Category Archives: new york state

Monday 2nd October 2017 – THAT WAS A NIGHTMARE!

Yes – I’ll tell you what was (and where it was too in due course).

But starting off, I had a really good night’s sleep in the hotel last night. Didn’t feel a thing at all.

and I was up reasonably early, did a pile of paperwork, had breakfast and a good shower too. Fit for absolutely anything.

And I needed to be, too. Because today is going to be the most difficult day of the journey. I knew that, and so I cannot say that I was unprepared for the events that were to unfold.

Having picked up some fuel, because by now Strider was running on fumes, we drove north up the island.

As I said yesterday, the Outer Banks (because I suppose that these are really still the Outer Banks around here) are in a perpetual state of flux and continually moving about.

A lot of work is needed to stabilise them, and here are three bulldozers hard at work moving the sand around

Back on the mainland I took a little diversion so that I could send you all Greetings From Asbury Park NJ.

It’s a little-known fact that when Brute Stringbean left the E-Street Band, they signed up one of the singers from ABBA to replace him.

He came over to the USA specifically to take up the role, and their first single was entitled “Bjorn in the USA”. You can’t say that you aren’t learning a lot by reading this rubbish.

As for Asbury Park itself, you need to have a good imagination of how this place must have been during the boom years of the 1920s and 1950s.

In those heady days the whole New Jersey Coast was the playground of New York City, but unfortunately they are long-gone and the town is just sitting here slowly decaying.

Today, it’s just really a shadow of its former self.

That is of course not to say that there aren’t any signs of opulence around the place these days.

The north side of the town seems to be very popular with the Upper Crust and there’s still plenty of evidence of wealth about.

And I for one would live in a house like this in a heartbeat. But I reckon that the entire readership of this rubbish couldn’t afford it even if we pooled all of our resources.

My journey up the New Jersey coast took me as far as the Highlands – and you can see why it is so named.

I mentioned the moving sand dunes of the Outer Banks – they are continually moving north and over the passage of time have isolated the cliffs of the former coastline from the shore.

The view from up there is quite impressive too, but we’ve seen it all before.

And so we hit the New Jersey Turnpike at Perth-Amboy, and we pay our … gulp … $15:00.

It’s 11:00 exactly, and you’ll need to make a note of the time because it’s quite an important feature in our story.

And you’ll also need to make a note of the traffic too. I’ve been keeping away from the heavy traffic as I travel north, as you know if you have been following this rubbish. But around New Jersey and New York there is no realistic option.

The best views of New York City that it is possible to have are from the Upper Deck of the Verrazano Bridge across the mouth of the Hudson River.

Unfortunately there’s no scenic turn-off (or scenic turn-on) to stop and admire the view and so the only way to appreciate it is to take an oblique photograph from Strider’s side window in the heavy traffic.

Unfortunately Strawberry Moose is not the best at photography. He needs to work on his technique.

It’s impossible to get onto the Belt Parkway. The queue was so long that I had gone way past the end of the queue before I saw the sign for the turn-off.

That meant hat I had to come off at Hamilton Parkway and fight my way through Brooklyn, which was not part of the plan, and rejoin the Belt Parkway at Queen’s.

This part of Brooklyn is “Chinatown” as you can tell by the signs on the walls and the people in the street.

Nose-to-tail all the way through Brooklyn and Queen’s. At least I console myself in that the Belt Parkway is exactly the same and it wouldn’t have been any quicker.

It gives me plenty of opportunity to admire the scenery as we pass through the city anyway. I’ve never been here before, and I’m probably never ever going to be here again.

And pressing on, I resist the temptation to pay a visit to Coney island just down the road. I’ll be stuck for ever

Having conquered Europe a good 45 years ago, it’s good to see the Ford Transit going on to conquer North America/

Both models are available here now – the “mini” and the normal Caliburn-sized one, and you can see just how much they are infiltrating the North American market.

They are even conquering the lucrative “school bus” market, and if that’s not a sign of official acceptance I don’t know what is.

I finally burst out of New York City onto the Belt Parkway at 13:30 – and that was the longest two and a half hours of my life, I’ll tell you that (or so I thought to myself at the time).

One of the suburban State parks looms up on the right and so that’s a convenient place to stop for lunch. Not only have there been difficulties with the traffic, it’s been piping hot too under the hot sun and i’m ready for a break.

Back on the road, first thing that happens is that we hit a “fender-bender”. And then the road works. And more road works.

I have to stop for fuel by now – (that means that I’ve travelled just 210 kilometres since I set off this morning). And then back in a long, depressing traffic jam that never ends.

I finally pull into Port Jefferson at 17:20.

At my lunch stop, The Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav told me that we were just 46 minutes away from here. And so Ihad timed it.

It had taken us almost three hours to drive this final leg of the distance, what with all of the difficulties that we had encountered. And I was thoroughly, completely and absolutely fed up.

I had even begun to wonder whether or not it might have been quicker to have stayed on Interstate 95 and fought my way through New York City after all.

No prizes for guessing why I’ve come to Port Jefferson, is there?

By pure coincidence and totally by accident … “of course” – ed … there’s a ferry that goes from here across Long Island Sound to Bridgeport in Connecticut.

This is going to be my lest ferry crossing of my voyage (Bar Harbor to Yarmouth is pushing the boat out a little too far, I reckon) and so I need to make the most of it.

And at about 18:15 we set off on the P T Barnum for Bridgeport in Connecticut.

And the name of the ship is certainly appropriate, considering the circus that we have been through in order to arrive here.

I was hoping to have been on the other side and halfway up the road to Boston by now instead of being on the ferry in the doom and gloom.

But doom and gloom is completely inappropriate considering the glorious sunset.

I mentioned earlier that it had been a hot day, and you probably noticed from the earlier photos just how clear and blue the skies had been

We were now being treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets that I reckon that I have ever seen. It was totally magnificent out here on Long Island Sound

There are two ships that ply this particular route across Long Island Sound.

The P T Barnum has a sister ship, whose name I had forgotten to note, and we encountered her in the middle of Long Island Sound doing the trip in the reverse direction.

Silhouetted in the splendid sunset like this, she looks quite spellbinding too. We were having our money’s worth out here.

And so we battened down the hatches for silent running and sailed off into the sunset.

Red Sky At Night might mean Shepherd’s Delight in the UK, but here on Long Island Sound, Red Sky At Night means that there are riots in New York City and they are burning the place down to the ground.

But tat’s not to say that we can’t admire the view as the sun disappears down below the horizon, can we?

And so Bridgeport, our destination, looms up out of the gloom. I’ve never set foot in Connecticut before now, and so that’s about to be put right.

The crossing itself was like a millpond. I’ve never been over such a tranquil sea in my whole life. There wasn’t a single wave to talk about.

But it was an expensive crossing, make no mistake. 90 or so minutes, and 19 miles, I believe. Just like the English Channel. And it cost me (and Strider) a walk-on fare of a massive and astonishing … errr … $57:00.

The P T Barnum is obliged to do a U-turn in her own length here in the river so that we can dock and drive off forwards,

And much to my surprise, I’m the second vehicle off the ferry. I’m not used to that!

Just at the back of the harbour is a big bridge over which Interstate 95 passes. And that’s the road that will take me all the way home as far as the USA border and it’s a drive of about seven and a half hours.

But I’m not doing that tonight – I’ll tell you. I’m thoroughly exhausted and thoroughly fed up (but then I was expecting this today. There was no other solution).

A sign looms up at the side of the Interstate – “Motel 6 next exit”. They’ve gone upmarket and expensive this last few years but I’m tired and fed up and want to stop.

They have a room too – for just $90:00 including taxes which is not too unreasonable either. I’ve had worse. But what is unreasonable is that their computer is down, everything is being done by hand and I have to pay cash.

I now have $5:00 to last me to the US border and Canada but I’m beyond caring. It’s 20:00 and well past my bedtime.

And so I bite the bullet, pay up, find my room and crash out.

ZZZZZZZZ.

Friday 22nd September 2017 – THAT WAS HORRENDOUS!

Interstate 81 looked so inviting on the map.

Running through open country and the Blue Ridge Mountains (of Virginia and elsewhere) and not passing anywhere near any major centres pf population.

And how wrong I was!

For a start, it was heaving with traffic. Just like the M6 around Birmingham on a late Friday afternoon – with the exception that it has just two lanes each side and not three.

Secondly, it was one continual set of roadworks from start to finish. We crawled from hold-up to hold-up all the way from Upstate New York to Central Virginia.

