St Johnsville NY to Rome NY

Another day on the Erie Canal.  Another day of wind, rain and ?sunshine?   Sometimes it was raining *and* the sun was shining.  Go figure.  

Today we left St Johnsville about 7:30am.   I didn't realize how early it was.... We reached the first lock of the day at 7:40am but they don't start work til 8.   

They let us through shortly after opening.  

This lock was .... Interesting...

It has a guillotine door that drops down from above to seal off the chamber.     The boat has to limbo in under it....  22ft clearance. We are fine...

Once inside they close the door and start the water a bubbling.  It pushes the boat to the south wall pretty firmly as water wells up on the north side of the chamber pretty rapidly.  

This lock lifted us more than 40 feet and the typical doors for a 25ft lock would have to have been twice as big if they opened left and right.  

After we got to the top we rode in the canal notched out of the side of the cliff for miles looking down at the town, the river, houses etc.  

There are flood stops along the canal they can drop if the water levels rise too quickly which will divert any flooding over the side and into the valley of the old river channel.  

They really could not use the river channel as the canal in this area due to the vertical drop, rock and wide nature of the valley.  It was apparently easier to dig a new channel next to the original one - but part way up the hill....

We actually drove in channels artificially elevated most of the day with the river channel down below off one side or the other....

The river varies in color and smoothness depending on where we were and how exposed the canal was.   

It rained on us in only one lock but it rained on and off most of the day.  

We did four locks today...   No long waits but it takes time to raise a boat ...   

Eventually we arrived in Rome NY.  Rome appears to be a fair sized town with the problems that come with being an old industrial town when the industry left.  

They appear to be working hard on the town but there are self evident challenges.  We saw boarded up schools and buildings and graffiti and old wrecked docks.   But we also saw a new beautiful park, took a ride on a bike path for miles long the Mohawk River (the non navigable part).  

Apparently it was cold though...

 It's a beautiful area. 

I managed to get stung by a wasp on the lip while biking.    Not fun.   Maybe it's payback for taking that last picture of my beautiful babe .. 

Lip is not too swollen though. I whacked the wasp right away and pulled it off me.  He hit me on the lip because the wind was really blowing and we were riding into it.   Too bad for him.  

We did manage to stop at an old fashioned gas station they have here.   Really cool it still exists...

Oh for $.129 a gallon.   Even when a dollar was worth a dollar that was a bargain..  

Back to the boat and loaded up bikes so we could make dinner.   I didn't even get ice cream... (It's not very warm out and I'm not sure how that would feel on a wasp sting lip)

The locks are making a horrible mess of the boat.  Gross dirty ropes hitting the boat and locks dripping things on the sides.   I used a magic eraser to get a bunch of the mess off the back of the boat.   

We will be using the generator tonight.  No power at this dock.  There was power further down on the 'federal' part of the dock.  Apparently the US govt pays for that power and it's 'canal power'.  It can be used by vessels on the canals.... But when towns build new modern docks the federal govt doesn't pay for the power anymore...  So most docks don't have power if they are decent.  

 We tried to dock at the federal pilings.  No bueno.  Getting bikes off would be tough.  Getting people off would be risky.     The old federal dock has been mostly destroyed and we would have been climbing over broken timbers and huge holes and metal shafts sticking out to plug in.   We will run the generator....

43.5 miles today.  Four locks.  That's enough.  We are tired... 

They tell us they fixed the lift bridge that was broken so we can probably get through the Oswego canal now!   We will still stop in Brewerton to change oil, shop, do some laundry and fill with US priced diesel before we head to Canada.    A few more days in NY