Hudson by Boats

KG here sending you greetings from a very sunny Hudson River.  Today was a stellar day, most likely because I got to start it in my favorite way - rowing!  Last night when we got back to the Hudson River Maritime Museum docks after our post-dinner walk, the folks from Rondout Rowing Club were coming in from an evening rowing session and I went completely out of my comfort zone (being cripplingly shy of strangers) and asked them if they'd be rowing in the AM.  As it turns out, they were and had provisions for guest rowing and so at 5:30 AM I was carrying oars down to the dock for a row in a quad.  That's me in 2 seat.

The rowers were lovely and I got to see a good chunk of Dragonfly's previous day's route into the harbor from the quad.  We rowed out the Rondout Creek to the Hudson and, as luck would have it, the Hudson was calm so we headed across it and then turned north. My boatmates pointed out sights of interest that I had missed as I was concentrating on coming into port the day before - such as this Osprey nest on top of an abandoned crane near the Rondout Lighthouse with baby chicks in it.

I asked about this boat that is just sitting on the side of the creek, abandoned like many other interesting boats, and learned it is for sale.  I think this might be an interesting boat to take on our next Canal adventure.

We spent a good 1.5 hours on the creek and river and had a beautiful row.  And then back to the Maritime Museum grounds to put the boats back in the nooks and crannies of the shoreline property.  They make great use of outdoor space - here is their oar locker (basically a cabinet on the outside of the Museum) that also houses their US Coast Guard mandated life jackets that they carried in the bow of the boat.  I was happy to see that.

After a quick shower and breakfast Dragonfly left Kingston and headed back onto the Hudson for our last day of southward travel for the foreseeable future.  We passed another beautiful lighthouse- Esopus - shown here with an Eagle perched on the walkway around the light and another nest in the chimney of the Lighthouse.

We also passed by the Vanderbilt Estate and the Roosevelt Home at Hyde Park - both now National Historic Sites.  Neither could be seen very well from the water because of all the foliage between the house and the water.  The Culinary Institute of America has a campus here also, which was visible, and was recently named as one of the prettiest campuses in America. 

Also the Holy Cross Monastery was beautiful.

Today's trip southward saw building winds against the tidal current and so we were in some serious chop with whitecaps as we headed into Shadows Marina in Poughkeepsie.  Quite a different river than the one I was rowing on earlier in the day.  We are planning to leave our boat here over the Father's Day weekend as I have two sisters who live in the area and we are planning to get off the boat for a few nights of dirt home visiting.  First, however, we held a Field Day.  No - this is not an athletic contest that happens at the end of the school year.  In the Navy every week time is set aside to clean the ship from top to bottom - this is called a Field Day.  With watchstanding and keeping boat equipment working while underway it can be difficult to keep on top of more than just cleaning dishes and wiping up spills and so to maintain some semblance of cleanliness on the boat, we have chosen to adopt that practice that we learned back in our previous Navy life.  

After Field Day and a cold dinner (since it was 90 degrees and sunny outside) we took a walk along the Hudson and saw many rowing shells practicing and visited Upper Landing Park which was the site of some of the earliest settlers to this area.  I was happy to see this quote from one of my favorite journalists, Charles Karault: "America is a great story, and there is a river on every page of it.”

I'm going to have to say Ta Ta for now.  I'm bushed!!