LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. -- As flowers wake from a long winter slumber, so too do the boats at the Lake George Steamboat Company, one of the oldest continuous operating passenger boat companies in the world.
"The first time that calliope fires up, you know that the winter is gone and the spring is here and the summer is soon on it's way," said Captain Matthew Dow.
This is the 198th year of operation on the Queen of America's Lakes.
There's the Minne-Ha-Ha, one of the last steam paddle boats in America, the Lac du Saint Sacrement, the largest cruise ship on inland waters of New York state, and the Mohican, the oldest continuously operated tour boat in the U.S.
"She is still sailing today and has been continually operating since 1908 and she's now on the National Register of Historic Places," Dow said.
When you take one of these vessels out on Lake George, it's like taking a step back in time.
"The company started in 1817 with a very small steamboat that could make one trip up the lake and back the lake and about a whole day," Dow said. "It went very slow. Somebody could probably paddle a canoe faster than that first steamboat, which was the James Caldwell."
Steamboats were still very new. The first successful one navigated the Hudson River only ten years prior.
"We were really at the beginning of steamboating in the United States."
It's that old time charm that keeps people coming back.
"The whistles, the calliope of course, the truffing of steam from the scape pipes, the splash of the paddles on the water, it really brings a lot back to people, it's very nostalgic."