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September - October 2018
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Disponible en línea en español.
Even back then I was always a bit spooked knowing there was
over 200 feet of murky river water beneath me, and God knows
what under it. Nowadays, I am still always a bit spooked ever
time we canoe through this narrow, twisty section of the river
betweenWest Point and Constitution Island. Honestly, my biggest
fear, particularly when heading north, with a limited view upriver,
is that all of a sudden a HUGE container ship will appear right
around the corner, leaving us kind of trapped between it and the
western cliffs of the island without a helluva lot of wiggle room.
This may sound a bit dramatic, but we’d (literally) have to
paddle for our lives to get the hell outta there before the bow
waves hit the base of the cliffs and ricocheted back into the river,
possibly creating some wicked turbulence that we just might not
be able to deal with. I don’t even want to think about being in the
water, and sharing it with a monster ship. Nope...
As I’ve often mentioned, Constitution Marsh is one of
our favorite places to paddle (“Constitution Marsh by Sea”,
BOATING ON THE HUDSON AND BEYOND, October 2015)
and, occasionally, to walk (“Constitution Marsh by Land”,
BOATING ON THE HUDSON AND BEYOND, February/
March 2017). But, I’ve always been curious about Constitution
ISLAND). You just can’t land on it and noodle around: it belongs
to the United States Military Academy, West Point.
But, I’d heard of The Constitution Island Association, and
found out via a little bit of on-line poking around
(http://www.
constitutionisland.org/) that on certain times of year a 38-seat
boat left the West Point South Dock on Wednesdays between
9:30-11:30 AM: $10.00/Seniors $9.00. Sometime in May/June
2017 I called 854-265-2501 and registered Kath and I for an
upcoming Wednesday. But...something unexpected came up on
the Big Day (ahhh, Life Gets in the Way...), and, crap, we had
to cancel.
But, Whoopee Do, I learned of a “Family Day” on the Island
on Saturday, September 23, 2017: I called and made reservations
(again) for Kath and I. We were on our way. It was a fine, blue
sky September day, and I really wasn’t looking forward to the
long drive to West Point, right across the river but not that easy
to get to by car for us: either up to Pougkeepsie and across the
Mid Hudson Bridge then down through Newburgh, or down to
the Bear Mountain Bridge and then up through Cornwall. Well,
it turned out we could drive over to the Cold Spring Metro North
parking lot, and there would be a bus there to drive us out to the
island.
Before we board the bus, let’s talk a bit about Constitution
Island.
Fort Constitution was built on the island in 1775, when we
were fighting the Brits for our “Constitutional Rights”, thus
The island is now part of the West Point
Military Academy Reservation.