4 Days in the Thousand Islands

 4 Days in the Thousand Islands: Clayton, A-Bay, Cape Vincent, and Sackets Harbor

The main purpose of this trip June 14-17 was to enjoy the 1000 Islands Harbor Hotel in Clayton.   A friend had told us about the hotel, and we booked back in February.  It turns out that was the perfect time to book for June.  As time went on the price went up, and by the time we arrived we had secured a very good rate compared to booking last minute.  At this point in time people are desperate to travel, and it pays to book early to make sure that you can get a reservation, and the type of room that you desire.

As we pondered our entire trip we realized we went to a LOT of places.  But-despite the long list of places, we never felt rushed at all.  This was actually a very chill, relaxing trip to the Thousand Islands. We felt that Clayton was a perfect central location for exploring the area. 

We left home on a cloudy Monday morning and headed for Coyote Moon Vineyards in Clayton.  We were the only ones there, and we enjoyed chatting with Lori and learning about the area.  It was great wine, but the atmosphere and Lori were even better!!

We parked at our hotel.  It was too early to check in (which we knew), but everything we wanted to do was within walking distance.  We went to lunch at Wood Boat Brewery.  Nice outside deck dining, with good  views of the river.  Very slow service-likely due to lack of staff.  We encountered that a lot on this trip. Luckily, it was a nice day-and we had no time schedule so it was no problem at all. 

After lunch we went across the street to The Antique Boat Museum.  We had not planned to go here, but several people had mentioned it, and it is the #1 thing to do in Clayton.  We enjoyed the visit.  Took a tour of La Duchesse, which is a  houseboat originally owned by George Boldt, and in later years by Andrew McNally of Rand McNally Atlas fame. We didn't do the speedboat ride-but that would have been really fun, and I'm sorry we missed doing that.

We had been texted that our hotel room was ready while we were at the Boat Museum.  We walked back to check in to the beautiful 1000 Islands Harbor Hotel.  We had booked a balcony room with a view of the St. Lawrence River.  Amazing views every single night of sunset from our balcony.  There are only 8 of these type rooms...book early.  Those rooms are located in the center of the photo. There are upgrade rooms on the ends of the hotel (re: more expensive), but we were just interested in the views...we did not need 2 balconies or a larger room.  We were thrilled with our choice.

For dinner that night we ate at O'Brien's which was right across the street from our hotel.  It gets good reviews...for the dining room.  It has a bar area, and a dining room area.  Due to reduced staff the dining room was only open a few days a week, and closed while we were there,  so we ate at the bar.  Not the atmosphere we were looking for.  I would return-but only to the dining room part.  

Al returned to the room, and I walked around the grounds of the hotel/resort.  Beautiful grounds and the views are wonderful.  There is quite a bit of space, so it doesn't seem crowded.  There are only about 105 rooms, so it is not a large place-but it is spacious.

The pool/hot tub at the hotel was restricted to sign up only.  I signed up for 7PM and I was the only one there!  So relaxing after a long day of being a tourist! I wanted to be back at the balcony to see sunset.  It was very nice!

Tuesday morning we left our hotel for breakfast (breakfast is not included).  As a matter of fact-we chose not to eat at the hotel at all.  We wanted to support the local restaurants.  We walked to  breakfast at the Koffee Kove.  Oh. My. Goodness.  I had a garbage omelet that was incredible with homemade rye bread toast. Worth a stop for breakfast!

From there we went to the Chamber of Commerce.  The woman was very helpful, and was able to secure us with dinner reservations for Tuesday night. We had planned to go to Wellesley Island by driving over the Thousand Island Bridge. The woman let us know about walking trails over on the island.  It was raining a little-but we figured we would give it a try.

We drove over.  Once we arrived on the island we entered the State Park.  We spoke to the woman who said that the "trails were not open until Wednesday".  I've never actually heard of trails being closed during daylight hours before...but the  bottom line is that we weren't hiking that day.  She did tell us a cool place to drive through called TI Park which had cute little cottages-so we drove around the island in the rain for a bit. My phone kept pinging on the Canadian Cell Phone Towers...we were that close. (I did call AT&T when we got home to make sure I wasn't being charged for international usage.  Turns out we now have Canada free on our phone...winning!!!😀)

On the way back to Clayton we stopped at a little (emphasis on little!!) winery called Northern Flow Vineyards. It's actually part of a Garden Center...mostly a Garden Center, with a little tiny tasting area.  Very unique.  We tasted, and did buy a couple bottles.

