Day 301: Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Port to Port: Kingston, NY
Underway: 0:00 am Motor Off: 0:00 pm Miles Traveled: 0 Stayed At: Marina
Mile to Mile: Not much new to report today. It didn’t rain 2” today, thankfully. We just had some intermittent sprinkles. I spent a good chunk of the day looking at our options. None of them are easy. We could stay here and wait for the Erie Canal to open but it could be two weeks or it could be next year. We just don’t have enough information. We could trailer Aurora 250 miles to Oswego and continue our trip from there. This would save a lot of time but Cindy wouldn’t be able to say she completed the Loop which isn’t fair (the girls and I already traveled this section of the Loop in 2002). A third option is to continue north on the Hudson and enter the Champlain Canal and head for Montreal, Ottawa and the Rideau Canal and ultimately end up in Kingston, Ontario. This choice adds about 10 days to our trip and 300 miles but the scenery is beautiful and we avoid having to cross Lake Ontario. We don’t know if we can handle the currents in some parts of this route – especially on some sections of the St. Lawrence Seaway we have to traverse. Again, we don’t have enough information. We will not get to Lake Michigan until the end of August so we may be delayed because of weather and might have to leave the boat in Michigan or Wisconsin until next summer to finish the trip. It all depends on the weather. Right now we are leaning towards Option 3. Ask me again in 10 minutes and I may give you a different answer.
Whatever we decide, we are planning to stay for the Fourth of July festivities. There will be music in the park, some wonderful fireworks and a bunch of other events in and around Kingston. We have already planned a potluck BBQ with the other stranded boaters for Thursday. We might as well have fun while we are waiting.
We definitely don’t have anything to complain about, though. We are incredibly lucky to be where we are right now. A lot of homes along the Erie Canal have been flooded and some people have lost everything they own. This has been the story along all the waterways we have traveled. Sometimes water can be beautiful and useful, other times it can get ugly and destructive. We can do very little to control it. All we can do is live with it and do what we can to enjoy it.
