7/23/08 Lake Ontario

Big dead catfish were on the beach of Lake Erie, and where we were the coastal water was pretty muddy, choppy and now much for swimming or kayaking. The campground was an open zoo of RVers...not that we can complain, being among them.

NY State Parks are many and nice...some nicer than others in terms of wooded privacy...cost about $20/night, with electricity, showers...all the comforts. We have been moving along Lake Ontario for the past few days...rain and sun, crowded and empty...but we sleep well in our little camper and the truck pulls everything well, so we knock on wood...

So we got to Lake Ontario, deeper than Lake Erie and with better clarity from where we stood and swam…swam! The water was delicious, fresh and clear, but we were told the clarity was due in part to the zebra mussels, fingernail-size invaders from ocean ship bilges that do a remarkable job of consuming everything and then clogging intake pipes along the Great Lakes. I don’t know about that, having spent a fair amount of time looking through goggles as I cruised along the bottom like a mudshark, looking for the little critters…so far none found, but black bass and perch have wandered by, and languorous swaying aquatic plants I saw must be aiding the clarity situation. I recall similar clarity when I was up here 34 years ago…but I’ll keep looking for anything I can see underwater.

I think it was called the Potsdam Sea, about 100 million years ago…extended from the W side of the Adirondacks across this area and left sandstone deposits that are flat shelves of rock along the lake shore and up into the St Lawrence River that make for great platforms along the lake…stepping off the shelves to some mossy wet shelves is a slick time, but pebbly places are around that afford traction if you don’t mind getting feet jabbed with those edges.

Once in, the water temperature is around 73…easy to get into and heaven to navigate, like floating on air, as fresh to the taste as the air is to breathe…just a little more dense than the air.

And…Lakes Erie and Ontario have the greatest skipping rocks in the world…like big cookies or small dishes, 1/3” thick that’ll skip 10 times, maybe 15 on a good throw.

Ospreys and herons and kingfishers along the coast, loggerhead shrikes catching bugs inland, bats busy in the evening, barn swallows and purple martins swooping all over the place after anything that flies. Not much for biting bugs, but a few flies that like to chew on ankles.