Posted: Jan 22, 08 9:58pm
From Gayle:
Anyone want to see the Thousand Islands? either in Ontario, or upstate New York?
Kingston, Ontario is a beautiful historical city, lots of tourism, hotels, motels, and B&Bs, fantastic restaurants, at the start of the Thousand Islands. We have a historic fort, a penitentiary museum, the hospital has a medical museum, lots of galleries and boutiques, an art museum, tours of several historic homes, a steam museum, more museums, theatres, a B&B in an old Coast Guard boat next to the water, anything a larger city would have, so do we, without the rush hours, and stress.
One of our harbours, was used as an Olympic Harbour when the summer Olympics were held in Montreal('76). You can take a boat tour of the start of the thousand islands from here (they even rent them out for parties, but it's expensive).
Or about 1/2 hour away, in Gananoque, fairly near the bridge to the US, actually bridges, you take the 1st bridge to a Canadian island, a 2nd brige to a US island, and then a final bridge to the US mainland, you can catch a 3 hour boat tour (memories of Gilligan's island in those words) it shows more of the islands, and is a beautiful tour. If you are a Canadian, or an American, or have a visa for the US, you can get off this boat at Heart/Hart Island (in the US) and take a tour of a castle that was being built by a man for his wife, he stopped construction the day she died. It was left derelict to rot, and be vandalized, until rescued by the Thousand Island Authority, and restored to the point it was left off at, and enough to protect it from the elements. You can now tour it, for a fee, and walk all over the island, and then get on a later one of the boats from Gananoque, to finish the tour.
Gananoque also has inns, B&Bs, and motels, and restaurants.
Downtown Kingston, there is a free car ferry (it's part of our highway system, and runs all year round) that goes across the harbour to a Canadian island, the first of the "thousand islands" Wolfe Island. It is a farming community, very pretty, and has a historical hotel, some motels,and B&Bs, and a beach, (if there hasn't been a health warning about the water) If you drive 11 kms. across this island, you will come to a smaller car ferry, privately owned by an American family, run spring to October, at a Canadian customs office, if you take this ferry you wind up at a US customs office, in Cape Vincent, New York. This is one of our favourite ways to get to New York state, barely any driving on the Canadian side, and about the same on the US side, as if we drove.
Near Cape Vincent is Alexandria Bay, a vacation spot, much smaller than Kingston, that has a hotel, and some inns and such. You can also easily go to historic Sackett's Harbour, there is a battlefield, and armory from the civil war there, and most historic homes have the year they were built on plaques at the front of the house.
I would be glad to see any of you, in any of these places (although I would prefer Kingston).
