you can eat at, plus a bakery and a food court with a brewery called the Egg. All of the student restaurants and The Egg are open to the public.

We chose to have lunch at the “American Tavern” restaurant. The servers are students, and the students do all of the cooking. We had a fantastic meal, and the service from Sophia, our student server, was excellent!

They won’t let you tip the students. However, they do add a 20% gratuity to your check that goes to a scholarship fund.

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After lunch, we stopped at the bakery and picked up some pastry for the next day’s breakfast, then went to “The Egg” to sample some of the student beer! It was also delicious. I found my favorite classroom!

Day 43 – Friday, 7/7 – From Poughkeepsie, NY to Kingston, NY – 17 miles, Travel Time: 1hr 50min

Our ride to our next port was short, just 17 miles, so there was no need to rush off in the morning. While it was still cool, we went for another bike ride on the “Dutchess Rail Trail,” which is part of the “Empire State Trail.” The Empire State Trail is a pathway that links a number of Rail Trails and bike paths that starts in Manhattan in New York City and runs to the Canadian Border. We rode about 14 miles before returning to the boat and casting off at about 11:00

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Because of all the rain we had been having, there was a LOT of debris in the water. As we left Poughkeepsie, we had to dodge large logs. All the way to Kingston, we kept seeing sticks and logs floating down the river and had to keep a sharp eye out.

After passing under the Singing Bridge and the Walkway Over the Hudson Bridge, we cruised past the CIA and got a waterside view.

As usual, we met a few larger ships and past a couple of lighthouses before turning into “Rondout Creek” in Kingston, NY, and cruising up to the Maritime Museum, where we would be staying for the next few nights.

The creek was full of sticks and logs, and we had to slowly pick our way through so that we didn’t hit anything and bend our props! Once we were safely tied up, we checked in and took a tour of the museum that shows the area’s rich history. Kingston was the second capital of New York State after New York City, and before it was moved upstream to Albany. Rondout Creek was a major port on the Hudson River and home to several large steamships, blue stone quarries, and cement production. It has a long and rich history, and there is a lot to see at the museum.

We had another major rain event in the afternoon and into the evening, but we were able to walk down the dock to the Ol’ Savannah restaurant for a nice dinner.

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Day 44 – Saturday, 7/8 – In Kingston, NY – 00 miles, Travel Time: 0hr 0min

Overnight, we had some torrential rain and a series of thunderstorms. We were watching the news because we were hearing of even heavier rains in Vermont along our route through Lake Champlain.

Tim, Brenda L., and I took a Dinghy Ride up Rondout Creek in the morning. Brenda H. stayed behind to entertain Riggs.

Brenda and I explored the creek on our last visit here in 2019 and found it fascinating. There are several marinas, some pretty bridges, a massive railroad trestle, a tugboat repair yard, a barge repair and construction facility, an old canal, and at the end, a dam. We slowly cruised up the creek, watching for submerged logs and taking in the sights. Tim found the history fascinating, and we noticed some old kilns that we had missed on our first trip.

The area around Kingston has a special limestone that was used to make one of the first hydraulic types of cement. They would quarry the limestone, then bake it in huge kilns using coal brought in by barge from Pennsylvania on the old Delaware and Hudson Canal. The cement was able to cure underwater, and we were told that cement from Kingston was used to make the base of the Statue of Liberty.

We went up to the dam, which was at full flow due to the rain the past several days, and we could see where all the sticks and logs were washing down from! At the falls, we turned around and headed back to the boat. When we got there, we picked up Brenda H. with the Dinghy, and the four of us went back out to the entrance of Rondout Creek at the Hudson River and took a closer look at the Rondout Creek Lighthouse and the old derelict boats lining the banks.

As we were passing a couple of people fishing on the bank, we saw that one had a fish on, so we stopped to watch and see what he got. While we were drifting, we accidentally caught one of the other lines and had to maneuver around a bit to get it unstuck. Fortunately, it was just caught on the rudder and didn’t get wrapped up in the propeller.

We cooled off for an hour when we got back to the boat. The temperature was in the low 90s, and it was very humid.

Heavy rain was again forecast, so we grabbed our umbrellas and walked across the street to the Trolley Museum in the afternoon. The Trolley Museum has a small collection of Trolleys, Busses, and related equipment. It’s not the most organized and is more of a labor of love for a group of trolley enthusiasts. The highlight of the visit is a ride in an old trolley about 2 miles down the old trolley line to Kingston Point on the Hudson. This is where the large Steamboats from New York and Albany used to dock.

