Sat July 31: Westport to Ft Ti anchorage

In which Little Blue has an adventure …

This is our last full day on the lake.  Tomorrow we move into the Champlain Canal on our way back 'down' to the Erie Canal.   We decided to again anchor at Fort Ticonderoga as we have been told it is possible to take the dinghy up the La Chute river all the way into the town of Ti (as we locals call it).   

The southern half of Lake Champlain is really like a different lake.  The north end of the lake is wide open and (mostly) has clear, deep blue water.  The southern half narrows way down and the water becomes much more shallow and has a dirty green/brown color.  It is not nearly as pretty as the northern end.   

Blue Horizon at anchor below Fort Ticonderoga-this time we anchored on the other side so we could see the fort, and hear the fife and drums!

We lowered the dinghy in the late afternoon and proceeded to motor about 2 miles up to the town of Ticonderoga.   The La Chute is the river that flows out of Lake George and down into Lake Champlain.  This is the closest point between the two rivers, and was the portage point where boats were moved between the lakes back in the 1700’s and early 1800’s - until the canals were built.  

The landscape made me think of Annihilation, the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy. (I read all three books and I still have NO IDEA what I read)

We motored all the way up into the center of the town until we came to the big falls that prevent any further upstream travel.   A nice little adventure, and by far the furthest we’ve ever traveled in the dinghy. Ti was in the middle of a Ti Alumni Festival - and we about lost our minds because so many things were OPEN!!!  We had to go in and out of a bunch of shops, just because we could. We ended up taking pizza to go.

See the little dinghy pulled up on shore across from the town.

 

Rick had hoped that this would be the perfect anchorage to see the sky and do some star gazing with almost no ambient light, but it wasn’t to be as the clouds came in and blocked out the sky.  Oh well…what we did have was MORE FIREWORKS, as Ti celebrated its alumni!