Thursday, August 23 Middleport to Brockport


I was the designated driver of the car today. I haven't done laundry in a month, so I went to the Laundromat for a few hours and then drove to Brockport. It was a nice drive through some small towns. I did find a vegetable stand to get some tomatoes. I scouted out the place to park on the wall in Brockport and let Mike know where to go. It started to rain pretty hard and I heard the lift bridge open so I went and stood out in the rain to help them tie up. They have water, electric, rest rooms and showers here for $8/night. It's a nice town. There is a branch of SUNY (State University of New York) here, so it's a bit of a college town.

Kathy

So .... Today our ride down the Erie was easy... the lift bridge operators always know when you're going to get there even if they have three bridges to operate. It's magic.

The canal is about 30 yards wide and is usually banked with rocks. There is always a walk way on one side or the other . Waterways that I am used to are natural and as such follow the lowest contours of land. The Erie Canal is much more like an aqueduct. Upstate New Your is rolling, much like the west side of Michigan. As the Canal passes through the land it's up and down .... Which means that al least half the time we are above the land....There are many times that we are looking down over valleys ... way below us, that consist of fields, orchards and much prime deer hunting territory.

Whoever engineered this looked for north facing slopes ... when it was dug, the tailings were moved to the north side and became the berm that is the north bank of the canal.

The only other surprise is the lack of boat traffic ... we are alone most of the day just driving along... our friends are joggers, old men sitting in chairs and farmers checking their irrigation pumps. We see two or three boats per day....


Friday

We all drove to Rochester to West Marine to pick up some things we needed-like a patch kit for the dinghy which had a run-in with a rough wall while tying up to wait for a lock, among other things. We went back to the boat and had lunch and then Mom and Annie left for Michigan. It was fun having them with us for a few days.

Mike changed the oil and some of the fuel filters, which took a long time and the boat has to be torn apart to do the job, so it was a mess. We were sitting in the cockpit relaxing after putting the boat back together when it dawned on me that there was a laundry room about 40 steps away. Shoot, I did six loads yesterday but I gathered up all the sheets and some other things and did a load. The washer was $1.75 and the dryer was free! Can't pass up these opportunities!

Another strange thing about driving through the canal is that we can't use the auto-pilot. There are too many turns and bridges and it is almost too narrow. We can't just put it on auto and sit back and read our books, checking things out now and then