5 posts tagged “river”
Welcome aboard the Luv-n-It, the cruiser we helped motor up the Oswego River last weekend. Here are a few more images from our recent adventure in lake-and-lock navigation. First stop: Oswego, NY.
Oswego is mainly known today as a home for a SUNY campus and a Niagara-Mohawk power plant. Once, it was a thriving shipping port on southern Lake Ontario, which is why its river has a series of locks for transporting goods from the port. My favorite place to visit in town is Fort Ontario, where Franklin Roosevelt housed a thousand European refugees during World War II. You can learn about this episode in quiet diplomacy here.
Another view from the Oswego River. You'd swear you were in Philadelphia, right?
Why is this man smiling? Because we're actually cruising up the Oswego River. Yes, it was raining. I became proficient at using a boat hook to grab onto cables suspended along the walls of each lock. The cables help keep the boat stabilized as the lock fills with water and lifts the vessel. By the end of the day, my arms ached.
Why isn't this man smiling? Because JK ended up on the fore deck to grab his cables. And there's no weather canvas on the fore deck, making this a rainy, slippery proposition. That's what teenagers are for.
Here we have the troublesome Phoenix, NY lock. The yellow cantilever bridge in the foreground kept raising and lowering. The lock gates beyond the bridge didn't open on the first few tries. It took much longer than we wished to get through this modest little town.
"This is one of the prettier photos from the voyage," he said modestly. Largely because, after the first day of sunny, clear waters, Day Two brought ceaseless rain.
I'm depositing a few images below to give a feel of what we encountered. Locks along the Oswego River -- part of New York State's Canal System, which includes the Erie Canal -- are in various stages of repair. Some operated flawlessly, like the lock at Minetto, NY. Others, such as the locks in Phoenix, NY and Waterloo, NY, had power failures and drawbridges that inexplicably raised and lowered.
Anyway, here's a short sampling from this excursion, all captured with my good ol' Panasonic Lumix FZ-5 camera:
A typical lock on the Oswego River, with a spillway creating a pseudo-waterfall off our port bow. Picturesque, in a way. Minetto, NY, where they had no trouble operating the machinery that raises vessels up to the level of the next stretch of the river.
More later. The good news is, no one got tossed into Class 3 rapids on this voyage.
Before the unpredictabilities of the New River swamped us, here are a few photos from my reliable old Canon Sureshot A-1 waterproof film camera:
Looks good so far.... Everyone's up for the run!
In case you're wondering, we were all a little busy, trying to survive the rapids. Makes picture-taking kinda challenging when you're trying to avoid drowning. So, here's what we looked like after the dunking. You'll notice that the serious river guides (at left and right in the photo above) have fancy, candy-sparkle helmets. I think they make you easier to find once you're in the water.
And, in cas
One of my favorite interviews took place a few years ago with photographer Steve Gottlieb, who's done several books about forgotten ruins of North America. He's captured great images of abandoned cabins, gas stations frozen in time, and empty psychiatric centers overlooking the New York City skyline. (The online story we created, "Lost and Found," tells Steve's story better; view it here.)
Steve's style stuck with me. While exploring towns around the New River Gorge in West Virginia, I encountered more than a few "lost and found" experiences.
This is Thurmond, a railroad town without people. It may have been the place Tennessee Ernie Ford had in mind when recording "Sixteen Tons."
Coal once was the lifeblood of the town, and all the trains that came through stopped for refueling. That all changed around 1930, when diesel locomotives replaced coal-fired steam engines. Thurmond, no longer a boom town, emptied quickly. The yellow building at left was the train station. Today, it's a well-done visitor's center, but it's only open from Memorial Day on. (There's also an Amtrak sign, but I'm skeptical about whether a passenger train runs though here now.)
Our small contingent of Boy Scouts briefly inbestigated the town, even through it was mostly locked up. They found discarded railroad spikes, overturned CSX freight cars, and a few burned-out remnants of what must have been a thriving little town. (More photos from the railbed appear below.)
What becomes apparent as you explore the small communities along the New River: the economy was completely geared toward coal. There are coke ovens (no, not that coke) cut into the rocky shores along the river. The rails snake through the gorge in directions that defy logic. And, while exploring the Kaymoor mine, we found safety signs that echo the placards I saw in modern manufacturing plants:
No "Lost time accidents" used to be a big deal in northern factories, too. Before automation and outsourcing. But now that I think of it, I haven't seen a version of one of these signs in a few years.
Almost heaven, West Virginia. I've heard and played that song for 30 years. Now it'll be different.
The New River Gorge in West Virginia once was home of a booming coal mining industry. Today, it's home to about 17 whitewater rafting outfitters who think nothing of taking a dozen neophytes into the river in big rafts for whitewater excursions. Excitement! Thrills! Loss of sensation in your toes! Wooo-hoo!
Here is the voice of very recent experience talking: don't go at the start of the season. April's supposed to be warm; it wasn't. The river is high and angry from the winter snow run-off. The rapids are malevolent and hungry. The river guides -- even the experienced ex-Navy guy who led our expedition -- are a little out of practice. And the boats are, well, in need of a safety check.
We went into the water near a Class 3 rapids called "Upper Railroad." Here's why it's so named: when your big raft collides with another raft and becomes airborne, you find yourself flailing in fast-running 35-degree water, looking up at the railroad bridge you're floating under. You're clinging to the overturned boat's Jesus straps as the previously confident guide says, "Oh, S--t." The 10-year-old girl in your party isn't visible, but you hear her under the boat screaming for help. And as you're fighting for survival, you suddenly wonder if your 16-year-old son, who's also into the water, is safe.
Credit our ex-Navy river guide who righted the boat, hauled us all in, retrieved our paddles, and got us calmed enough (mostly) to finish the run down the rest of the rapids. With frozen toes. From that moment forward, I approached the river with a vengeance, thinking: "I'll beat you to death with this paddle." A little anger can be your friend.
I'll never hear John Denver sing "Almost heaven, West Virginia" without recalling those nightmarish moments in the frigid blue water between the rapids. Shivering with borderline hypothermia, we finished the run. And spent the rest of the trip touring safer, slightly warmer, prettier areas of the New River Gorge.
Here are a few pictures from the drier portions of the trip, If my waterproof Canon film camera survived our dunking, I'll have actual river rafting pictures to share in a few days.
