Erie Canal - Western Half - Oswego to Albion - July/August 2008
Leaving Oswego, we headed south back down the Oswego canal and then west to explore the other half of the Erie. We had been told by many people that the western half is much nicer than the eastern half and they were right! We spent a month on the western portion of the Erie and now think of it as one of our favorite cruising areas. What's not to like? It's a protected waterway with lots of thriving towns and villages along the way. All are welcoming to boaters and most have free, or very inexpensive, town docks. Even better, most of the town docks also offer free electric and water.
This is the sign at turnoff from the Oswego canal onto the Erie. 192 miles to Buffalo!! That's either a few hours in a car or a few weeks on our boat.
Turning onto the Seneca, you start to notice a lot more weed in the water. The weed, known as Cabbage weed, is actually and intrusive pest that grows into a mat on the top of the water. Having pulled massive clumps of it out of the water to keep it from tangling in our prop, I can report that this is, indeed, nasty stuff. The mat extends down into the water about a foot - so it's no easy feat to pull it out or push it aside with a boathook - as I tried to do a couple of times coming into a lock. On top of that, the seed pods have very long and nasty thorns on them - so if you do tangle with this stuff, be sure and wear a pair of heavy-duty gloves. Somehow I don't think this guy we saw tied to a dock along the Seneca is going anywhere anytime soon!
We met the most wonderful couple when passing through our first town of the western section, Baldwinsville - also called B-ville by the natives. They are Rick and Mary Ann Barletta and we had dinner with them and their daughter, Jennifer, at a canal-side restaurant near the lock. Rick took this picture of us on the bridge over the lock as he was passing through, heading back home.
Leaving Baldwinsville, we soon 'fell off the end' of the charts on our GPS chart plotter. It seems that no one has actually charted the western portion of the Erie canal. so there are no navigation charts to be had. All is not lost, however, since the Erie Canal Corporation has created a cruising guide that contains maps of the entire canal. While these maps do not include water depths or bridge clearances, they do contain the location of navigation markers, locks, dams, bridges, and dockage areas along the way.
My cousin Valda and her husband Jim flew out from North Dakota to spend a few days with us. They hooked up with us in Newark and then traveled with us along the canal through Palmyra and on to Fairport. Valda is actually my second cousin, since my grandma Wanda and her grandma Agnes were sisters. She had visited their home country of Denmark last year and took a picture of a portrait taken of Wanda and Agnes as children. Wanda's on the left and Agnes is on the right. Do we look like our grandmas??
We hadn't seen each other for 36 years - but it could have been yesterday. It was so good to see her and catch up on family stories.
We took advantage of Jim and Valda's rental car and did a land tour of some of the Finger Lakes. We found these beautiful waterfalls near Ithaca on Cayuga lake. That's Taughannock Falls pictured to the left below. It has a vertical drop of 215 feet. The picture to the right is of Buttermilk falls.
We found this fairly interesting fence made up of old bicycles in Ithaca. Back in Newark we visited a wonderful clock museum located in the town library. Jeremy has successfully punched his timecard. He seemed awfully proud of that, especially considering he hasn't punched on for real in many a year....
In Palmyra, we visited a quilt and coverlet museum. The quilts were beautiful, but the museum was mostly about the woven coverlets.
These had intricately designed patterns and were hand woven using either blue or red threads over white warp threads on a loom like the one shown below. (The warp threads are the ones that are strung on the loom and run vertically through the coverlet. The red or blue threads are then passed between the warp threads and pushed down to form a design.
This is a close-up of the designs in one of the coverlets. The weavers often wove their name and the name of the person for whom the coverlet was being made along the edge of the coverlet.
Pretty old church in Palmyra. This church, as many of the older buildings in this area, was built using Medina Limestone - pulled from a quarry in the nearby town of Medina.
Valda got to experience going through a couple of locks with us. It was really helpful having an extra hand on board!
Jim snapped the picture of Tardis in the lock above, as well as the picture of us coming into the town of Fairport below. The bridge clearances on the western end of the canal are much lower than on the eastern end, so we raked back our VHF antennas and tipped back our radar arch when we were moving the boat on this part of the canal. We had to remember to put the radar arch back up each night in case it rained - since there's a bit of a hole up there where the wires run into the boat when the arch is tipped back.
Fairport turned out to be one of our favorite stops along the canal. It's a thriving town, centered around the canal-front. Lots to do and see including concerts every Thursday night and a vintage car 'cruise-in' every Tuesday night. There is a wonderful ice cream shop as well as several wonderful restaurants very close to the canal-front. We stayed several days, but could have easily stayed longer. Our friends Dick and Lynn on MV "Ladyhawk" spent the entire summer here.
