Upper Hudson River

June 7-8, Day 41 & 42 - After leaving Saugerties, the 4 boat group broke into 2 groups of 2 each, with Rickshaw & Moor $tuff heading for what seemed to be an unbelievable destination...a cute town (Athens) within a short distance up the river(20 miles), and a FREE! & (almost) new dock.   (Having a free dock allows easy access to the town without having to get in the dinghy).   Arriving in Athens, we were pleasantly surprised that what we had heard was 95% true.   The town was kind of cute, the dock was an almost new, 80 ft aluminum dock which was fronted by a manicured park, and there were no signs that said that we were not allowed to stay there.   So we followed the mantra of don't ask permission, seek forgiveness.   (We did find out that the actual rule was no overnight docking but since no one told us to leave, we stayed the night).    After taking a brief stroll around the town of Athens, during which we discovered a new flavor of ice cream (Crumbs along the Mohawk), the 4 of us decided to check out the larger town (Hudson) accessible via a quick dinghy ride from the west side to the east side of the Hudson River.    Hudson was a very pretty little town that featured a lot of wine bars, antique stores, and eclectic furnishings, and quite a few rainbow flags hanging off of the 200 year old homes & buildings (which helped to explain the artsy feel of the town).  Following a two hour stroll around the town, and a glass of wine at the wine bar to contribute to the local economy, we hopped back in the dinghy to return to Athens where we feasted on cheeseburgers and felt like we were almost in paradise, just like Jimmy Buffet says.

The next day, we dropped our dock lines and headed up to Troy, NY (just past Albany), where we went through our 1st lock (out of 140 in total) where we would meet up with Carried Away and Quest at the convergence of the Champlain & Erie canals with the Hudson River.

Belinda on the fore deck getting ready to retrieve the anchor in Esopus Creek.

Our dockage in Athens, NY. A local came by and told us the dock was built for the Tom Cruise movie War of the Worlds which was filmed here. It was used in the scene where the townspeople are running down the street to get on a ferry boat.

Rickshaw in the Troy Lock just north of Albany. This is our first lock - think of it as a boat elevator. You can see the gates are still open behind us.

Although the charts give the bridge heights and we know how tall Rickshaw is - with the antennas and anchor light down the bridges always seem lower than they really are.

At some points on the Hudson, the river gets quite narrow with steep cliffs plunging down into the river. We're in the Catskills area of the Hudson in this picture

This is West Point on the western shore of the Hudson River. It is a very impressive & imposing site that was built during the Revolutionary War and used by the Americans as a fortress to keep the Hudson River from falling into British hands

The Esopus Lighthouse. In this area of the country the LIGHTHOUSES are really houses - not light columns! They are beautiful.

Barb from Moor $tuff took this picture of us while we were dinghying over to Hudson from Athens. In case you can't tell, Belinda is having a great time.

We are almost to the top about another foot to go.

It always looks like we are going hit the bridge, but we don't.

                                                                    

Just past the Troy Lock is one of the lowest bridges we will have to pass under with a 20' clearance. The lowest will be in Chicago - 19'-2". Jim wanted to see for himself how much clearance we have.