June 9th & 10th:  Into the Erie Canal

Tuesday we walked to town to take advantage of Don & Paul’s breakfast specials - two eggs and toast for $2 - and then set off to enter the first of the five locks that make up what they call the “Waterford Flight”.    These locks are all within a mile and a half - sometimes you leave one and go right into the next one - and each elevates the boat about 35 feet.  Our guidebook says by the time you are done with the Waterford Flight you are old hands at locking, and we found this to be true.  The lock chambers are long enough for six to eight boats side-by-side, but the most we had in any one lock was four.  There are lines to grab or poles to slide your own line around and all you need do is hang on and keep your boat steady as the water rises.  The lock keepers are all very friendly and often give information about the next lock or places or to tie up.

The canal is more rural than we expected - we saw lots of different birds, from bald eagles to blue herons and gaggles of geese - and we really enjoyed slowly motoring along.  Tuesday we had a brief, strong thunderstorm, but Wednesday was hot and sunny.  We were happy to have our bimini and made good use of our supply of sunscreen.  

We visited a historic site showing the older Erie Canal.  In the pictures here you can see the old canal (now with a large tree growing in the middle of it) and the old side-by-side locks where hand-powered machinery let water in to raise or lower barges depending on whether they were Eastbound or Westbound.  

Wednesday my cousin David met us where we’d tied up at a canal terminal in Fonda, and we went to a local truck stop for dinner.  David and his friend Mohannet have been on vacation visiting various relatives, and were traveling across New York state to Niagara Falls on their way back to Wisconsin.  Being part of his itinerary (him being part of ours) was an unexpected treat.