Another thing is the traffic. Speed limits are 65 mph in some places and 55 mph in other places. And with the speedo in Strider being in kilometres, I converted the SatNav to imperial measurements and set the cruise control in accordance with the read-out.

And that is a suicidal thing to do – because no-one else obeys the speed limits even with the whole mess of Tijuana Taxis and unmarked speed control cars handing out loads of tickets all down the Interstate.

I had lorries, trucks, pickups and everything wedged up behind Strider crammed in with the traffic waiting for a moment to overtake.

Last night in the Rodeway Motel was one of the most comfortable nights that I’ve had for a while.

Despite the cheapness of the place, it was excellent value for money, complete with microwave and fridge. I’ll stop there again, that’s for sure.

I’d been on my travels too, but not very pleasant ones unfortunately. I was in Strider when I had a head-on collision with a lorry. Strider wasn’t very badly damaged as he had “gone underneath” but I felt that I could have avoided the accident if I had exerted myself. Furthermore, we were driving on the left as in the UK, but it was for some reason clearly the other driver’s fault, although I’ve no idea why.

It was 09:30 when I hit the road, exactly as planned, and decanted myself more-or less straight away into the traffic.

I stopped for the usual reasons and to pick up a coffee, and again at Frackville in Pennsylvania for fuel and a lettuce. But finding a food store was something – I must have driven up every street in the town.

But yes, Pennsylvania. I made it into here just before midday.

Mind you, that’s not such a big deal because we’ve been here before – twice in fact. Once in 2010 but once previously on a quick in-and-out over the new year of 1999/2000 when I was staying on Long Beach Island in New Jersey.

But at least I put my feet on the soil this time, because I found a nice motorway Service Area where I sat in the sun for an hour.

I blinked and missed Maryland, but I did manage to take a photo of West Virginia.

I’ve certainly never been here before and so I was grateful that Strawberry Moose was able to take a photograph.

But I didn’t manage to put my feet on the soil here – that will have to be for another time, if there is one.

I dunno.

I was otherwise preoccupied with traffic when I crossed over into Virginia, but I’ve been here before too, on my trip in 2005.

As it started to grow dark, I spied a motel with rooms at reasonable prices.

I’ve stayed at Motel Sixes before now and they are quite good, and I was lucky here because I had the last room. It was a smoking room but I was past caring by now.

Here it Mount Jackson we are at more-or-less halfway, give or take 50 miles, so I was glad to stop for a rest and a stretch.

But the road through the mountains is beautiful, and we passed by loadsof names that I recognised, such as Gettysburg, Antietam and the like.

How I would have liked to go for a visit but I’m a Man on a Mission and I can’t stop.

And tomorrow, I’ll be back on the road.

Tuesday 8th September 2015 – WHAT AN ASTONISHING STORM!

It went very hot and humid late at night and then about 23:00 he wind got upand we had a howling gale for 20 minutes, and then the most tremendous thunderstorm for ages and ages – at least I know that my little tent it waterproof. I sat there for hours (probably 20 minutes in fact) wondering whether I should evacuate the tent but I’m not sure at all what happened because the next thing that I realised, it was the alarm going off at 06:00. Yes, the bed, even though it is too small for the tent, has made a world of difference.

But I couldn’t stay here lounging in my stinking pit all morning. This is the morning when I need to be moving on, so I have to pack everything away. And I’m pleased that I packed away everything yesterday so that today’s packing is a simple (well, relatively simple) half-hour’s job once I’d dealt with everything that needed dealing with on the internet.

Then a shower, followed by the laundry. There was a machine and a dryer available, both at $1:00 a go, and I could have put myself in there with the clothes. Everything took a while but it all came up clean and dry and you can’t argue with that. I just wish that I’d brought the washing from home.

And the result of my little stay at Goose’s Point campground? Covered with (harmless) whitefly and my spec wasn’t up to all that much. However, the internet connection was the fastest I’ve ever had in a public place and it was just $21:00 per night. I’d more-than had my money’s worth just here for sure.

First job after leaving the campsite was to go down to the Isle la Motte, or la Motte Island or whatever it’s called. The woman I met the other day recommended it.

This place is important for several reasons, not the least of which being that it’s yet another place where Samuel de Champlain is said to have landed. And it might be true too, although if de Champlain landed at every site that is claimed for him, he would never have found the time to get back into his ship.

The second claim to fame is that it was the site of one of the French forts – Fort Sainte Anne – that protected the Lake Champlain / Richelieu Valley supply route from attacks by the Iroquois. Built in 1665-66 by Pierre la Motte, it was garrisoned by about 300 soldiers (the first “European” settlement in what is now Vermont) and only lasted for three or four years before the French pulled back, destroying the fort as they left.

Nevertheless, a great many artefacts from this period have been unearthed by different archaeological squads over the years. It’s a shame that they haven’t rebuilt a replica of the fort around here.

But I have been told a story about the time that Hawkeye and Chingachgook came around here on a spying expedition for the British

“How many soldiers do you see in the fort?” asked Hawkeye.
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground. “About 300” he replied
“And how many cannon?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground again. “About 30”
“And how many horses?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground yet again. “About 60”
“And how many native allies?”
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground once more. “About 200”
“That’s incredible” said Hawkeye. “Can you tell all that by just lying down and listening to the ground?”
“Ohh no” replied Chingachgook. “If I lie down here like this and turn my head so that my ear is to the ground just like this, I can see right underneath the gates of the fort”.

In its short lifetime, the fort was aid to be an “exciting” place to be if you craved for contact with the native Americans.

Its third claim to fame was that it was the site of the first mass said in this region – in May 1666 as the fort “opened for business” and a shrine to Saint Anne, mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus, was dedicated.

Although the fort itself was abandoned, the shrine lived on and since then it’s become a place of pilgrimage for many people. There’s also a retreat here, where people can come to seek peace and quiet, and communicating with nature, although if the racket that I heard coming from the unsilenced hedge trimmer used by one of the gardeners was anything to go by, I would have done my communicating with a pickaxe handle.

I’d seen this sign a few times as I had been driving up and down the road between Alburgh and Rouses Point and so I had to take a photo of it, just to prove that the street did exist.

And sure enough, down at the end of the road were a few derelict nissen huts and a few bits and pieces of other stuff, but nothing exciting in the way of ordnance like an A4 rocket or something. The place was however sealed off with chains and padlocks and so a really good exploration was out of the question.

It wouldn’t normally bother me as you know, but bearing in mind the paranoia and fear that is gripping all Americans right now, I’d probably wake up in an orange jump-suit in Guantanamo Bay – if I ever were to wake up at all.

I went into Rouses Point after that to buy myself a coffee and something for lunch (yes, it was that time already) at the big petrol station in town.

And just to prove to many people that bad parking isn’t just confined to Liverpool, here’s some pretty shocking car parking in Rouses Point New York as Madam abandons (because on-one can say that this is parking) her vehicle across two parking spaces, one of which is a disabled bay. It’s hard to believe just how selfish and thoughtless some people are.

Over the road from the petrol station is another historic site, of which there are thousands all around this area.

This promontory where this derelict motel is situated is a former quay and over there where the lighthouse is is another quay. And this was apparently the route of a sail ferry that plied its trade across the head of Lake Champlain. I’m not sure how long it lasted but the first bridge across the head of the lake wasn’t, apparently, until the 1930s so I suppose that there had to be something going across here until then.

From here I retraced many of my steps from the other day and ended up in a town called Plattsburgh

And once again, it’s amazing the things that people leave lying by the side of the road isn’t it?

Never mind the FB1-11 that was parked up here, this is a B47 and to see this kind of thing parked up here must be something pretty exceptional. Where we are in fact seems to be at some old military complex with loads of decaying and abandoned barracks-type of buildings. apparently there was an Air Force base just outside town and the two planes here were of the type that flew out of it.

And now, almost my final destination for today.

This is the harbour at Port Kent and why it’s important for our journey is that it’s the terminal of the only crossing of Lake Champlain that I have not yet taken. It’s another one of these places that was very important once the area calmed down in the late 18th Century, becoming a thriving port and holiday resort, because there are some nice beaches here.

But the coming of the railway here (and, very much to my surprise, there is still an Amtrack railway station here and that just about beats everything) took away much of the river trade and the port declined in importance.

According to a very friendly old guy with whom I had a lengthy chat, there are three scheduled goods trains that pass by here every day, as well as the once-per-day passenger service between New York and Montreal.

And of course, I missed them all.

