PIRATES IN ROCK HARBOR!!!

Okay, they weren't exactly pirates, per se, but the tall ship that sailed in last Sunday generated so much excitement, they might as well have been. The beautiful brig Niagara, and her 41 passengers/crew, graced us with her presence from about 3:30 pm Sunday until sunset Monday evening. They were greeted on the Ranger III dock at Snug Harbor by pretty much our entire population, and the captain, Wesley, generously allowed everyone to swarm aboard and check it out. (They even had a real, gen-u-ine gangplank. It was awesome.) The Niagara's home is Erie, PA - they were en route to Duluth, MN.


The night was spent docked at Mott Island, where they avoided "the fishbowl" and got a warm night of much merrymaking in its stead, complete with fiddles, guitars, dancing, a bonfire, and enough spirits that if they HAD been pirates, they probably still would have been satisfied.


They're gone now, but I think the lovely image of their masts and lines towering over the spruce tops lingers on in everyone's mind.

They did, however, bring something not quite as nice as beautiful views and gangplanks with them - a whole hoard of zebra mussels. Our very own Pete, Marshall Plumer, Paul Brown, and Dan Pontbriand spent much of Monday morning/afternoon diving on the Niagara, scraping the nasty buggers into buckets. Apparently whoever cleaned the hull before they entered the park didn't really do a top-notch sort of job. Hopefully none of the mussel-y vacationers decided to take up permanent residence in our little island paradise.


(A second tall ship was scheduled to arrive Monday afternoon, but they never showed - no word on what's up with that. Very curious.)



In other news, Paul Brown has reported a confirmed find of a deer tick. The tick was found on the arm of a Rock Harbor employee and brought to Brown for identification. (See photo - really gorgeous critter, eh?) Brown emphasized that this is "most likely an isolated incident," but if anyone finds a tick, they should bring it to him to check exactly what sort of tick it is.