The Hudson River

You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.

About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."

Dr Seuss – “Oh, the Places You Will Go”

T

here are so many options to choose from on The Great Loop. While there is a overall route, it is the decisions you make on where to stop and what to see that makes The Great Loop uniquely your own.

One of the reasons Kathy was so excited about the Great Loop was her growing up on her dad’s boat on the Hudson River. For that reason we decided to stop at Cornetta’s in Piermont, NY. Kathy’s dad had her boat there

Cornetta's Piermont, NY

for years before retiring to North Carolina. Piermont is not usually a stop on the loop because you need to have a small draft and need to go in mid tide or higher. That is a shame because Piermont is a wonderful small town filled with shops and history.

Dave, the dock master, met us in his powered rowboat and led us to our slip. He was an older gentleman so I asked him how long he had been at Cornetta’s. He had been there for years so I asked him if he knew my dad. Wow. Not only did he remember him, the owner remembered him and they shared fond memories of my dad with me. This was a memorable stop.

Since we were at Piermont that meant we were close to where I grew up. I wanted to show Mike what a wonderful place I grew up in so off we went on our bicycles on a ten-mile trip to Westwood, NJ. We saw where I went to school, where I lived and the downtown area. We had “lunch” at Conrads- a lunch of ice cream. Mike wanted something for the bike so we went to the bike shop still owned by the Albert’s. Mark remembered me from our years at school. We had attended elementary through high school together. What fun memories.

After Piermont we were off to Bear Mountain. We anchored out, took the

Bear Mountain

dinghy to shore and hiked up to the top. It is hard to believe that it had been almost 50 years since I had last been there.

Continuing up the Hudson, we passed West Point and other beautiful places. We stopped at Hyde Park Marina near Poughkeepsie. It was just a waypoint stop over to do laundry and some shopping before heading to Mills Norrie StatePark.

Mills Norrie State Park is beautiful. We thoroughly enjoyed the quiet setting of a state park while still being near the action. Again this is another spot loopers often skip as they stick to the main stops.

We toured the grounds of the Vanderbilt mansion and rode our bikes past the Roosevelt library. Our friends George and Nancy met us the second day. We took them for a boat ride to Kingston, NY and back to the state park. We drove to the Culinary Institute and had a wonderful gourmet lunch. We crossed the Walkway over the Hudson. Then, Mike gave us a tour of where he worked and lived in Poughkeepsie.

The Hudson River is famous for all the different light houses along the way. Each one is different. Here is a photo of one of them.

Our generator wasn’t working. It had been smoking when we tried to run it. On one of our Hudson River stops we picked up a local boating magazine and saw that there was a genset expert in Albany. So before going on to the locks we stopped to get the generator looked at. Things were looking bleak. It seemed at first we might need to get the back end rebuilt. As Mike was trying to remove that we realized it was too much for us to handle. However, Mike did send a picture of the wiring in the back end to our electrician who immediately noticed the wiring was wrong. The genset expert came back and rewired the generator correctly and miraculously it worked. It should have been shorted out from previous attempts to start but God was with us. Now we will be able to anchor out or tie up at a free dock that doesn’t have electricity.

We still had daylight so we decided to try our hand at the Troy Federal Lock and make it to Waterford NY for the free town dock. We desperately wanted to get out of the wakes of the Hudson and have quiet waters. We pulled in at 7 pm and there was still a spot for us on the free wall.

Next up – Locking through the Champlain Canal