I’d also missed the ferry too. Only 4 per day and the one that I wanted was steaming (or dieseling) out of the bay as I arrived.

But never mind. It gave me a good opportunity to go for a good wander around and admire the local sights, including some of the famous local beaches. And they were quite nice too. But many of the hotels that used to be here no longer exist or else have been converted into private houses, such as those up there on the cliff behind.

Eventually, after a two-and-a-half-hour wait, the Good Ship Ve … err … Valtour came steaming back into harbour from its trip across to Burlington and we made oursleves ready to cross.

$30:00 to cross for a 45-minute sailing, which is starting to become excessive, but with just 7 cars, one motorcyle and a dozen foot passengers, they need the revenue. It’s a seasonal service too, that’s why it’s not very well advertised, but yet it sails right into the harbour in the centre of Burlington.

As we sail out of Port Kent harbour, I have to tell you that it’s ironic really that we are on our way to Burlington, the largest city in Vermont and whose metropolitan area includes one-third of the State’s population, and the railway line there has long been pulled up. But you can still reach Burlington by rail, in the summer months at least, if first you take the train to the little station here and then take the ferry.

It did make me wonder if they synchronised the times of the trains to correspond with the ferries? Knowing how public transport works, I doubt it very much. But they could make quite an impression on Burlington’s public transport if they were to make an effort

“Twas on the Good Ship Ve .. errr … Valtour”
“By God you should have seen us”
I know that I shouldn’t have let His Nibs near that bottle of rum.

Strawberry Moose and Strider are here enjoying the relaxing crossing, which was nothing like as rough as I was expecting, given the weather that we were experiencing. It had changed dramatically for the worse since this morning.

While you enjoy the rapidly-deteriorating weather, I wandered off to check out the facilities on the boat.

And much to my surprise, there is actually a ship’s cafe on board – the first that I have encountered on a North American short sailing. But it’s down in the bowels of the ship and you have the disconcerting sight of watching the water splash against the portholes which are round about your eye level.

I don’t mind being below water level if I can’t actually see it, but this was getting to be a little too near the knuckle for me. I’d rather be out on deck in rough weather where I have a good chance of escaping if we turn turtle. What kind of wimp am I?

We eventually make it over to Burlington in one piece, and I end up chatting to a guy and his wife who are doing a tour of the North-Eastern states on a Harley Davidson. I asked him what the fuel consumption was like, because I’d head the stories.
“Depressing” was his reply.

Anyway, they are planning to end up in Halifax and so we had quite a lengthy chat about the city which, as you know, is one of my favourite places in the whole of North America. I really hope that they enjoy it.

Having left the ship, I made my way out of town to the campsite at North Beach – and it really does have a beach too!

But I didn’t show you this cloud that was looming away in the distance as we were crossing the lake. It was in fact right over the campsite and we were having a torrential rainstorm and high winds there when I arrived. I quickly put up the tent (you’ve no idea how quickly I can do that when I’m being soaked to the skin) and crawled inside.

That’s all that I’m doing tonight!

-2

Monday 7th September 2015 – THIS BED …

… has made a world of difference – I’ll tell you that. It’s far too long for the bed, due to the dome-like nature of the latter, so even though I have to sleep curled up I was out light a light and off on my travels.

In fact I was in Shavington last night, wandering aimlessly around between Goodall’s Corner and the Sugar Loaf and I was joined by Zero, a young lady of my acquaintance who comes along to join me every now and again when I’m off on my perambulations. I’ve no idea why she should put in an appearance in the night though. Just one of those things I suppose, or else I’m hankering after my lost youth again.

The phone battery was going flat as I was going off to sleep and I couldn’t be bothered to put it on charge, so when I awoke I had no idea of what time it might have been and so I arose anyway – only to find that it was 04:00. And I couldn’t go back to sleep either.

It’s Labour Day in the USA today – a Bank Holiday – and so I had a day off. In fact I spent all morning reading a book and I don’t regret one minute of it either. And with the campsite office having coffee on tap as well; I was doing even better.

This afternoon though, I did a mammoth sorting out of everything that I had brought down from Canada yesterday and managed to fit most of the things into the storage boxes wit room to spare. And just as well too, because it’s going to be just a little tight for the next couple of days.

I seem to have acquired some duplicate tools too, not knowing what I had and what I didn’t have, and that seems par for the course of course. Still, better too many than too few. One thing though – I don’t have a metric spanner bigger than 18mm and 19mm is one of the most useful sizes on a Ford. Must sort that out too.

As it grew dark, and to celebrate the bank Holiday, I went into Rouses Point firstly for some cash and secondly for a meal. The transport cafe on the corner came up with one of the nicest spaghetti and tomato sauces that I have ever tasted and I thoroughly enjoyed that. Things are definitely looking up in North America.

But Strider now has a headlight out. I’ll have to fix that tomorrow.

-3

Saturday 5th September 2015 – QUEBEC SHOWERS

At this campsite we have what are called “Quebec showers”, and regular readers of this rubbish will know exactly what they are. For the new readers, of which there are many these days, this is when the “C” and “F” on the taps does not mean chaud and froidas you might expect, but “cold” and “freezing”. Still, at 07:15 in the morning that woke me up, I’ll tell you that.

Yes, 07:15! I had a lie-in today, one of the reasons for this being that as I am now so close to the Quebec border my phone is picking up a signal again and it has reset the time to Quebec, rather than Maritime time. The second reason being that I had another bad night’s sleep. A pile of campers decided to have a party that went on until I don’t know what time last night and also due to the fact that I’m right by the edge of the road here so every item of traffic passing by makes a noise that wakes me up.

Of course, it can’t be that bad because for much of the night I was away on my travels – another reason for a good lie-in. Some town where I was had picked a fight with two or three car-loads of strangers from another town, and had given them a “right good panning”, as the saying goes. The townspeople were delighted but like most successes of this nature it was quite ephemeral, as the injured parties returned to the town with not just the rest of their townsfolk but the townsfolk of a couple of other towns too, and the result was an orgy of some violence and it was all quite uncomfortable.

From here, I went off for an interview. I had at one time written the script for a film in just two days. The third day, we rehearsed it all and on the fourth day, we filmed it, and this was the track record that appealed to whoever it was who was holding the interview. I wasn’t actually going for the interview – I was running through it in my mind and was making a mental list of everything that I needed to take with me. One part of me was saying that I surely wouldn’t forget everything, but the second part of me, that clearly knew me much better than the other one, was saying that I really ought to be writing this down as I’m certain to forget something important.

But once that was out of the way and I’d had quite a leisurely morning (after all, I am on holiday) I went off on my travels to check on something that I had caught a glimpse of yesterday

And I was right! It is indeed a Morris 1000 convertible. Here in the USA too! This is really quite extraordinary!

It really does make you wonder – here in the 1960s Britain was selling cars all over the world, including to North America (and we’ve seen several examples of British cars of this era on our travels – a Cortina Mk II and a Mini to name but two of them) and yet 20 years later the British couldn’t even sell one in their home country.

In this period Ford UK disappeared. So did Hillman and its offspring, so did Austin and Morris and their offspring. Gone, the lot of them. Rover struggled on for another 10 years selling obsolete copies of Asian cars and Jaguar and Land Rover were being bailed out by foreigners.

Where did it all go wrong?

That wasn’t all that was on offer here at Alburgh either.

We had a couple of other vehicles too. A saloon from the 1920s – the beige one – and inside the garage was a drop-top from an earlier period.

There was no-one around to ask permission to photograph them (you have to do this kind of thing these days) otherwise I would have found out much more about them

No such issues around the corner at Rouse’s Point, New York. Here, the owner was out mowing his lawn and so I went over for a chat – and ended up with the good old traditional American hospitality.

It’s nice to know that, despite all of my moaning, there’s still plenty of the good old American hospitality left although these days, you do have to look for it.

This is a 1949 Hudson that he rescued in 1988 and one of these days he’ll get around to restoring it.

It’s one of the last of the Hudsons, so he says. The company folded because it ra the same product line for 8 years and people who wanted an up-to date vehicle had to look elsewhere. And so despite my earlier ranting, it’s not just the UK that lacks vision and imagination and suffers from complacency.

That wasn’t all that he had either. What we have in this photo is a 1941 Buick 8 saloon as well as an absolutely gorgeous 1946 Buick 8 Hearse – the hearse being fitted with a “Flexible” body, and you can actually see the welds where the body has been customised.

I’d take that one home in a heartbeat too given half a chance. It was beautiful

He had lots of other stuff too but it wasn’t convenient to go to see them. he’d had a notice served on him by the town council to either remove the vehicles or to erect a fence, and a fence was what he was going to erect.

At least he was given the option. I lost count of the threatening letters and the other stuff that I received from Crewe Borough Council over my vehicles. And he said that it’s given him the impulse to do something, and once the fence is up, he’s going to build a great big shed to put them in and, who knows, he might even start work on them.

In between Rouses Point and Alburgh I had stopped at the picnic place at the foot of the big bridge over the Richelieu River between Vermont and New York State.

I’d been here once before, and I certainly don’t remember seeing the fort over there. It’s actually Fort Montgomery and dates from the period of the Border troubles between the USA and Canada in the 1830s and 1840s.

Ironically, by the time that it had been built, the disputes had been settled and so it never saw action and was part-dismantled in the 1930s to provide the stones for the footings of a bridge.

It’s for sale too, if you want to buy it and the island upon which it sits. Surprisingly, it’s not a Government Historic Site but private property, and it’s yours for just $2,950,000. Cheap at half the price.

One thing that I have been noticing though, and here’s a fine example of that, is that at many New York-Vermont state lines, there’s a large open area. It’s almost as if they are expecting Vermont to secede from the Union and so they have prepared the border control immigration points.

Of course, Vermont did used to be a republic (as did Texas) before selling itself out completely to the USA. I’d be intrigued to see what would happen if Vermont were to secede – what action would the USA take?

From Rouses Point I continued my leisurely ramble around Lake Champlain and, sure enough, I came across what I was expecting to find.

A ferry! The first of the holiday for Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly, and also the first for Strider. Strider will have to start getting used to our maritime perambulations

It’s always a bad idea to take me to see a ferry. After all, whenever I do see a ferry, it always makes me cross and today was no exception.

There are three or four ferry crossings across lake Champlain, and this is the second that I’ve taken. Believe me – I’ll be researching into the others in due course and we’ll be doing the business without fail.

I still can’t believe that they don’t have coffee machines on board though. What a waste of a business opportunity.

There were a couple of women here, in a Quebec car, but talking the Francais de Paris. They were trying to take a photo of themselves and so I went over to them to ask if they wanted me to take one of them.

“No thank you” they said, “but isn’t your French good!”. Well, and so it should be after almost 23 years of living there. I would have been disappointed with anything else.

Back on the Vermont side of the lake, I stopped to take a good photo and ended up chatting to a couple who had a house right here – with one of the best views in the entire State, I reckoned.

We ended up discussing building a fieldstone house, something he was quite keen to do as he had a very stony piece of land upstate somewhere. I wished him luck, because although it’s not difficult, it’s quite a complicated procedure.

And on that note, I came home for an early evening.

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Thursday 4th September 2014 – OLD HABITS DIE HARD

Indeed they do? I’m at it again, even in the USA.

This is where I spent last night – on a motorway service area on Interstate 87 up at the top end of New York State. This is what it looked like at about half an hour after dawn because I was up early. I’d had something of a restless night.

But you can see why I was happy to stay here. The surroundings were beautiful and the smell of pine essence was overpowering. There wasn’t too much noise either, which makes a change for a motorway rest area.

I wasn’t alone on here by any means. There were plenty of cars about, as you can see on this trailer. Most of the overnight residents on here were Canadians heading south – I hardly noticed a lorry from the USA. It’s something about which I’ve often wondered – where do lorries from the USA park up overnight because you don’t see them parked up in every lay-by as you do in Europe.

Mind you, you don’t see many lay-bys either in North America, something about which I’ve often commented.

I found a Home Depot (eventually) and I’ve bought a couple of things that I needed. I had to go to a second one though for an angle grinder (passing by a Walmart on the way where I left half of my shopping and had to go back for it).

It was quite exciting in this second Home Depot. According to the Home depot computer, there should have been 6 there but there were none on display. Eventually I found someone who confirmed that they had some but he couldn’t find them either. Eventually he located them up on the top shelf, so he fetched a ladder, climbed up and passed one down to me. Then he started to descend the ladder. “Aren’t you going to get the others down then?” I asked. “Either customers will walk away empty-handed or else you’ll be climbing back up that ladder again”

One of the things that I’ve been moaning about too is the price that I’m having to pay these days for hiring vehicles. The idea of buying one to keep in North America has often gone through my head but finding the right kind of vehicle has always been an obstacle.

I wouldn’t have any problems here though. There must be a thousand vehicles here, many of which are Ford Ranger 4×4 pickups and prices start from about $4800 which is reasonable.

They are all bulk-buys from Government institutions, such as the Police as you can see, and the owner reckons that he has about 100 new vehicles every week. Anyway, I have a card from him and I shall be giving the matter some serious thought.

From here I’ve been on Highway 9 heading east towards the Maine coast but I’m not making very much progress with things that there are to see.

This is the view from Hogback Mountain in Vermont. This particular spot is called the Hundred Mile View, so-called because you can see for 100 miles from here.

It’s probably true as well, becaus that mountain right over there in the distance looks rather like the big mountain at the back of Millinocket in Maine, although I bet that it probably isn’t.

This area was quite an important ski area at one time but rising insurance premiums and falling snow levels … "DECREASING SNOW FALL" – ed … due to global warming have caused its abandonment.

This is a 1933 Pontiac saloon parked up in New Hampshire and it’s for sale for … errr … $19500, a price that stopped me in my tracks. I stopped to take a couple of photos and the owner came out for a chat. He’s totally rebuilt it from the ground up – one of many that he’s done because he’s 76 and been doing this for 60 years

It’s not for me though, because it’s been rebuilt to modern standards with a “350 V8” engine, a modern auto box, hydraulic disc brakes and all that kind of thing. There’s probably very little that is the original vehicle which is a shame if you ask me, but that’s how vintage vehicle “restoration” is carried out in North America.

From here I came across a camp site just as the sun was setting, so I’ve stopped here for the night on a pitch with a beautiful view across the lake. It’s a lovely place to spend the night, as you will soon find out.

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Wednesday 3rd September 2014 – WELL, I HAD AN EXCITING DAY TODAY.

And here is the result of my visits to places of historic interest along the lower part of the valley of the River Richelieu

The Museum of Fort St Jean – closed since yesterday for renovation and to be moved into a new building

Fort Lennox on the Ile aux Noix – open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays

The blockhouse at St Paul de l’Ile aux Noix – closed since yesterday

The museum at Lacolle – open at weekends only.

Yes, I’m not having much luck at all with the Canadian Tourist season, am I?

I had better luck at Bell Telephones in St Jean sur Richelieu. Someone who actually knew what he was talking about had me conected in five minutes – at a price, mind you (we are talking about Bell Telephones of course) but I’m now connected. I’ve had to have a new number – it’s 740 6186 but the area code remains the same as before.

So off to the Fort St Jean and found that it was closed, but a helpful woman military person allowed me to wander around the barracks and to take photos, as long as I didn’t go inside any buildings.

There are lots of old military equipment there so I was in my element for a good hour or so. This is an anti-U-boat homing torpedo from World War II. It’s the type that was launched either from the air or from a ship.

It’s certainly quite an interesting artefact to see, especially as I’ve been spending a lot of time wading my way through Clay Blair’s rather polemic and viciously anti-British submarine book just recently.

There were lots of other stuff there – tanks and aeroplanes and so on – so I didn’t have a totally wasted morning.

Probably the most important thing in the fort, at least from my point of view, were these anchors. They were discovered in Fury Bay on Somerset Island, which is in the High Arctic.

They are said to come from the ship – the Fury of William Parry (he after whom Parry Sound in the High Arctic is named) which was crushed in the ice one winter in the early 19th Century during one of his explorations to pass through the North-West passage.

So at Fort Lennox I was disappointed. Not just by the fact that the fort was closed to visitors but the fact that the fort was situated on an island and there was no possible access to the island for even a wander around outside the fort.

There was someone from Parks Canada on site and so I bent his ear about the desperate tourism facilities on offer here. If you come here during the summer season you can’t find a campsite or a motel because they are full. If you come here outside the summer season you can’t find a campsite or a motel because they are closed.

You just can’t win.

The blockhouse at the River Lacolle was also closed. It was part of the border fortifications controlling the access up the Richelieu valley and was built in 1778 after the American incursions of 1776.

Its claim to fame was that in March 1814 it held out against 4000 American soldiers bent on invading Canada, and in November 1838 it was the site of the last stand of the “Patriots”.

It’s the only blockhouse left in Quebec now, but regular readers of this rubbish will remember that we encountered one in Edmundston in New Brunswick a few years ago.

From there I went on to the town of Lacolle and with the museum closed, visited the site of the enigmatic “Battle of Lacolle Bridge”. Here in thick fog on 20th November 1812 the American forces prepared to attack the British forces but someone accidentally discharged a firearm.

This caused the Americans to start shooting, and ended up inflicting heavy casualties upon their own troops. This caused them to retreat in disarray without embarrassing the defenders at all.

At Hemmingford I encountered the “d’Antan magasin General”- a shop that was set out in the style of a shop of 100-odd years ago.

I had an interesting chat with the proprietor of the shop – I kept her away from her jam-bottling and sauce-making. We put the world to rights for a good half an hour and I ended up with a handful of traditional sweets and a cup of coffee so I’m not complaining and I’ll come back here again if ever I get the chance.

We then drove on for our usual confrontation with the American border farces down the road. I’m sure that there’s no real reason for them to be so … err … difficult with cross-border tourists and they would make tourists feel much more welcome if they would be a little less confrontational and a little more friendly. After all, it’s tourists like me that keep them in employment and if they chased everyone away from crossing the border they would all be out of a job.

I fuelled up just across the border and then set off down Highway 87 through the Adirondacks and the beautiful smell of fresh pine until I came across a welcome rest area where I’m settling down for the night.
l

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Friday 4th October 2013 – HERE AS PROMISED …

… is a photo of the view from my “bedroom” window from last night. It is of course the new Champlain Bridge across the lake of that name between New York and Vermont, and it’s pretty spectacular too, especially when I remember that I have a tripod in the Dodge and so I can use a long exposure.

I can’t think of many better sights to see as I settle down for the night, apart from the lighthouse from the beginning of May 2012, but that of course was something special.

Last night though, there was no-one on duty at the camp site, which was not unexpected, and neither was the note “if there’s no-one on duty when you arrive, find a vacant space and check in at 08:00”. What was however unexpected was that when I got fed up of waiting and hit the road, it was 09:44 and there was still no-one about.

I also had an encounter with yet another dissident today. The USA seems to be crawling with them but, as I have said before, they only seem comfortable expressing their dissent with foreigners such as Yours Truly. It really is just like the old Soviet Union back in the USA just now. I was not joking.

I don’t travel far, though. Just to Port Henry where I encounter what is rather laughingly called a “preserved locomotive”. Port Henry was formerly a steel town, due to the fact that there was an iron ore mine in the interior, and between the port and the mine ran a railway line, the Lake Champlain and Moriah Railroad. It all closed down in the 70s but some of the rolling stock has been “preserved” and a redundant ALCO RS18 was donatrd by the Canadian Pacific.

Why I’m treating the “restoration” with total derision is because it consisted simply if walloping a few buckets of thick black paint all over everywhere just like the “Big Boy” in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the result is just the same. Red streaks of rust everywhere where the paint has been worn away, and the rust trailing down all over the rest of the equipment giving it all an air of total dereliction, which is exactly what it is.

Here’s no surprise. Yours truly is on a ferry. It’s always a bad idea for me to go near a ferry, because every time I see one it makes me cross. This is one of the ones across Lake Champlain between New York State and Vermont that was not done away with when the Champlain Bridge was opened and you may well be surprised to learn that after more than 5 weeks on the North American continent, this is the first ferry that I have taken.

Not like me at all, you might think, but then I have had many preoccupations this year and have not been my own master as far as things like that go.

The Vermont side of Lake Champlain brought me over a series of bridges back into New York and a small one-horse town called Rouse’s Point.

Students of Civil War might well be forgiven that Rouse’s Point was the largest town in the whole of the Union States, given the number of enlistments from there in the latter stages of the Civil War. The statistics are certainly impressive. However, that is only a small part of a very long story. Rouse’s Point is the town closest to the Canadian Border for Quebeckers, and in the latter stages of the war, the Union paid quite a substantial bounty to civilians who joined up to bolster the army for Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia in 1864 and 1865.

Thousands joined up from Rouse’s Point but probably not even one-tenth were actually from the town. All of the rest were Canadians from Québec who discreetly crossed the border into the town, signed up, did their training, received their bounty, and then promptly deserted. And there is considerable evidence to suggest that the same person enlisted in three or even more
regiments in order to receive three or more bounties. The enrolment books of many a New York, Vermont and Maine regiment have an entry “Rouse’s Point Bounty Jumper” against a name.

From Rouse’s Point it’s a mere cockstride back into Canada and along the Richelieu Valley to Sorel on the St Lawrence. And here the second ferry of the day (and second of the holiday) takes me across the river to the north bank and the town of St Ignace.

Onto the Highway at the back of the town and off to the Service Area near Lavaltrie. I spent my first night “on the road” here, and it’s fitting that i’ll be spending my last night here, because it really is my last night in North America for 2013 and that thought fills me with total sadness.

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Thursday 3rd October 2013 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

mans … "persons!" – ed … a British 12-pounder gun that was dragged to the top of Mount Defiance by a troop of General Burgoyne’s artillery with the aim … "ohh, well done!" – ed … of threatening the American rebels in the fort way below on the promontory on Lake Champlain.

It just goes to show you the power that modern artillery posed back in the early modern era because I doubt very much whether any cannon in the British artillery train, and certainly not a 12-pounder, would have had the effective (or even the absolute) range to do anything like any serious damage to the fort.

Don’t forget that these forts are not like early medieval castles, built of stone walls, where a few 14th- and 15th Century cannon balls could send them crashing down. These fortresses might be faced outside and inside with stone (or even wood) but in between the facings was often as much as 24 feet of earth or sand and any cannon ball, explosive or otherwise, would be merely smothered. At Fort William Henry they were firing point-blank (like 150 yards) with all the artillery that Moncalm had and the only reason that the fort’s north-western bastion collapsed was because a lit howitzer shell from outside landed in an opened box of fused shells on the parapet. And even that wasn’t enough to breach the walls – it simply showed Munro that the writing was on the walls.

Of course Strawberry Moose was not alone up here. He recruited a very keen and willing artillery crew from amongst the local residents out for an early morning hike, and they were only too ready to help him in his exploits with his weapon.

With one volunteer being worth ten men, it was certainly enough to put the wind up the American rebels down in the fort below and they soon fled across the lake into Vermont. But seriously, I cannot imagine whatever was going through the mind of the commander of the fort that he didn’t put a detachment of his men up here to stop the British from taking the position and threatening the fort. Overconfidence?

I did promise you all yesterday that I would show you a photo of my camp site from last night, and you won’t be disappointed, because I wasn’t. This is Rogers Rock campsite on the very northern edge of Lake George and it is one of the most spectacular places in which I’ve slept (strangely enough, of my “top 10”, every one of them is in North America).

As for Rogers, he was someone who became totally disillusioned with the British tactics of marching in fours, dressed in bright red uniforms, through the forests around here. He recruited a band of volunteers, called them “Rogers’ Rangers”, and dressed them in greens and browns. Then he sent them crawling through the forest to wreak havoc and destruction amongst the French military, their native Algonquin allies, and the Frech settlers who had settled around the head of Lake George in defiance of the treaty of Utrecht of 1713.

From there I drove on across the pass and the old portage to Crown Point, where Lake Champlain narrows to about half a mile. Crown Point actually faces north rather than south and so once the French had abandoned Fort Carillon (as Fort Ticonderoga was known) in order to defend Montreal after the fall of Quebec and the loss of Montcalm’s army in 1759, the British dashed here to where the French formerly had a trading post (Fort St Frederic) to take possession.

Here, they started to build what would have been the largest fortress in the whole of North America and in a rush that would have put modern builders to shame, they were well on the way to completing it when the dramatic collapse of French military resistance in North America in 1760 meant that the fort was no longer necessary. After all, who could have foreseen the American Revolution?

The fort was built much more substantially than this, but a chimney fire in one of the barracks went out of control and set alight the armoury, wherein was stored most of the British munitions, including a couple of tons of gunpowder. The subsequent explosion atomised the armoury and set everything else alight, including the timber cross-bracing within the earthen walls and so there was a subterranean fire that went on for weeks until everything was consumed.

There’s a bridge here too – the Champlain Bridge, that crosses the lake into Vermont (I was in Vermont when I took this photo). Pretty though this bridge might be, it’s not a patch on the one that used to be here. That was a graceful steel lattice-girder bridge that was totally innovative in the 1920s when it as built, but the techniques used went on to be standard bridge-building practice until the advent of (yeeuucchhh) concrete bridges.

