Frozen Heart

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
10 Feb 2019	N21481	SDC (Sodus, NY) - OGS (Ogdensburg, NY) - SDC	2.8	1914.3

For the first time in a month, the weather was good enough for a prolonged Sunday drive through the sky.

I passed the familiar and mundane Little Sodus Bay near Fair Haven, NY.

Circular patterns writ large appeared in the ice "down Mexico way" (over Mexico Bay).

Smaller circular patterns were also present near the outflow of Port Ontario.

Is it just me, or does it look like there must be a drain under the east end of Lake Ontario?

The St Lawrence seaway was almost entirely frozen over, all except for a striking patch of open water near Alexandria Bay.

All approaches to Heart Island, home to Boldt Castle, were entirely encased in ice.

Looking west over the Thousand Islands, flirting with the Canadian border.

That ice probably cuts into the bottom line for boat tours to Heart Island.

I love the parallel shadows cast across the island from the trees.

The power house on Heart Island, set on an otherworldly landscape.

As I looked eastward along the St Lawrence, I was taken with how fissures in the ice radiate outward from the islands, like the paths taken by electrical arcing through space.

I made a brief stop at Ogdensburg (KOGS). Ogdensburg is memorable as the only place I've ever purchased water-contaminated aviation fuel (September 10, 2011) in my 18 years of flying. Ogdensburg feels like a desolate little outpost and yet, an Allegiant Airbus A319 landed shortly after I did. I am not used to seeing A319s at uncontrolled airports. With some snooping on FlightAware, I learned that Allegiant runs a flight between Ogdensburg, NY and Clearwater, FL on a regular basis. Who knew?

The A319 was actually larger than the passenger terminal. Is there really so much passenger traffic out of Ogdensburg to warrant an airplane this big?

On the way home, I was treated to a beautiful sunset over the frozen St Lawrence. I live for sights like this. It was a perfect day for a protracted Sunday drive.

ForeFlight ground track of the route from Ogdensburg (green) back to Sodus (red).