Day 303: Thursday, July 4, 2013

Port to Port: Kingston, NY

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Marina

Mile to Mile: Today was a perfect Fourth of July – hot, humid and sunny. The current news on the locks is that it “may” be open by Friday next week. The long range weather forecast also looks dry, hot and calm – perfect for travel. This actually complicates the decision of whether to go north into Canada or wait a little longer for the Erie to open. We may go slowly north and explore some new places and wait to get some more accurate information before deciding which direction to go.

Eddy and I put together a charcoal grill that Jeff on Not So Fast donated to our party. Eddy inflated his 6” deep, 4’ in diameter pool for our pool party later. Between that and multiple chat sessions with everyone who walked by wondering what we were doing, we had a busy morning.

We decided to take a walk over to our favorite ice cream place and ended up with 8 people in our entourage. We stretched our visit out to almost an hour – it was cool and comfortable in the shade – and finally wandered back to the marina to take naps and get ready for our potluck party.

Although we weren’t going to eat until 7 pm, the party started around 5 pm as the ladies found out how nice and cool it was put their bare feet in the pool and the guys started getting the grills ready. And, of course, we had a variety of cold drinks to enjoy. You would think that with all the time we have all spent together that we would run out of things to talk about but that is not the case. We enjoy each other’s company and somehow find things to laugh and cry (Erie Canal news) together.

Our potluck was a huge hit. We had hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, salads x 5, cupcakes, cookies and everything in between. What a blast. And this is with 20  people from three different marinas who were mostly strangers a week or two ago. We ate too much and finished cleaning up just in time to set up our chairs on the dock by Spiritus and watch the fireworks shooting off the top of the bridge a few hundred feet upstream. The life of the Looper – how lucky can we be.