We said goodbye to Valda and Jim here. They headed back to Buffalo to catch their flight back to N. Dakota. Jeremy took this picture of all of us using the self-timer on the camera. I think he's yelling at the camera to take the picture ...
The mule, Sal, is a bit of a mascot of the Erie canal. Jeremy's giving the statue of Sal in Fairport 'horns' (as Jeremy is want to do). There's a song about Sal called "15 miles on the Erie Canal." The mules pulled the barges along the canal for 15 miles at a stretch during a day's run.
I've
got an old mule and her name is Sal
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
She's a good old worker and a good old pal
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
We've hauled some
barges in our day
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay
And we know every inch of the way
From Albany to Buffalo
Low bridge,
everybody down
Low bridge for we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor
And you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on The Erie Canal
We found these neat old cars when out walking around town one day. Most of the towns up here have 'Classic Car Cruise-in Nights' - usually once a week. With all of the rust damage we saw on most cars around here, we can only guess that these babies only come out to play in the summer and are tucked away nice and secure in a warm garage during the winters.
Fairport is also known for it's interesting lift bridge. It has appeared in 'Ripley's Believe It or Not' because of its unusual construction. The bridge is an irregular, ten-sided structure and crosses the canal at a 32-degree angle. No two angles in the bridge are the same, and no corners on the bridge are square.
Speaking of pretty bridges, leaving Fairport and heading west we found this set of lovely curved bridges crossing the canal just west of the Genesee River - which leads up into the city of Rochester. We also saw this blue heron standing on the bank surveying his kingdom.
The village of Brockport was another very welcoming spot where we spent a few more days. We had only planned on spending one night, but there was a street fair on that weekend, complete with a band (the Boomers from Buffalo) playing at the waterfront - so how could we not stay?? This village not only provided free dockage, with free electric, but also had bikes available for anyone to borrow and take a ride around town. We ended up walking (it's a small town) - but the offer was nice. In addition, they had little red wagons that you could borrow and take to the grocery store (all of about 1/4 mile away) to haul your groceries back to the boat. I took the 'big walk' - maybe a mile - up to the Wegmans grocery on the edge of town. I confess that I have come to love Wegmans - and will really miss them when we have left the area. (For those that may not know, Wegmans is a gourmet grocery with lots of beautiful cheeses, meats, and fruits and vegetables. It rivals Whole Foods - sort of like an Andronico's Market - for our San Francisco friends.)
Our next town was Albion. What you should realize is is that we had 'Sal-like' epic voyages between each of these towns. They are all about 15-20 miles apart.
Albion, as many of the towns in this part of the world, has a wonderful 'town clock' situated on Main Street. Yep - all of the towns have a Main Street.
It was raining when we came into Albion, but we wandered up into town to explore anyway. We were fortunate to meet up with the village historian, a very informative fellow who took us on a bit of a tour of the town churches. Albion is interesting in that there are at least half dozen churches surrounding the center square. Most are constructed of Medina Limestone, mined from the nearby town of Medina, and have beautiful architectural lines.
The pictures below are of the Pullman Memorial Universalist Church which was built in 1894 by George Pullman, known for manufacturing railway sleeping cars. Many of the windows in the church were designed and built by the Tiffany Glass and Design Company - including one rather spectacular one inside the church which I unfortunately didn't get a picture of. Pullman grew up in Albion, but later moved to Chicago, where he made his fortune. He had this church built in his old hometown as a memorial to his mother and father.
The church in the picture to the left below is the First Presbyterian Church. It was also built of Medina Limestone in 1874, largely through a bequest from Elizer Hart. Hart was the original owner of the famous Heart Island in the Thousand Islands on which the entrepreneur George Boldt built Boldt Castle, which we visited last year when we traveled through the Thousand Islands. It is the highest building in the county with a spire that reaches 175 feet into the air. Hart wanted the spire to be taller than the one on the nearby Baptist church.
The picture to the right is of the Roman Catholic church as well as the Baptist Church next door. The Baptist church was constructed in 1860 and the Roman Catholic church was built in 1896 - or sixteen years later. The poor Baptist church! First the Protestants wanted to ensure that their spire was taller (the one on the Baptist church is 160 feet high), then a disgruntled Baptist sold his property adjacent to the Baptist church to the Catholics with the stipulation that the build their church on the property and that they build it so that it would block the view of the Baptist church from Main Street. Sure enough, the Catholic church is built as far forward to the side street as possible, so that the Baptist church is almost totally blocked from view when walking on Main street.
Updated September 12, 2008