We drove back to the hotel, parked, and went into the village of Clayton to do a little shopping.  There are a ton of cute shops-some have limited open times.  We were traveling during "off-season". The tourist season would start in a week or 2 after we were there. There was a popcorn store that never opened the 4 days we were in town-it opened at 11 on Thursday, but we had left by then.  The most exciting store we went into was The Little Bookstore.   It was so quaint and cute.  Masks were required because it is such a small space. We bought some books there.  The proprietor was a very knowledgeable lady.

We drove the short 2 miles to Clayton Island Tours to pick up our 3 1/2 hour boat tour.  We have traveled on the large Uncle Sam's Boat Tour out of A-Bay in the past-and we liked this smaller version so much better.   We had booked the 10AM tour-but they called me Sunday to say that "due to high winds predicted" they needed to move us to 1:30 instead.  We think that likely there weren't enough people booked for 10 AM, but as it turned out it would have been rainy and miserable at 10AM.  By 1:30 the sun was out and it was beautiful!!!  Lucky turn of events! The boat goes to Boldt Castle,  and we had 1 1/2 hours to visit Boldt Castle (which we went to 20 years ago!!!) It has changed so much, and we watched a really great 10 minute movie on the 2nd floor showing all of the changes.  It was suggested by our boat tour guide.  Normally we would not have watched the movie-but so glad we did.  

For dinner that night we walked to DiPrinzio's Kitchen.  This was our reservation from the morning.  We did eat indoors-but had an amazing view of the river.  They have outside dining, but it was full.  Our inside view was pretty good!  There was a man flying an ultralight plane out over the river, which we could even watch from inside.  The food is incredible, the service (Lexi)  perfect, and the atmosphere was great! 

We enjoyed the walk along Riverside Drive along the river back to our resort.  Clayton is an extremely picturesque area.  

Wednesday morning we went to Bellas for breakfast.  We loved it.  Outside dining right on the river.  We had planned to eat dinner here, but due to COVID they are no longer serving dinners-just breakfast and lunch.  Lindsey was our awesome server!

This was our A-Bay day.  We didn't have too many plans except to go poke around in A-Bay. We began by stopping at Thousand Islands Winery.  They have come to our Cortland Art and Wine Festival for so many years and we knew we loved their wine.  We also had to pick up a bottle for a friend!! Nice place-and a lot more choices of wines than they bring to our festival. 

When we entered A-Bay we had to figure out parking.  It wasn't at all busy (off-season, mid-week), but I wanted to walk over a little bridge to Casino Island that they said was a mini Thousand Island bridge. It ended up being SUPER mini...(see picture) and we couldn't even walk over it because construction was going on!!!  I found a parking lot near on the map and we figured we would park there.  Someone had told us to park near the hospital, and this was right next to the hospital. It was a place called Scenic View Park.  There were parking meters-that took quarters.  We had no change whatsoever!  And...the only close place was the hospital.  Can you walk into a hospital and ask for change for a $1.?????  I walked into the park a bit and there were about 5 or 6 sets of people sitting there.  I sized them up to figure out who to try to buy quarters from, and approached 2 women. They were very friendly (thankfully), and gave me a few quarters.  She said if it was her she would not even bother paying.  A lot of the meters weren't working (out of order), and she had never seen anyone around to check them.  She said that due to COVID they were unable to keep up with checking them, and it wasn't a weekend and wasn't busy at all. We ended up not paying because our specific meter was out of order-and we never got a ticket.

The weirdest thing is that this woman we spoke to graduated 3 years after me from my High School in Ithaca, NY. 😊 Small world isn't it??   Who would have known, except for the fact that she was uber chatty!! She also told us that she had been tracking a big cargo barge on her app-and it would be arriving shortly-so we stayed to watch.  It was worth the wait.  Those cargo barges are very impressive on the St. Lawrence.

We walked quite a bit around A-Bay.  Used some disgusting public bathrooms near a small boat launch. Attempted to find somewhere to have lunch.  Many places were closed.  Others weren't "our type".  Finally ended up at Riley's By the River which is right next to where the Uncle Sam's Boats take off.  I didn't give them much credit to be very good since it was in a place where they don't have to do much to get business.  But...it actually was pretty good!  A little bit of a wait to get in, but given the lack of lunch choices it makes sense.  

We continued wandering around and fell upon Cornwall Brothers Store Museum.  Used to be a General Store used by people bringing goods on the St. Lawrence beginning in 1866.  Scott was there to tell us all about community life back in the day.  No, he wasn't alive back then 😂😂, but he does know a lot about the area. He is passionate about the river, and protective of it.  His interest is in shipwrecks and how people dive near them to discover treasures.  A short stop-but glad that we did. 

Before leaving A-Bay we bought popcorn at Nav's Popcorn since we were positive that the one in Clayton would not reopen for us to go to.  We were correct!  The popcorn is good-and we bought some for gifts.

We decided we liked the sleepy vibe of Clayton much better than the touristy vibe of A-Bay.

On the way back to Clayton we stopped at Otter Creek Winery.  This is their satellite store, and it is very small.  They have a huge following for slushies (which is not our thing).  The woman was very nice, but the wine wasn't our style.  An interesting side note-she told us that for a long time she worked for Billy Fuccillo,  the HUGE car dealership owner.  Due to his poor health, others had taken over the business and it wasn't the same-so she left.  When we got home, 2 days later we learned Billy Fuccillo had passed away.  She had very good things to say about him, and missed his leadership. The people you meet when you are traveling...

Had a relaxing time at the hot tub/pool.  BUT...the governor had opened up things due to high vaccination rates and there was no longer a need to book time at the pool!! +++

Dinner was a short walk into town for The Hops Spot. We tried Duck Wings...unique-but a new trend since chicken wings are in short supply.

For sunset tonight we got a drink at the hotel bar and sat out at the fire pit.  Met some great people-one man originally from the Netherlands. The sunset was just as beautiful from the ground!

Thursday was our day to leave.  We decided we wanted to do our last breakfast at Bella's (although we had planned to have hotel breakfast on our last day...) and we were so glad that we did!  Lindsay was our server again-and we sat right out by the water and saw lots of huge cargo ships during breakfast.

 

After breakfast we went to River Rat Cheese.  You can not come to Clayton without stopping here for  cheese!!!  We even brought a cooler to keep it cold!  We also bought The Original Thousand Island Dressing made here! We bought gifts for friends, as well as for ourselves!  It is a really great little store, and is not to be missed when in the area.

Our next stop was to Cape Vincent "on the way home".  Not exactly on the way-but we were close so why not! Went to the Chamber of Commerce who gave us some good ideas. We visited the Tibbetts Point Lighthouse.  My phone was mostly on Canadian Towers at that point. It is a curvy drive to the point-but in that place you are at the spot where the St. Lawrence meets Lake Ontario.  It was very windy up there, and Al's hat even blew off!

From there we went to Cape Winery.  This is a little winery that is farm owned and operated.  Al and I visit many wineries, and I think we learned more from Kelly about wines, and pairing than we ever knew before.  So many of the wineries in this area are small wineries.  Coyote Vineyards was probably the only large winery.  We are used to larger wineries being from the Finger Lakes, so these small wineries were fun for us to experience.

Traveling on home, we went to Sackets Harbor,  and the Sackets Harbor Brewing Company which was our plan for lunch.  The views were the ONLY good thing about this restaurant. We travel a lot-and we have never had a worse experience at a restaurant, and we do not recommend it.  We were seated for 35 minutes before we were even acknowledged to wait on (yes, there were also others waiting).  There was NO BREWERY BEER.  Even though they make 30 different beers-they had none, "and wouldn't get them until after the 4th of July."  How can you possibly not have any of the 30 beers you supposedly make on property in the brewery? We heard later that they are moving the brewery to Watertown.  That is fine-but don't advertise as a brewery.  And...the food was just not good. No apology from the staff-it just is as it is... oh well-a little glitch in the trip!

Our last stop before home was The Sackets Harbor Battlefield. It is a nice area-but the signage was by area rather than by sequential order of the War of 1812.  I'm a sequential person who isn't gifted in history-so for me it was interesting facts, but hard to follow and piece together. 

This was a great trip (except our final lunch...). The Thousand Islands area all revolves around "The River" and it is very obvious in every aspect of their lives.  We traveled quite a bit last year and found it very easy.  This summer is much harder. There are too many people traveling for the low number of workers and it is creating a mismatch. I don't have answers-but it is challenging.  Patience is a virtue when you are traveling in 2021. We also do recommend visiting either the Chamber of Commerce or the Visitor Center when you first enter a new place.  Although I do a lot of planning ahead of time, the people that work in those places know everything and have been extremely helpful when we travel.  We also talk to servers in restaurants if they aren't too busy.  They are local-they know the hidden away places.  Lastly-just wander.  You are guaranteed to find something unique and unusual. 

All places mentioned here have been reviewed in detail on Trip Advisor.