Accordingly it was classed as a National Monument in 2009 and a team of experts was sent to examine the bridge and make an inventory. What they found so horrified them that the bridge was immediately closed and demolished, for it seems that in the confusion about who actually owned the bridge, there had never been an inspection or even five minutes of maintenance of the structure since the day that it was built.

So tomorrow, I’ll show you this evening’s camp site and you can see what you think of that.

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Wednesday 2nd October 2013 – I WAS ON THE ROAD EARLY THIS MORNING

So much so that if it wouldn’t have given me a guilty conscience I would have avoided paying the camp site fees. There was no-one around when i arrived, and no-one around when I was about to leave either. However, earlier in the morning, the patrolling ranger hand come by to chat to me because I wasn’t on his list, and he reminded me to pay at the gate “but you look like the honest sort anyway” – which just goes to show that they don’t know me very well around here.

I’ve been following Lake George northwards towards the head of the lake. Lake George is a cleft in the earth between two rather large solid lumps of limestone and this is another one of those places that quailfies for the Most Beautiful Places on Earth and as you can see.

Some of the views are stunning, specially when you consider that we are now in autumn and the leaves are turning. It’s definitely the best time to be here

I wouldn’t be here in the high summer though. It’s terribly trendy and frightfully twee, with the worst kind of boutiques all over the place, including the “Indian tepee” where you can buy genuine First-Nation artefacts, all dutifully stamped ‘made in China”.

That of course does remind me of the Indian who won first prize at the Boston Tea Party all those years ago. He was found next morning drowned in his tepee.

I did however meet a guy who, like me, lives with nothing but his solar panels and wind turbines, and runs his truck (an ancient Ford F250) on biodiesel. We had an extremely lengthy chat about all kinds of things, but going back to this summer thing, he was telling me that in the summer the population here is over 30,000 – but in winter they struggle to make 2,000.

Further along the Lake is a place called Silver Bay, and my first opinion was that it was one of those places that had “Strength Through Joy” that you found in Germany in the 1930s, churning out little Master Race clones, written all over it.

It turns out that I wasn’t all that far out either because further enquiry revealed that it is in fact a YMCA summer camp. Although I could do with getting myself clean and having a good meal, I didn’t want to hang out with all the boys and so I resolved to no hang around too long. But they get their money’s worth from a place like this.

As an aside, I should mention of course that out of season when there are no paying customers, the YMCA, so I was told, does open its doors to deprived children from the inner cities to give them a break, give them an experience of the countryside, and teach them leadership skills.

I made a few stops off along the route, for a variety of reasons, one of which was to look at this. It’s a tiny little waterfront lot with enough room to just about park a car and trailer, a storage shed, a boat ramp and a small dock.

The view from here is totally stunning as you can see, and furthermore, it’s for sale. I’ve determined to find out the price of the lot and if you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s because I’ll be lying down in a darkened room recovering.

But really why I’m here of course is to visit Fort Ticonderoga, or Fort Carillon as it was known when it was in French hands (even though in “The Last of the Mohicans” they insisted on calling it Fort Ticonderoga throughout). It’s the scene of several abject British military disasters and when you read this litany of errors it really does make you wonder how come the British managed to rule a quarter of the globe.

Failing to sweep away a defensive line from behind an earthen bank when you have a numerical superiority of over 4 to 1 and so abandoning a battle, even though your casualties are no more excessive than the defenders’. Or else a sentry fleeing from a charge of half a dozen enemy scouts, dashing into the fort to seek safety, and forgetting to close the gate behind him. I can go on and on … "not with a bayonet through your neck you can’t" – ed .

The purpose of Fort Ticonderoga was to control the entry from Montreal down into the Hudson Valley to New York (or, more precisely, the reverse of that route). That’s Lake Champlain right there ahead of us in this photo taken with the sun streaming into the lens of the camera (sorry about that), and that on the right is the river that goes into the interior where there are several portages and then you reach Lake George. All the river traffic that travelled between New York and Montreal – freight as well as British soldiers on the way to attack Montreal – had to come out of that little bay on the right.

Of course, when Fort Ticonderoga was finally captured by British (it wasn’t, by the way, despite what British history books might say – the French abandoned it round about the time that Québec fell to the British under General Wolfe) it served no useful purpose and so a further fort – Crown Point – was commenced a few miles further north and this time, facing northwards to watch out for the French advancing from the North to try to retake their possessions around here.

However, the rather dramatic collapse of the French in Upper Canada in 1759-60 rendered that fort unnecessary so some rather half-built ruins are all that remain. They are said to be in a spectacular setting and so that’s where I’m off to tomorrow.

But tomorrow morning I’ll show you all a photo of the view from my “bedroom” window here at Ticonderoga.

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Tuesday 1st October 2013 – I’VE BEEN TRAVELLING BACKWARDS TODAY

And that might explain this awfully stiff neck that I have – unless I didn’t swallow the Viagra quickly enough last night.

First stop was back to Fort William Henry to watch an artillery demonstration – a real period cannon firing a real cannon ball. Certainly impressive, definitely noisy, and quite successful. Much more successful than Colonel Munro’s artillery that were badly constructed and kep blowing up – there’s a lovely piece of a 32-pound cannon, that they found well-embedded in the soil, on display here at the fort.

And I learnt something new today too, and that was why no cannon was ever raised more than 5° from the horizontal even though that meant a huge loss of range. The answer was that in general it meant very little in loss of range but much more accuracy, which is a strange thing to say. With a high elevation, you need pinpoint accuracy because when the ball lands, it buries itself in the soil. With a low elevation, it skimmed across the surface like a flat stone across the lake, and this could increase the range and also increase the likelihood of hitting something.

From here I went off to look for Fort Edward, the fort that controlled the frontier around here and to which the survivors of Fort William Henry were fleeing when they were butchered by the Iroquois. I drove past it yesterday, simply for the reason that it isn’t signposted at all from the main road, being on private land. The guy here at Fort William Henry gave me a few pointers and off I went.

And here is the site, in someone’s back garden, although the fort was very much bigger than this of course. It was totally destroyed by the Americans during the Revolutionary War to stop the British from fortifying it, and yet when some of these house-owners were digging down underneath their houses to make cellars, they were churning out all kinds of artefacts, many of which are in a little museum in the town (although, of course, many were simply sold on eBay).

There have been a few archaeological digs and searches on a few of the properties and all kinds of things have been unearthed, all of which is quite exciting. Not as exciting as what was to happen next, though, for we are about to have another Red Bay or Albion experience.

Expressing quite an interest in this kind of thing and, I suppose, being quite knowledgeable, I was engaged in quite a chat with the local museum curator, and after a while he beckoned me into the back room. “Good job I’m wearing my chastity belt” I mused.

However, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it but I’ve been encountering a lot of dredging along the Hudson just now, and the dredgers were here a short while ago and they encountered something solid just off the banks of the river where the fort was. It turned out that they had hooked a couple of squared-off timbers that have in all probability been part of the fort and were thrown into the river by the retreating Americans. The dark peaty silt on the bottom of the river has preserved them.

Anyway, I’m apparently the first layman to lay my hands upon them, which is something of an honour, I suppose.

One of the things that we discuss every now and again is the dramatic change in language over a period of time, and here’s a classic example of this. This describes “one of the most thrilling events in the annals of the American Revolution”, and so today you would be gripping the edges of your seats in eager anticipation.

But back using the contemporary language of the end of the 18th Century your heart would be fluttering as you read the tragic story of young Jane McCrea. She was 17 (according to one account, and as old as 24 in another, and varying ages in between according to more accounts) and she was travelling in the country to visit her fiancé (and so 17 would be a good bet if you ask me) when she was seized by two native Americans working as scouts for the British soldiers.

These Native Americans couldn’t decide amongst themselves which one had captured her first and so was entitled to … errr … do the honours, you might say, and so in an age-old tribal custon, they decided to cut her in two so that each one could have a half.

I can imagine that if such an event were to happen today, poor Jane McCrea would be less than thrilled by the outcome of events.

Fort Ann was the last place to visit today. Known as Fort Schuyler when it was a Dutch possession, there have been 5 forts here at Fort Ann although today not a single vestige remains of any of them.
It is however a strategic place on the route of the Champlain Canal, because, rarely, all three routes of the canal pass within 100 yards of each other here. The first route, known in the vernacular as “Clinton’s Ditch” … "Ditch with a “D” – we aren’t talking about Monica Lewinski" – ed … was modernised and rerouted in the 1850s when new technology permitted wider boats and deeper locks, and the old canal at Fort Ann, just to the right of these locks, was converted into a dry dock for repairs.

