On the road again,
Going places that I've never been,
Seeing things that I may never see again,
I can't wait to get on the road again.
-Willie Nelson
This past weekend P and I succumbed to cabin fever, and set out for the unknown quarter of New York known as the Thousand Islands.
Tucked into the space where Lake Ontario meets the St. Lawrence River, the archipelago actually comprises more like 1200 islands, some tiny enough barely to hold a single shack, and some quite large, with woods and golf courses and planned neighborhoods. And yes, that staple of American cuisine, Thousand Island Dressing, was discovered by explorers here while looking for the Northwest Passage in 1674, bubbling out of a space between the rocks.
Okay, I just made that last part up. But the dressing really was created here, although there are different versions of how that transpired. None involve bubbling mayonnaise springs, however.
We drove up on Friday night, passing through Watertown in darkness to arrive for a late supper at the bar at our hotel, the Bonnie Castle Resort & Marina in Alexandria Bay. That bar was the main reason we picked the place--P was enchanted by the online photos of the '70s era naugahyde barstools. It was like drinking and eating chicken wings on the set of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Strangely reassuring in this most strange moment in American history.
The place sits across from the region's best known tourist attraction, Boldt Castle, built over a century ago in an act of conspicuous consumption by the owner of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel as a gift for his wife. They had just finished construction when she died in 1904, and her grieving husband walked away and never spent a night in the place.
It was strikingly illuminated the night we got there, which made us eager to go take the tour we didn't realize was not an option because it was closed for the season.
The actual lodging facility gave me flashbacks to my days staying TDY in Navy visiting officer quarters. They were always the worst---run down, tan cinder block facilities with all the warmth of an eastern bloc jail. My naval officer friends used to explain that the reason their shore facilities were so awful was that they spent all their money on ships. The Air Force had some expensive toys as well, and yet our Qs were generally pretty spiffy.
The rooms at the Bonnie Castle, however, were not. The place was once a Catholic seminary, and it felt like a place where an aspiring monk would feel at home. Except, I guess, for the giant jacuzzi bathtub in our room, which I'm guessing was a later addition to the facility. We made the best of the situation and decided to use the tub for our postprandials. There was no plug. Ever the McGyver, P stuffed a rag in the drain, dumped the courtesy shampoo bottle in the water, and voila! A hot tub bubble bath!
[here you must picture the photo I imagine P would forbid me placing on this page, with her smile poking out of a mass of bubbles that covers everything else. Well, most everything else. Maybe a little randy for a family friendly blog]
The next morning, we wandered the property and discovered a surprisingly nice indoor pool and hot tub. Regret set in as we realized we left swimsuits at home, but we figured our Amex card could solve most every oversight, and off we went down the road to nearby Clayton for a little shopping. Little Alexandria Bay, where we were staying, only has a few dozen residents as the season winds down. Shopping local simply was not an option.
Clayton turned out to be a busier town, but still pretty sleepy. Think Apalachicola with a little more money and a little less tackiness. We found our swimsuits, and P found SALES! that left us with arms drooping with bags of clothes and little left in our bank account.
Next up was a car ride across Wellesley Island, one of the biggest land masses in the area. The fall colors were breathtaking.
We killed a little time afterward in a neighborhood bar in Alex Bay, drinking a couple wines out of those little airplane bottles and eating onion rings because it's illegal here to sell us a drink without food. The ghosts of the folks who brought you the 18th Century Great Awakening are still lingering in the nation's statute books. The onion rings were superb--homemade, hot from the fryer, and in Peg's case covered in hot sauce. The wine was forgettable.
Of course, no trip to the Thousand Islands is complete without a cheesy ride on a tour boat, narrated by a fireplug of a young man with two hours of stories, some true, about the history of the islands and communities along the river.
We were freezing.
Planning ahead for our predicament, we brought a bottle of wine to split along the way. And we found pork rinds, the smell of which ensured that all the Yankees on the boat would socially distance from the two Southerners in the stern seats. One Russian guy from NYC was willing to sit near us; an oncologist it turned out, shopping around for a place to ride out the most recent wave of the pandemic. He asked about our politics, and like pretty much every Russian I've ever met started lecturing us about the evils of socialism. I engaged in lots of mouth-breathing with cheeks jammed with stinky pork rind debris until he finally, blessedly, turned away in disgust.
The views of Boldt Castle were uber cool.
In need of warming after our chilly, damp boat ride, we made our way back to the crumbling "Resort & Marina" (I'm guessing if our Russian friend had followed us back, he would've felt right at home there), and changed into our new bathing suits for a dip in the hot tub.
The views of the castle out the window in the late afternoon light were almost as cool as when it was illuminated the night before.
We ventured into town for a gourmet meal in the one restaurant that was open, a pleasant surprise for us. Afterward it was back to the jacuzzi tub to dump another shampoo bottle into the water and settle in for an evening of wine and Prine. We had the presence of mind not to take pictures this time.
This ramble has gone on a lot longer than planned, so I'll save the description of our Sunday meander back to Corning for tomorrow. Selah.
Comments