July 27-29 Ilion, Sylvan Beach, and Lake Oneida NY

Ilion: Our trip to Ilion from Little Falls was only 9 miles and one lock. After waiting on the morning fog to lift, we departed about 9:00 and were all tied up in our slip by 11:00. The Ilion Village Marina and RV Park is right near downtown and has a small ice cream and fast food restaurant. About half of the sixteen RV spaces were taken and we shared the wall with 6 other boats.

 After a quick lunch at Voss's Ice Cream and Restaurant, we freshened up and headed into town to the Remington Arms Company manufacturing and Museum facilities. Since "911", you cannot tour the facility but the museum offers 2 excellent films on how they manufacture both shotguns and rifles. There is a lot of handwork and lots of milling and heat treating. We enjoyed viewing the old guns and learning about the history of the company.

Afterwards (because that is all there is to do in Ilion) we headed back to the boat, connected the cable TV and watched an NCIS marathon. First time we had cable in months!

Sylvan Beach and Lake Oneida: Our trip to Sylvan Beach was a bit longer, 40 miles and 4 locks. We left about 7:30 and made great time with all the locks seeming to be waiting for us and all went smoothly. We did see several workboats from the Canal Authority doing maintenance and they turned out to be the highlight of the day.

Dredge

Grader doing shore maintenance

Small tug for moving the barge.

We tied to the free town wall but there is no electric or power. No different than anchoring out, so not a real problem. We squared away the boat and headed to the Crazy Crab for seafood and margaritas. After dinner we walked around town and looked at motorcycles that had come to town for a "street show" that evening. Sylvan Beach is on the east shore of Lake Oneida (the lake is about 23 miles by 5 miles) and as such is Beaches, Bars and Boats! Lots of boat and car traffic and young people. There is also an old amusement park of what looked like 1960 vintage equipment. It is only open on weekends - so we did not see it in action as it was a weekday.

Next morning it was up and across the lake before the wind came up. Left the dock at 8:30 and were at Ess-Kay Yards marina by 11:30. We fueled the boat and pumped out our waste before heading to our slip. This marina is just across the river from where we will keep the boat this winter (Winter Harbor) and we plan to spend about a month here doing the maintenance before winter and traveling back to see some places we did not stop at or where there were no rental cars to visit the sites. You may remember that we had left our car at Winter Harbor before we left Virginia, and we retrieved it and gave her a good wash. It will be great to have our car and go when/where we want.

Our friends Gene and Linda will be here in late August and we will leave the boat here while we visit Quebec City and Montreal by car.

Sorry: We seemed to have forgotten the camera for this part of the trip!