Boldt Castle

 Ahh, so today…

a lazy morning relaxing in the hotel room.

We wandered around Clayton a bit, seeing if there was anything interesting there..  Nothing too terrible much.

Then back up to Riley’s for lunch in Alex Bay.  

After that we took the 2 Nation tour which was a nice 2+ hour tour around the thousand islands.

At the end of the tour we toured Boldt Castle.  Self guided.  Neat place, quite interesting.

IIRC, basically the guy who is more or less responsible for the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC, decided to build his wife a castle on heart island.  Well, about 4 years in, she died and right then he told them to stop work, and it just SAT.  I guess it was enclosed, had heat and interior work was in progress.  That was 1904.  I think in 1977 NY took over ownership and I believe it was opened to the public around 94.  A lot of it looks quite nice at this point, but there are a lot of rooms on the upper floors that are still unfinished and they are almost all covered with people writing their names on there.  A lot of them are pretty recent, but I noticed at least a few from the 40’s.  Odd to imagine this castle sitting there in the 40’s just completely abandoned and these people must have just wandered around in there.

And there are a few pics of the power plant (which is a castle in itself) and this bird tower of how they were like half gone before NY began restoration and now they are completely restored at least as far as outside is concerned.

Definitely worth checking out if you’re ever in the neighborhood.

But it was a long afternoon, and around 5 we got back, did a bit of browsing the local shops and found some dinner at Cavalleros.  Then we stopped for some ice cream at Beefer’s where we’re planning on trying the breakfast buffet tomorrow morning.

And then it was another evening of hanging out on the dock while the sun went down over the river.  (: