Cottages and Cedar Point State Park - Thousand Islands, NY

When I was a teenager, my best friend Jay's parents used to rent a cottage on the St Lawrence for the summer. Her dad, Mr. Harold Shank, was a merchant marine and spent September to June sailing back and forth from ports in Elizabeth, NJ, to Port Arthur, TX, and then had the summer off.  He and "Ma Shank" (Josephine) invited me to spend a couple of weeks with them for a few summers, which were some of the best summertime memories I have.  My quest here this trip was to try to find the cottage where we stayed and revisit the state park where we had spent most of our days.  There had been a cow field between the cottages and the park. Jay and I would jump the barb wire to take a short cut to the park. I figured if we went to the park, I could try to find the cottages from there, and we got lucky.

The rec hall at the beach was closed.  So was the beach.  The ranger said will re-open when school is out.

Inside the rec hall where Jay and I spent many hours dancing the "Jersey Stomp" and playing cards with all the other kids who camped there year after year.  Since the hall was closed, I took pictures from the outside windows. Bob said the white lights were the reflection from the windows, but I prefer to think they were the ghosts of summers past.

A view of the swimming area next to the recreation hall and field.

Another view of the beach and the life guard stand. 

From the park, we turned west onto SR 12E, found Breezy Point Rd, and decided to try going down it.

 Along Breezy Point Road was the cow pasture!  I have a very nasty scar on my right calf (no pun intended) from trying to scale the barb wire fence in our rush to get to the park one day.

There were several cottages that had been renovated, but this one look the most like the original one the Shanks rented.  I think the actual one we had was two doors east of this one.  As you can see, we were right on the river.  A couple of the buildings had signs that the property was under the control of the NY State Police, but we have no idea why.