Lake Oneida sunset

This sunset was as the end of our day, a couple days ago now, in Sylvan Beach on the east end of Oneida Lake still in New York state.  We had to go over it from Brewerton to carry on our trek. It's quite a shallow lake about 20 miles long has a few shoals here and there to watch for, with buoys and markers all the way across to follow. This place has a fabulous beach, but with signs up all over the place not swim in the lake.... oh and to watch out for the blue-green algae blooms.

section of old canal system

Back on the canal, we passed old sections which firstly was just a ditch with water in it and a path alongside where the critter that hauled the boat walked.  When motorized craft started to be used they made it a bit wider and deeper.  Now the newest version of the canal has a depth of anywhere from 9 feet up to 16 depending on the line you take in the canal.  It is quite wide, enough to easily pass two large tourist cruising vessels side by side.  The width of the boat of course is determined by the width of the locks and fixed bridge heights, some bridges are quite low which is why masts have to come off to get through.

Guard Gate 7

These are called guard gates, that can be lowered to divert the water from a lock if it needs to be worked on, or there's too much water flow or debris after storms.  There is always an alternative route for the river just above these gates but not boats.  They used to close them off for the winters just as the water was starting to freeze.  The fellow at the place we are at right now who has always lived here remembers that the gates were lowered when there was a few inches of frozen ice on top and as the water dropped away so did the ice and for a few weeks they would have the most perfect skating rink a mile or so long.

Rowers,.. going faster than we were

As we motored our way along two of these skulls of what looked like high school boys, came along in practice, as the coach in the motor boat was continually keeping them in sync.  Very graceful, and in slow motion rowing, but those little boats were cruising along quite quickly as we found out later when they caught up to us from behind.  We're stuck with a 10 mph speed limit and no wake, they're not and don't really have a wake.  Can't imagine how fast they were actually going to catch up.

Dredging barge

Passed a couple dredging barges that weren't actually in use that day, it would have been neat to see them in action.

Main Street, Little Falls

Today is September 11, a somber day in the States for obvious reasons.  We are in a town called Little Falls, we've stopped here for a couple nights, mostly because the weather wasn't looking exactly as we like, there were thunderstorms in the forecast for last night and this morning with winds gusting up to 50 kmh, so we slept in.  We must have been tired, as neither of us heard any of the storms only some of the rain. The sun and humidity saps the life out of one.

We caught up on some laundry, then went into this town to see what's around and found a lot of empty store fronts looking for renters.  There's a couple hardware stores, a couple bars, a couple sandwich shops and a liquor store on the main street operating and that's about it.  There is a grocery store and dollar store on the next street down.

The buildings in this picture, which were for the old canal, are full of antique vendors of all sorts; some crafts and a bit of food stuffs.  Yesterday we arrived in time to catch the last of the garlic festival which was held in the courtyard just on the other side of these buildings.
We learned that this town used to boast two shoe making factories as well as a bicycle factory that had 700 employees itself.  The Salada Tea company is still here and is across the canal from where we're berthed.
We'll likely be back enroute tomorrow  and will see what new adventures await us.  Til our next post...