Wellesley Island (June 15)
Having concluded our business in Toronto, and with the intention of arriving in State College by June 25, we decided to go to Ithaca, NY via Thousand Islands at the east end of Lake Ontario. I had also hoped to visit Presqu’ile Provincial Park en route – however, with the levels of Lake Ontario up by about 40″ we concluded that the impressive shoreline would be under water. So, we headed directly to Wellesley Island State Park, which lies just on the US side of the first 1000 Islands bridge over the St. Lawrence. Again very little difficulty at the border except that we had to surrender our fresh tomatoes.
The on-line reservation system stated that there were only 5 campsites available, none with any services. So, when we pulled into our uninspiring campsite, we were surprised to see that the park appeared to be mostly empty. The park is huge, with 7 camping areas each with about 100 sites.
The following morning, Rumple and I went for a lengthy walk along one of the shores and through several of the campgrounds. It is the egg laying season for snapping turtles. The highlight of the walk was watching a large snapping turtle dig a nest by the roadside.
In the afternoon, Chuck and I biked along the same route and more, exploring the entire camping area and marina of the park. We rescued a small snapping turtle who was crossing the road, but diverting a car and then encouraging the beast to move along to the edge of the road. The small ones, at least, can really scramble when they need to. We also saw a lot of turtle egg “shells”. I guess that the nests are preyed on by various birds and small mammals.
Chuck had the brilliant idea of checking at the office to see if any better campsites were available. It seems that NY State park campsites are mainly NOT on the on-line reservation system, and we should have checked when we checked in. In any case, we were able to move to a site with electricity, which made our stay much more pleasant, as we could use our appliances. Most importantly, since we had booked a boat tour of the Islands and the weather was predicted to be very hot, we had air conditioning, which made it possible to leave Rumple in the RV.
On Saturday we headed off to the mainland to start our boat tour – only to find that the on-line booking system for the tour was also defective. The tour operator decided to give us free tickets for a tour later in the day, and we went into the little town of Clayton for lunch and a walking tour. 
We ate overlooking the St. Lawrence Seaway, and watched a couple of big freighters cruise through. Clayton was having a dog diving competition, and we watched for a while as the dogs jumped into a dockside pool and swam their laps.
In the afternoon, we boarded our little tour boat and enjoyed a 3 hour cruise around the islands. It is really lovely. Needless to say, there are some huge mansions including Boldt Castle (which can be toured, although we decided not to). The water was very high, and some of the islands had nothing but the cottage or a tree visible. It was a very nice thing to do on a very hot afternoon, and we definitely got a better view of the islands than would be possible by either car or kayak.
Oddly, in what appears to be a prime kayaking environment, we used our bikes but not our kayaks. Perhaps if we had just one additional day …
My final activity on 1000 Islands was to retrace my morning hike alone in the dark. I have always liked walking in the dark – preferably without a flashlight. However, there were several deserted stretches of road that I found rather spooky – it was easy to imagine coming upon a wild animal (although I suspect that the eyes I saw glowing in the dark belonged to someone’s straying cat). It was all worth it to listen to the plethora of night noises – especially the chirping of the frogs.