virtualDavis

A true North Country winter! The Champlain Valley is blanketed, no… quaint, but no. Rewind. The Champlain Valley is buried beneath another 15-18″ of fresh snow. Beautiful. Picturesque. Unless you’re pushing a shovel! (Or trying to get somewhere…)

Getting somewhere is the learning lesson topic of the day. Why get anywhere other than right here. Stop driving the desk and go out for a ski! Shortly I hope to do just that. But first a glimpse at the now mostly frozen lake. I shot the fuzzy video on my phone this morning to show that the Essex-Charlotte ferry is still managing despite the ice. This vessel is technically not an ice breaker and can only manage to navigate until the ice becomes thicker than 3″ thick. Which — I’m guessing now — isn’t too far off. In fact, it’s already well beyond that near our dockhouse. Then we’ll reallyhave to stay home and play in the snow!

Another Rosslyn dockhouse sighting, this time discovered via Google Earth. The photo was taken by czechsteve on Panoramio.com on 2005/08/12 which is approximately one year before my wife and I purchased Rosslyn. The wooden Chris Craft on a mooring between our boathouse and the Essex ferry dock belonged to our neighber, but he has since replaced it with a sailboat which is visible in more recent photographs.

If you go click through to the original photo and enlarge it, you can see the degree of disrepair that we inherited when we took ownership and began restoring this stately old maritime structure.

I have contacted the photoprapher to suggest a title because the image is currently untitled.

Update: Today is Wednesday, February 2, 2011 and I’ve just heard from the photographer:

I have added a title to your boathouse picture. Thanks for your input – I have seen that boathouse for many years (I’ve been coming for summers in the Adirondacks since I was a teenage student at the Meadowmount School of Music coming from Texas to study violin.)

Was the boathouse there in 1980? I don’t remember when I first saw it from the ferry crossing but I have always enjoyed seeing it – that is why I took the photo years ago…I can’t wait to see what you have done…

All best wishes! Steven Rochen – a.k.a. czechsteve!

Wonderful response. I’m excited to have made the connection, and I’m hoping that I may one day have the chance to meet Steven Rochen and give him a tour of the boat house which has intrigued him for decades.

I missed an opportunity to bid on another great old photo postcard of Rosslyn’s dockhouse/boathouse in an eBay auction this weekend! The photograph shows the Essex-Charlotte ferry early in the 20th century and beyond the ferry boat the Rosslyn boathouse is distinctly visible and looking very much like it does today.

Do you recognize the circled dockhouse/boathouse in the blown-up image I grabbed from a current eBay auction? It’s a bit difficult to discern from the fuzzy photo, but that’s Rosslyn’s dockhouse fifty or sixty years ago. Historic photos and postcards of this unique building protruding out into Essex, New York’s North Bay are not uncommon on eBay and elsewhere. Soon enough I’ll be sharing some of those images over at the Rosslyn Redux website.

Dock house roof 50% complete
Originally uploaded by virtualDavis

The hardest part of re-shingling Rosslyn dock house is now behind us. Special thanks to Michael Leslie, Jerry Spooner and Jim Spooner for their progress so far.

In a bizarre twist, David Hislop asked me yesterday, “What’s the story with the dock house?” Hmmm… The story? Well, that’s what I’m writing: Rosslyn Redux. Coming soon to a digital download near you.  ;-) Turns out he was referring to the roof. “People are asking why you’re re-roofing it AGAIN.” Again? Apparently a half dozen people have asked him this question. Easy answer. We’re not. It hasn’t been re-shingled since the early/mid 1980’s, but after a quarter century of rain, snow, ice, sun and wind, many of the shingles have rotted through and the roof is leaking, especially the southern exposure. We’d known that we would eventually have to strip the old shingles, but we had delayed as long as practical. Let’s hope the new roof lasts as long as the old one!

Another unseasonably balmy day today, so I snapped a couple of photos from our waterfront. You’re looking at our dock house on Lake Champlain located in Essex, New York. In the distance you can see Vermont’s Green Mountains.

Rosslyn Dock House via twitpic.com

I took this photo a day or two before they closed the ferry. I was sitting in my car, waiting to be ferried across Lake Champlain to Charlotte, Vermont.

Flickr is nearly as perfect a procrastination tool as Facebook or Twitter. Better than Twitter, maybe. Recent discoveries include a couple of shots of our dockhouse.

Day actually became colorful a little later on, but these tones were almost richer than the bright blues and yellows of high noon. Any idea what’s missing from this photo?

Docks and boat hoist are in. Doug and I spent the better part of Sunday morning seeing to that awkward task. And then changing out the moorings for winter. And neither of us fell into the drink!

But docks, boat hoist and moorings aren’t the only missing pieces of this puzzle…