On the 1850s canal, new technology meant that they could experiment with “combined locks”, where two locks were immediately adjacent to each other and shared a common central gate. This is combined lock 16 and 17 and the central gate is just behind where the staircase is, the recess for the first gate being seen in the immediate foreground.

From here I stopped at Walmart to do a final food shop for my journey. There I encountered a woman with a face like a wet weekend in Weymouth. “Do you know”, I said, “you look exactly how I feel”.
She burst into laughter, said “well, at least that comment made me smile” and shuffled off down another aisle. Ahh well.

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Monday 30th September 2013 – THE FRENCH ARE COMING! THE FRENCH ARE COMING!

And even if it is General Montcalm and his Abenakis allies about to wreak havoc on the British soldiers and massacre their prisoners on the plain in front of the fort, there’s no need to worry because as well as Hawkeye and Chingachcook, Strawberry Moose is there ready to repel all boarders – and a few … "you said that yesterday" – ed .

Where I am is at the infamous Fort William Henry, another one of those humiliating episodes in British Military History in North America where, due to an insufficient lookout and picket, Lt-Col Munro allowed the fort to be enircled by Montcalm’s French troops and Iroquois allies and whose superior artillery (which should never have been allowed to land if the look-out had been up to much) battered the fort into submission.

Although the story of the subsequent massacre of the captive women and children was grossly exaggerated by Fenimore Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans, there was certainly a considerable slaughter here outside the fort as the Iroquois, drunk on the rum looted from the fort and having been denied any say in the peace process thus feeling cheated of their right to obtain scalps and other booty from the occupants of the fort, were determined to seek redress.

So this morning after my relaxing stay at the camp site at Schaghticoke last night, I hit the road.

First stop was at Schuylerville, the old “Saratoga” and a pretty place it is too. But this sign isn’t so pretty. The ground is so polluted by PCBs that it’s against the law to dig in the soil – no use trying to grow potatoes and the like here, even if not a couple of hundred yards from where I’m standing there are corn fields and all kinds of things.

But tha corn is not of course intended for human consumption – it’s for animal feed (and humans will then eat the animals)and so that’s ok. But it’s frightening all the same, what’s happening to the world’s food supplies.

Yesterday I showed you a photo of a lock on the Champlain Canal. Before the modernisation of the Hudson navigation, there was an “Old Champlain Canal” that was on a much smaller scale. I’ve been following that today too, and I reckoned that I would show you a photo of a lock on here. This is in fact Lock 12 and it’s a little different, isn’t it?

Still, for a canal that was built in 1832 the masonry is in surprisingly good condition although the amount of neglect of the canal and the amount of route that has been lost means that it will never be opened again, which is a shame.

A little further up the road is a town called Glen Falls and while there is nothing to see here (the falls have, like many on the Hudson, been oveebuilt with barrages for hydro-electric power) it has its own excitement. On Lap Three of the circuit of trying to find my way out of the town , I noticed a place called “Mailing Made Easy” – a kind-of boutique which guarantees to find the cheapest method of mailing parcels. Too good an opportunity to miss and so I took the Roland amp that I had bought. They told me the price and, picking myself up off the floor, I packed it because $35:02 was too good a price to miss out on.

And it’s not going on a snail’s back either – delivery 2/3 weeks they say, which may well be before I get home and certainly before I get back from my next stint in Brussels. And so, Liz and Terry, if you read this before I get in touch with you, I’m sorry that I didn’t ask you if you will take in a parcel for me, but I had to make an on-the-spot executive decision, and with it being an executive decision, if it is the wrong decision, then you can execute me when I return home.

-2

Sunday 29th September 2013 – THE BRITISH ARE COMING! THE BRITISH ARE COMING!

No reason to be alarmed, though. Strawberry Moose and his faithfful artillery crew, namely Roy the Ranger, have manned … "personned" – ed … the guns and are ready to repel all boarders – and a few day pupils too by the sound of things.

I’m deep in the Hudson Valley near a town called Schuylerville and while that name might mean nothing to most people, it used to be called Saratoga and that might mean a whole lot more because the battle here, in October 1777, put the writing on the wall for the British occupation of what is now the United States of America.

For four months of the year the St Lawrence is frozen over and the only way to send supplies to Montreal and Lower Canada is up the Hudson Valley, over the portages around the various lakes and then down the River Richelieu to Montreal.

At Saratoga there’s a bluff overlooking the Hudson River and whoever controls this bluff controls all of the upper Hudson Valley – a fact perfectly well realised by the rebels, and only belatedly by the Imperial power who had failed to stock up with supplies. The rebels made it here first and as winter started to draw on, the Imperial forces realised that they needed to move them off the bluff in order to restock themselves for the winter.

So on October 7th, 1777, the Imperial forces attacked and after a fierce fight, were pushed backwards off the bluff and right into the arms of rebel reinforcements, and that was that. This was the first nail in the coffin of Imerial domination of the 13 colonies.

So that was how I spent my afternoon, and a beautiful afternoon it was too and no mistake. So much so that I ran completely out of time. luckily though, although the visit cost me all of $5:00, the Tourist Information service gave me a campsite list and so I was able to find the campsite that I missed in the dark last night – must remember to finish earlier in the daytime.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my preoccupation with roundabouts in North America. When I fist started travelling here, finding a roundabout was a major achievement. Nowadays, though, it’s the “in thing” for towns to have roundabouts, almost a status symbol, for here at Malta on Highway 9, they have two in quick succession.

However, it’s all very well having roundabouts here, but it’s another thing completely about drivers knowing how to use them, as this truck driver has discovered, and he has come to a sticky end as he tries to turn off Highway 9 to go up to Interstate 89 and Montreal.

On a neagtive camber like this with a high centre of gravity like that, a dead stop at the “Give Way” sign and a slow and careful drive around would have been much more appropriate than showing off the handling capabilities of his rig. At least the cab hasn’t gone over, so he’s not hurt, except in the pride department, and also in the wallet I bet, because there were several of New York’s finest in attendance.

Why I was down here was for the huge Home Depot that I encountered last night. There was a sale on and so I stocked up with cheap tools – not rubbish but heavily-discounted stuff including a Ryobi all-in bit collection, the type that sells for about €35 in Brico Depot but here reduced to just $6:00. I can do all sorts of things with that.

My route is going to take me along the side of the Champlain Canal – the 19th Century water route between the Hudson and the St Lawrence. While much of it has been abandoned to due navigational improvements on the Hudson, there are still several locks along the route that are used.

This is lock 4 and I watched it being used by a pleasure boat, sadly the only type of traffic along here these days with commerical freight long-gone.

Ironically though, I’ve had lengthy (and I do mean lengthy) chats with 3 people today and they have all featured one thing in common – the scepticism of their Government’s foreign and militarist policies. All three of them have been as cynical as I am about all of this.

There’s an undercurrent of dissent running through the USA and people seem to be only able to express their discontent to foreigners. It really is just like the Soviet Union in the 1970s here, only that the authorities use ridicule and ostracism as a punishment instead of imprisonment. And believe me, ridicule and ostracism are far more devastating a punishment.

But yes, 50 years of fighting Communism, and now they have installed the worst aspects of it here in their own country? There’s something fishy here, and I’m not talking about the contents of Baldrick’s apple crumble.

-4

Saturday 28th September 2013 – I’VE BEEN TO HEAVEN …

… this morning, and it was by mistake. I’d crossed over the river from Lebanon, New Hampshire, to White River, Vermont and I wanted a place to park in order to photograph the sign.

The bridge was under repair and there were queues of traffic about all over the place and so I nipped onto an industrial estate to park up, but I became somewhat distracted instead.

These three vehicles here, the older of which is a 1932 Hudson, are three of about 20 or 30 vehicles from the 1930s and 40s that were lying abandoned all over the place.

I’ve no idea what they are all doing here but it’s certainly something of a tragedy to see them lying about like this – for some of them, there’s not very much left to save and for others, something needs to be done with them pretty quickly if they aren’t going to end up like the others.

It also begs the question, if these are outside, what might there be lurking around in a warehouse or industrial unit around here? If these are simply the donor cars for other projects it would be extremely interesting to blag my way in for a nosey but there was no-one around to ask. But it does bring back old times when I used to do this kind of thing in France with Nerina all those years ago.

