Day 98: Out and about in Clayton

6/18/18:  One good thing about being in one place for more than one night, and being plugged in to electric…. we can have Pillsbury cinnamon rolls fresh out of the oven with mimosas.  😉🥂   Cheers!    Today was supposed to be windy and some rain with a chance of thunderstorms.  It was a good day to stay put in a marina.  We took our chances with the weather and walked over to the Clayton Antique Boat Museum.  “The Antique Boat Museum collects, preserves, interprets and celebrates boats and related artifacts to advance public understanding of the importance of boating to the cultural history of North America and the St. Lawrence River in particular.”  We had several people recommend that we go see it, so we did!    As we left the marina, this is the hotel right on the river walk by the marina.  It is very nice!

Most of the boats at the museum are antique wood boats of all varieties.  From canoes to hydroplanes!  This building was great for my go-fast motor head sweetheart.  There was all kinds of information about the beginnings of hydro racing.

  

There were several old advertising posters by Dr Seuss!  He started his career as a cartoonist while at college.  Just a few years after graduating, he began working on a advertising campaign for Essomarine, a division of Standard Oil.

There were some cool restored wood boats in the water, which the museum sometimes takes people out for short cruises around.  This area of New York, on the St. Lawrence River, was a playground for the well-to-do New Yorkers.  It is known as the Thousand Islands, because there is a whole bunch of little islands dotting the river here.  It was a summer playground, where the wealthy could ride the train from the city, and enjoy the Thousand Islands beauty.  Once personal size self-propelled boats were available, they could travel out to the many islands, and even build vacation homes on the islands.

There were all kinds of engines and small watercraft.  This one reminded me of an engine my dad had – and maybe still has!    The ol’ green Johnson!!

There were lots of canoes and history about the various styles of canoes.  I thought this one was cool with all the ribs.

One of the prize possessions of the museum is the houseboat La Duchesse, originally built in 1903 by George Boldt.  (There will be more about him in a few days when we go see his castle!)  Anyway, he was an ooberwealty man and wanted a houseboat.  He was one of the Guilded Age gazillionaires who spent and flaunted money everywhere.  The houseboat was used as a dockside guesthouse, because that is what wealthy people could do, right?  It has never had any power of it’s own, so it was towed from place to place.  The inside was constructed of beautiful wood, monogrammed door knobs, gold inlay ceiling art, Tiffany stained glass and so on.  There were even servants quarters in the stern near the galley, separated from the rest of the rooms by the dining room.

But Mr. Boldt died in 1916, and La Duchesse was ignored.  His children inherited the estate, but ignored the houseboat.  In time, Edward Noble (founder of Life Saver Candy Co) bought the entire estate, but had no interest in the houseboat either.  It actually sank right in its own boathouse slip in 1943.  At that point, Andrew McNally III (of the Rand-McNally empire) purchased the houseboat for $100.  He had spent all of his summers in the Thousand Islands, and always had an interest in the houseboat.  He had extensive renovations done,  including some retrofitting for power, heat, plumbing, and functionality to make it into a summer home for his family with young children.  That is how it appears today – some of the old, some of the new.   This is the view down the beautiful wood hallway.  The entrance was here, you walk past all of the staterooms down this hallway to the dining area with a beautiful brass fireplace.

This is typical of one of the staterooms.

And there are still the monogrammed door knobs from the Boldt estate throughout the boat.  The dark wood is a remnant from what all the wood looked like after the boat sank.  Most of the wood was cleaned and bleached to bring back it’s original beauty.  The Boldt crest includes the B surrounded by a heart, with the stag.

I saw this and thought it was pretty neat – an old style barometer.

On the upper floor, there was a salon area with a Steinway piano sitting under a Tiffany window skylight…

…and a HUGE open air covered patio ‘dance’ floor just outside.

This history of the houseboat was pretty cool.  While the Boldts just had it as a show of wealth for guests, the McNally family loved the boat very much and spent many summers living and raising their children on it.  In 1986, Mr McNally donated the vessel to the museum, so that it would always be cared for.  But his donation was a gradual transfer so that he could still use it as his summer home until his death, at which time the final share would transfer to the museum.  That happened in 2001, when he was 92.

The museum was quite large with several buildings – even a building where craftsmen continue to restore old wooden boats.  There were fellas in there working today!  Unfortunately, we didn’t eat enough for breakfast, and were about to clunk over of low blood sugar or something, so we had to go find some food.   It was a very interesting museum, and very well done.  We spent a few hours there, and could have spent an entire day, there was so much to see.

So we walked back toward the boat, and found a little bar and grill that was open.  It’s 3:00 on Monday, so the breakfast/lunch places were closing, and the dinner places weren’t open yet.  We just needed a burger and we were so glad to find one!

Back at the boat, Kenny chatted with Herb from Phanthom some more.  They talked this morning, because Herb was needing to change his oil.  He’s been here for over a week, just chillin out, and deciding which way to go.   When we came out of the Erie/Oswego canals into Lake Ontario, it was another what I call ‘Disneyland event’:  looper boats scattered in all different directions with different interests, itineraries, and timelines.  Some went directly to the Trent-Severn, some to Kingston, some came here for just a few days then will go back to Kingston and on to the Trent, like us.  Our friends on SeaJamm came here and then continued up -oops- I mean, down the St Lawrence River.  They are headed North to Montreal.  They will turn left there, and follow the Ottawa River west to Ottawa.  Then they will turn left again, and follow the Rideau canal south to Kingston, on the north shore of Lake Ontario.  They are doing a counter clockwise triangle.  They will be behind us as we get into the Canadian Lakes.  We thought about doing the same, but decided that we’d rather spend more time in the North Channel and Georgian Bay.  So until we get into the Trent-Severn canal and lock system, which gets everybody back into a parade line, we are all spread out with fewer looper boats doing the same thing.  It’s part of the variety and fun!