We bought our tickets, and had a look around the museum, then headed out for our ride. We waited in the heat for the trolley to show up and heard it had broken down. It did eventually limp back into the trolley yard with the throttle control held together with a collection of Vice-Grip pliers. Unfortunately, they had to go for parts to fix it, so we decided to go back to the boats and check in later to see if it was running. Unfortunately, they never got it running that day.

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We got together with some other Loopers, Larry & Carol from Maraki, for docktails and dinner in the evening.

Day 45 – Sunday, 7/9- In Kingston, NY – 00 miles, Travel Time: 0hrs 0min

Sunday morning, we did boat projects, and I worked on editing and uploading photos for the blog. At 12:00, we took an Uber ride up to the Catskill Mountain Railway. We had 1:00 tickets for the Sunday Ice Cream Social Train Ride. The train ride goes 5 miles up into the Catskill Mountains, then reverses back. Very scenic and a fun time!

On our way back, we started hearing thunder, and it was raining steadily when we reached the station. We disembarked, opened our umbrellas, and walked across the parking lot to a grocery store to re-supply. When we had finished shopping, we called another Uber and returned to the boats.

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Brenda and Brenda put away the groceries, and Tim called the Trolley Museum to see if the trolley was fixed. It was still raining hard, but the Museum said they would give us our ride if we came right over! We put on our raincoats and walked across the street, dodging puddles, to the museum.

The Museum Director (and chief mechanic) was the one who would drive the trolley for our ride. He works full-time driving a trolley in New Jersey, coordinates the volunteers, and does a lot of the restoration work on the trolleys. He is as busy as he is passionate about trolleys!

We boarded the trolley with one other couple and headed down the tracks, through an old part of town, past the lighthouse, to the old Steamship landing. There we turned around and headed back. Usually, they let you get out and walk around, but it was raining hard, so we just went back to the trolley shed.

Our driver then offered us an in-depth tour of the Trolley Shed and workshop. We spent the better part of the next hour learning more about Trolleys than we ever thought we’d know! The collection has some interesting Trolleys. There is a 1930s-era trolley that was originally horse-powered and was converted. There are trolleys from Sweden and Germany, and they have one of the New York City subway cars that was recovered from under the World Trade Center after the 9/11 collapse.

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It was almost 6:00 by the time we got back to the boats. We had a quick dinner and then prepared to head out to Shady Harbor Marina in New Baltimore the following day.

Day 46 – Monday, 7/10 – From Kingston to New Baltimore, NY – 41.3 miles, Travel Time: 4hr 17min

We had heavy rain for most of the night, but it had stopped by the time we left Kingston at 9:30 am. Rondout Creek had swollen due to the rain, and we had to crawl down the channel dodging sticks, logs, and other debris. In places, we would add a bit of power in areas with small debris so that we could coast through the areas with heavier debris. Fortunately, we made it to the Hudson River without hitting our propellers on anything.

As we approached the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, we noticed a large brick house on a hilltop. We looked it up and it was the Olana State Historic Site. A beautiful Victorian structure built by the artist Frederic Church, who taught and painted in the Hudson Valley. We cruised past several lighthouses and had a “chat” with some County Sheriffs in their boat who were looking for a boat that we passed heading downstream that had snapped the mast on a sailboat with excessive wake.

Aside from having to dodge logs floating down the river, we had a generally smooth ride up to New Baltimore for our stay at Donovans Shady Harbor Marina.

Donovans is a regular stop for Loopers. Each year the owner has a June and 4th of July Pig Roast to thank the Looper community for their business. We had reservations to be there, but with our late start, we missed it. It turns out that was not a bad thing, as on July 4th, they had a small tornado go through the marina, tearing several of their docks off the moorings and destroying them. Fortunately, there were only minor dings and scratches to a few boats, but half of their docks were damaged and unusable.

When we arrived, the current was running very strong, between 3 and 4 knots! It took us three passes before we got into the slip as the current kept pushing us around.

After getting settled in, we dropped the masts on both boats in preparation for our trip on the Champlain Canal. Our boats usually need 25 feet of “air draft” (clearance between the water and the bottom of bridges); however, on the Champlain Canal, many of the bridges are only 15 feet, so we have to lower the masts to make it under them.

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In the evening, we started hearing about all of the flooding in Vermont and were disappointed to hear that they had closed part of the Champlain Canal due to high water. We were scheduled to start the Canal the next day, so we decided to wait until morning to see what the situation looked like.

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Thanks For Visiting! – Tom & Brenda