Peebles Island in the Blistery Wind

Peebles Island

I was up visiting my Mom and decided not to bring the mountain bike this time :-( so I headed over to Peebles Island to check it out and hike. Its a fascinating place with a lone abandoned factory, two one lane bridges and a spectacular walk along the cliffs...

Aerial Views (on Kiosks)

You park at the former Cluett and Peabody factory. There's detailed signage out front explaining the factory history. Its where "sanfordization' was first introduced - invented by an RPI alumnus! Details here >

I hiked around the perimeter and had no idea of the scale of the cliffs in this area. Awesome!

Across the river is Polrump Island - seemingly one big cliff!

These trees were "clinging on" to survive - amazing resilience!

There are a few dams in this area - taming the powerful river...

The perimeter trail was very scenic but the wind was extremely cold and strong - at times I could hardly hold my cell phone to take a photograph and felt like I might get blown into the river! yikes...

Curiosity overwhelmed me trying to figure out what the huts were across the river. For bird watchers or for hunters?

The roar of the rapids even over powered the howling wind noise!

Finally, once I circled back at the parking lot, I snapped a photo of the Black Bridge. I had visited this in the past on one of my the railroad research explorations: Black Bridge Bust.

This is a great island and worth a visit any time of the year!

Waterford

Although I had intentions of scouting out railroad remnants in Troy next, my time was limited as I had promised to give a concert at Judson Meadows in the afternoon so I head up to Waterford to sniff out an Irish Pub - it was St Paddy's Day!

Waterford's a lovely town seeped in Erie Canal history. I found a very nice Irish restaurant and had their Shepherd's Pie along wth a couple of Irish Red ales -- mmm mmm good!

The coolest this about the place was the wall to wall paintings of local history! Check it out - its a great spot!