Just down the road from there is the Quechee Gorge on the Ottauquechee River.

It isn’t quite the Grand Canyonof course, but it’s the best that was on offer around here. Hordes of people from everywhere and, much to my surprise, much of what seemed to be on offer was free. Maybe the USA is “The Land of the Free” after all, after all that I have been saying. I’ll have to change the script a little.

I’ve been travelling steadily south-west through the mountains and there wasn’t really very much to see because with overhanging cliffs and forests and the like there was never a clear view. But somewhere along the highway between Londonderry and Manchester there was another one of these rear-view mirror moments as I crest an enormous rise.

That’s where I’ve come from, right over there in the distance. That far ridge is probably 40 miles away and this is really the first proper glance that I’ve had of it. It was worth the wait, even if the image can’t do the view any justice.

This image is rather sad, though. It’s Troy, in New York State, my destination and where I hit the Hudson River. This is civilisation and a sign that my holiday is drawing to a close. This time next Saturday I’ll be somewhere over the Atlantic if we haven’t crashed on take-off, and I’m not looking forward to going home. I wish that I could stay here.

However I did have a stroke of luck. The Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav directed me into town past a huge Home Depot and so I took the opportunity to go for a wander around. I did a few errands there but I also made another Ryobi purchase.

I don’t know if you remember that a while ago I broke my Ryobi flourescent light. Here in the USA the model has been discontinued because they have now launched a similar light but powered by LEDs, and all for $19:99 too, and that’s a bargain in any currency.

And I’ll probably have to use it tonight because I’ve left it late to find somewhere to sleep.

-7

Thursday 8th October 2010 – A BIG RED BOX …

… has now appeared in the back of Casey (in case you are wondering, Casey is the name of the PT Cruiser – with a registration number of BBKC 458 it could hardly have been anything else now, could it?) and the big red box is full.

For having been to a Lowe’s yesterday afternoon and the huge Home Depot and Walmart that were right on the US-Canadian border at Covington (they must have heard me coming), I now have

100 drywall pattresses (cost $22 the lot)
25 wall-mounted pattresses
20 white sockets – the standard colour
10 ivory sockets
10 red sockets (regular readers of these pages know that I’m heavily into colour-coding for different usages)
all of the fascia plates (they say that they are unbreakable – obviously they haven’t had me in there for a while)
about 50 3-pin plugs
a few extension leads and all kinds of other exciting American electrical stuff
one partridge
one pear tree

The reason for this of course is that when I do 12-volt DC electrical circuits running off solar panels and wind turbines in Europe I need to use plugs and sockets and the like that cannot be mistaken for anything else and which can handle high amperages.

There are no American fittings in Europe so no-one will mistake them, and as American current is 110 volts instead of 230 volts and so more susceptible to voltage drop, they use thicker cable to compensate – and the thicker cable will handle higher amperages.

So now I have a full stock on hand and I shall be shipping that back to Europe in due course and so when I get back I can get on with what I’m supposed to be doing – ie earning money to compensate for what I’m spending over here.

You’ve no idea how rampant inflation has been over here since I last visited. Petrol in the States for example costs $2.80 a gallon in most places, and as there are only 16 fluid ounces in an American pint instead of 20 in a European pint, an American gallon is just about 3.65 litres. And $2.80 a gallon is a far cry from 2005 when I was paying $1.45 and an even farther cry from 2001 when I was paying $1.10.

Cheapest motel I’ve found so far has been $45 – last night, stranded in the wilderness miles from civilisation I paid a whopping $69, and that motel was nothing to write home about at all. It just happened to be the first one that I came across after looking for half an hour.

Gone are the days from 2002 when I paid $25 per night and in 2005 when I was stopping in a respectable chain of modern motels at $33 per night.

With millions of Americans out of work and rampant inflation such as I am noticing, no wonder there are thousands of people being turned out onto the streets. The States is nothing like the Shoppers’ Paradise it used to be.

But in Walmart I also bit the bullet and bought a new digital dictaphone. The Olympus that Rhys recommended wasn’t carried and they had a whole selection of different ones. not one of which did everything that I needed.

In the end I bought a Sony at $39 which does not have a direct connection to a computer (which is strange and disappointing – I’ll have to rig up a cable through the headphone and mike sockets and see what I can do about getting some speech recognition software) but it does have a “pause” facility (which puts the “record” on standby for an hour), 2gb of memory, a unidirectional microphone facility as well as the more normal omnidirectional mike – so if you switch it into unidirectional, it just picks up whatever is going directly into the mike and none of the background noise, a noise reduction facility that cuts out high-frequency interference.

All in all considering that there wasn’t much choice, I’m well-impressed with it and it’s doing the business.

Many years ago, driving through Canada, I saw what I was convinced was a Sprite Musketeer caravan althougb I didn’t stop to photograph it and I rather wish that I had.

But here on the side of the road in northern New York State about 8 miles from the Canadian border I come across a very sad Sprite Musketeer caravan that originally came from a company down in Oswego down the road according to the sticker on the chassis.

So there we are. They were definitely imported officially into North America.

A few miles further on, I’m caught in a police road block. There’s a prison not too far from here and one of the convicts, by the name of McCann, has made a bid for freedom.

The police have a quick glance inside Casey to see if he’s hiding under the seat or in the boot, but once they have satisfied themselves that he’s not in here, I can carry on with what I was doing.

I’m now in Canada, approaching the suburbs of Montreal, and this looks interesting.

It’s the old ALCO railway works, apparently, now transformed into Exporail, a railway mseum and it’s chock-full of railway engines and other relics. I’ve no time to look at it today, but this will be high on my list for the return journey.

I’m on the southern shore of the St Lawrence River here and there across on the far shore is the city on Montreal.

I’m staying over here because there’s much less traffic and much less congestion. I don’t have the time to be caught up in the traffic today. Every hour that I waste on the road at the moment brings the snows of Labrador that much closer.

I can still stop and take photos though if I’m quick. This is a huge ethanol plant on the edge of Montreal and the steam that’s pumping up from there is really impressive. It gives you an idea of the heat that the plant is generating.

Ethanol is becoming much more important as a renewable energy source and is slowly being added to petrol in an attempt to reduce the amount of fossil fuels that we consume. There will be more and more of these plants sprining up in the future.

But never mind new technology for the moment – here’s a bit of old technology to be going on with. On the outskirts of Sorel-Tracy I encounter a nuclear power station.

It’s something that has taken me completely by surprise because Canada, and Quebec in particular, must be up there amongst the top three countries in the world for producing hydro-electric power and so I would have thought that a nuclear power station, particularly one situated in between two major urban centres, would have been the last thing that they needed.

But then Sorel-Tracy has a huge mineral-refining plant and so it must need all of the power. It must need all of the minerals too and there are some big ships in the docks being unloaded, as well as one or two awaiting their turn outside.

But I’ve found an impressive motel here – $60 Canadian it has to be said, but it has all mod cons including a microwave so tea has cost me less than $2 – a couple of tins from the supermarket next door.

If I’m spending all this money on motels I’m going to have to economise on the eating – no restaurants for me – and I can see me buying a $30 microwave for where a motel doesn’t have one if these prices keep up.

Of course, many of you know that the eastern part of Quebec, from roughly the centre of Montreal, is French-speaking and here in my shower room the taps are marked with C and F.
“Chaud and Froid” I hear you say.
“Rubbish” I retort. “It’s cold and freezing“.

-5

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Category Archives: new york state

Monday 2nd October 2017 – THAT WAS A NIGHTMARE!

Friday 22nd September 2017 – THAT WAS HORRENDOUS!

Tuesday 8th September 2015 – WHAT AN ASTONISHING STORM!

Monday 7th September 2015 – THIS BED …

Saturday 5th September 2015 – QUEBEC SHOWERS

Thursday 4th September 2014 – OLD HABITS DIE HARD

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 – WELL, I HAD AN EXCITING DAY TODAY.

Friday 4th October 2013 – HERE AS PROMISED …

Thursday 3rd October 2013 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

Wednesday 2nd October 2013 – I WAS ON THE ROAD EARLY THIS MORNING

Tuesday 1st October 2013 – I’VE BEEN TRAVELLING BACKWARDS TODAY

Monday 30th September 2013 – THE FRENCH ARE COMING! THE FRENCH ARE COMING!

Sunday 29th September 2013 – THE BRITISH ARE COMING! THE BRITISH ARE COMING!

Saturday 28th September 2013 – I’VE BEEN TO HEAVEN …

Thursday 8th October 2010 – A BIG RED BOX …

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