Tugboat festival

Together with some friends, Little Guy and Dancer and I headed down to the tugboat festival today. We toured two types of barges (a wooden Erie Canal-era one and a motorized cargo barge), a schooner, and then at the very last moment we scored the last two wait-list tickets for the 2pm tugboat ride. The people at the ticket table wrote 'admit two' on one of the tix when I said we had three people. Little Guy and his buddy Alex took the ride, along with Alex's mom. They're somewhere in the group of people in this picture.

Apparently the boys got to walk through the whole boat, spent some time up with the captain, and had a fun hour on the river.

This beautiful blue tug was supposed to be open for walk-through tours, but someone goofed: the pier was too high, so there wasn't a safe way to get on the boat.

It was a gorgeous day, surprisingly uncrowded on the pier. There was also a fun water playground, with steel pumps and dams and troughs. Our only regret is that we forgot to bring sunscreen. Ouch!