North Country Vacation

        

   Rather than spend the last night on the St. Lawrence at Coles Creek State Park west of Massena, we went an extra 20 miles or so to stay at Robert Moses State Park next to the Eisenhower Lock.  Gail’s a bit of an infrastructure junkie and wanted a chance to see one of the freighters go through.  Funny, the roads at Robert Moses aren´t where you´d expect them to be and are in terrible shape.  Guess that's why they named it after him.
   Our timing was perfect; we got the tent set up, swam and showered, checked out the eclipse using the reverse binocular method then went to the lock for a scheduled ship arrival.  The road to the park went under the lock, and they had a visitor center that included this display of jars showing much or all of what the freighters carry back and forth.  We saw a freighter loading when we were on a previous trip in Duluth. 

  The freighters don’t cruise straight into the lock, they hit it at an angle to slow down and slide in rather than using the brakes.  That is the look of an infrastructure junkie drunk on an approaching vessel.  Notice how high the ship towers over the wall on the other side.

  The ship dropped at least 50’ once the water was let out of the lock, well below that wall noted above, that’s the post (or whatever the nautical term is) sticking up as it passed us.  An osprey built a nest on an unused piece of equipment next to the lock.  I remember reading a description of osprey somewhere when they first started making their comeback in the northeast that they don’t like disturbances of humans around the nest.  I guess we’ve learned a bit about them since then.  They were one of the most abundant birds we saw since we spent so much time on or near water.  We also saw two Bald Eagles on the first couple days, one right near Derby Hill and the other over Chimney Bluffs.  Later we had a Boreal Chickadee pointed out to us on a mountain in the Adirondacks.