Erie Canal Photos

Day #616; Loop Miles to Date = 7,255

Found some WiFi...so here are the photos from our days on the Erie and Oswego Canals. There's a bunch of them...so have a seat and peruse at your leisure...

Albany

The USS Slater, a Cannon class destroyer...now open for tours.

 

The parade of boats headed for the Federal Lock at Troy, NY.

Inside the Federal Lock.

And now at Waterford...time to hook a left into the Erie Canal.

At Waterford, it is a free dock that is first come, first served. The boats in front of us took the last few available spots. But...

...as you can see here, we rafted off of our friends on Act III and it all worked out just fine.

Typical entry into one of the locks. This one is quite tame...some of them are a bit more turbulent...and exciting.

On this morning, we had a parade behind us.

 

Act III going into Lock E4.

This is a guard gate. They can lower these to control the water flow. Typically they are up, but when you pass under one that was just in the water, you get all kinds of canal water on your boat. This happened to us twice. Kind of like a huge Guillotine.

Dam beside one of the locks.

Debris left over from the recent high water...locks E8 through E20 were closed for 3 days due to this.

We stopped to walk the pups, and missed out on making this lockage by just a tad...you can see the boats already towards the top of the lift.

Marina wall at Amsterdam, NY.

 

Typically, there are lines dangling from the sides of the locks. Sandy grabs one at the bow, and Rob one at the stern, and then hang on as the boat is lowered or raised by the water level. Mostly it is a calm process...but it can get exciting if we start moving around. There was only one really bad lock experience in E8...3 of the boats on the other wall had a very difficult time hanging on due to the current created by a broken valve. The lock operator could have mitigated this, but chose not too. No damage was done, but there were some tense moments and sore muscles that resulted from this situation. It wasn't fun at all for the other boats, Act III included.

All of the Canal working tugs and boats are painted just like this. It's really neat to see these older tugs still working.

One of the dams beside a lock.

Debris clean-up still in progress.

E17 is the only lock where the doors are Guillotine style. All of the other doors open horizontally.

Neat entry into this lock...there is a bridge at a 45 degree angle across the canal on the approach.

Towards the front of the procession this day.

Much of the trip was just this peaceful...no traffic on the water, and beautiful conditions.

There were scads of Canada Geese with goslings all over the place along the way. Sandy must have taken 50 pictures of them!

 

And now some shots of the faces we saw along the way...many of these are the lock operators.

 





 

The morning we left Little Falls was idyllic.

All for now. We are still in Oswego, and plan to leave tomorrow (Saturday) for Clayton NY...about a 65 mile trip across the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Canada awaits.