Who said we could not go home again . . . Well, I am not sure who but I know that Carrie Rose has not. In a leap of faith, several years ago we gave up our summer “plot” at Montrose Harbor and stayed north. The first year in Mackinaw City, MI, the next in Alexandria Bay, NY and this year Carrie Rose is spending the winter on Grand Isle, Vermont.
Vermont is a lovely state. The people are genuinely friendly without gushing. The grass is emerald green. The sky is pure blue, as is the water. The vegetables are organic. The milk is GMO free. And there is the presence of civility. By that, I mean there is an intellectual fervor. The most striking example of that for me was the unique bagels shop a few miles from the harbor.
We are not in a harbor per say. More like a carved out portion of the island. Right after we pulled into our slip at Ladd’s Landing Marina and decided to stay, I looked to the NE and saw nothing but water. So, at some point, I am sure there will be hell to pay when the wind picks up but the time we spent there was peaceful.
Ladd’s Landing is a marina constructed out of an old quarry of metamorphous rock. A young and charming mom, dad, and daughter run the operation with the help of various other characters filling in the gaps. So, from the very beginning we felt right at home. They let me do what I wanted and I wanted to fix our dingy after we went for a boat ride and realized that Lake Champlain was leaking in the side of it. I wanted to winterize the engine and the generator and the water system and the toilet . . . well you get the idea.
You might be wondering how we ended up on another island this year like we were last year in the middle of the St. Lawrence River on Wellesley Island. A Nordic Tug friend or should I just say a friend boarded us at U.S. customs and directed us to his marina. He had even done the preliminaries down to the slip we spent the end of our boating season in.
Jerry and his wife Diane took us in their tug, Water Horse, to a local state park (on another island) and on a grand tour of the lake. Lake Champlain seems manageable being at most 15 miles across with much of its cruising destinations well within a days cruise. This is opposed to Lake Michigan where there is anywhere from 200 to 500 miles of open lake before getting somewhere worthy of a Nordic Tug.
This spring and summer, we did not cruise far miles wise but went through many environs. We traveled from the Thousand Islands of New York and Canada, to the rustic Rideau Waterway north to Canada’s striking capital Ottawa. Then eastward on the Ottawa River to the complex waters of Montreal where we turned NE onto the St. Lawrence River, and traveled with the current to Sorrel, turning south down the Richelieu River through the Chambly Canal and into Lake Champlain.
As varied as the terrain we traversed were the people. Entering Quebec was like a trip to Europe. The farther east we went the more French it became. The gastronomic level of the bread, pastries, cheese, and wine went up. As did the engaging personalities, it made me wish I had learned some French along the way. But then, with some of the mystery gone, the experience might be diluted.
Now onto 2015 with the knowledge that we will have no need for a schedule other than the one that nature imposes on individuals that find the watery world intriguing enough to countermand the rigors of a life floating in a hunk of plastic.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all our family and friends who make the experience of living so special!
Charlotte & Dean
