Wednesday July 7, 2021.
Temp: 81 /71, Humidity: 64/93%, Top Wind: NE15 mph, Precip: rain this morning & evening, Miles Traveled: 34, #of Locks: 2, Lift Bridges: 4
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This morning we awoke to really hard pounding rain at about 5:00. SHEESH! This was not little pitter patter white noise, but was serious pounding and was accompanied by some thunderousboomus and flashes of light. 💦 It soon quieted down, and we snoozed awhile longer. We knew we couldn’t leave before 7:00, because we have a lift bridge right around the corner to go through. It also was probable that the bridge tender that minds this bridge would most likely be at his other bridge which we came through yesterday, five miles to the east. So we waited for the rain to be good and gone, then got ready to bug out. We knew that we didn’t want to pull lines until we made contact with the bridge tender to get an ETA. Kenny called the phone number for this bridge, and we got no answer. Then he tried the previous bridge and got the guy, and he told us it would be 15 minutes. Cool! OH NO! We realized that we still wanted to pump out our holding tank at the handy-dandy free pump out just up the wall from here. So we quickly untied, tootled to the pump out and got that chore done. We were pleasantly surprised and glad that it was the fastest pumper-outer that we have ever used! Just as we were pulling our lines, the bridge tender called on the radio and said he was ready – where were we? Oops! Just around the corner… be right there! 🤭. We went through this bridge at 8:00.
With that bridge behind us, we had five miles to the next one and a different bridge tender. There was a lot of crops off to our right side…. acres and acres of crops.
There were some beautiful homes on the left. It was surprising to us how green everything is! They must get a lot of thunderstorms around here in the summer, because everything is lush and green, and we saw no irrigation sprinklers in the fields. The homes all have nicely mowed huge lawns.
When we came by this guard gate, one side was lowered, which gave us an idea of what they look like when they’re in position to stop the water flow.
It was 50 minutes later that we arrived at the next bridge. This one is in Middleport, and the bridge tender here has two bridges to mind, the other one being five miles west from here. We called on the radio and got no answer. We called on the phone and got no answer. So we figured he must be down at the next bridge. We strolled over to the wall and tied up to wait. I thought I could see a black car like the one we saw another bridge tender driving the other day. After about 10 minutes, I was about to go knock on the door of the little building, when a lady came out and walked to our boat. She was the bridge tender and asked if we were waiting to get through. We told her that we tried contacting her by VHF and phone, and she heard nothing, but she thought we should be here by now, so came out to see. The tenders almost always ask how far we intend to go, then they talk to each other so that they all know how many boats to expect. Anyway, she apologized all over the place, and hustled on back and got this bridge opened right up for us. When she opened it, a boat that had been on the wall in Middleport on the other side tootled past us going east, then another boat that had been tied up there came out and followed us going west for the rest of the day.
On our tootle down the waterway to the next bridge, we saw this fun family of tractors.
And Noah’s Ark, in case the canal floods.
When we arrived at the next bridge in Gasport, our friendly lady opened the bridge right up for us.
I don’t know what is in Gasport other than the bridge and this building. We couldn’t see any other signs of a town.
Moseying along, we encountered several orchards.
As we neared Lockport, I spied this neat old stone church and house. I don’t know why I love this stone so much, but I just really think it looks amazingly beautiful.
Our next bridge was actually out of order and has been abandoned in the up position. Just beyond it is the Exchange Street bridge. We called him and he asked all kinds of questions, including the beam (width) of our boat. That seemed odd. Then it made sense…. he said that the Lockport lock #34 would be open and ready for us and our wingman CJ’s behind us, who are also loopers. We would need to set up on the starboard side, as there would be east bound boats on the port side. HUH you say? We’re going to have boats going both ways in the lock? How does that work? I’ll explain.
I’m bummed that I didn’t get a great picture here because on the right is the old “flight of five” locks that used to be how to get through Lockport. Now there is a flight of two big locks, #34 & 35.
We puttered into lock 34 and got hooked up on the starboard side as directed. The lock master here was terrific and offered all kinds of information on the radio for us. He told us that there are cables and ropes that are secured at the top and bottom of the wall. He wanted us to go midway in and get secured by running a rope around the cable and back to our boat. Yep – we know how to do this. Then you see that giant door in front of us? And the water line only goes part way up? That’s because on the other side of the light green part of the door is a whole nother lock, and it is holding back the water in lock 35! So lock 34 filled up, raising us up, and lock 35 lowered, letting the boats in it go down. When the water level was equal in the two locks, those big doors opened, and we were all in one big giant double chamber for a few minutes.
Then we were told to go all the way forward in this lock 35, and once we were in position, the east bound vessels would move out and go into lock 34 to continue their journey down.
Here is looking forward in lock 35 before we started going up.
And looking back as the two boats left lock 35 to go back to lock 34.
It wasn’t long, and we were released from the lock and on our way. This is looking west ahead of us, and this huge wide bridge with some kind of plaza on top.
It was really a bummer that there was very little opportunity to tie up anywhere to visit this town and to see the old flight of five.
There is just one spot, which is right at the top of the lock wall. We came out of the lock on the right side of that wall back there. If we had really wanted to stay, we could have just done a quick 180, or backed in on the left side of that wall where the “35” is and tied up there. There’s room for about two boats there. But we were wanting to continue our journey and get to Tonawanda today, so we kept going. This was it! We are all done with lift bridges and locks in the Erie Canal!! Just 17 more miles and we’ll be in Tonawanda, which is the western end of the Erie Canal. 🥳
This was cool – some buildings right smack on the canal wall! It felt like we were in Europe or something. That is a bucket list item, after all: To go to Europe and experience some waterways there, somewhere, sometime. On the brick building, isn’t it interesting how there is a door at the bottom level, then another door about three feet above it?. 🤔
This is just leaving Lockport with CJ’s behind us. There were big walls here on both sides of the canal, so any wake that we made just bounced back and forth, making a really rough ride for them.
The rock walls went for a few miles, so CJ’s came up close behind us to try to stay in our prop wash and out of our wake waves.
Probably the most painful part of today was five miles of 5mph speed limit coming into Tonawanda. Sheesh! But we finally made it. There are tie-up walls on both sides of the canal here, and power at most of the spots. I had figured that we wanted to be on the north wall (starboard side) for better selection of restaurants and stuff. We picked a spot and bellied up, got everything tied up and plugged in, and the power pedestal didn’t work. WHAT?! We thought… well maybe they don’t turn them on until you pay. But CJ’s said he had power. So we untied and moved to a spot right in front of him and now we’re all good. We have power and water. Another boat was complaining that he had power and no water. 🤷♀️. So he had to move too.
We got here at about 2:30, and watched in amazement as all kinds of boats kept coming! WOWZA it was getting busy. We were soooo happy that we got here when we did!! When we went to the dockmaster’s office to pay, we saw that there was a stage being set up for a concert in the park. Huh! Alrighty then!
Apparently they have free concerts here every Wednesday evening. There were food and drink vendors getting set up, and it was starting to look like it’s gonna be a parrrr-tay!
I took a little stroll around to look at stuff. Here is looking east down the canal, with the concert set up on the left. Island Girl is waaaay down on the left side past that bridge. I headed across the bridge to the south side of the canal to Tonawanda.
There were several historical marker boards around telling about the history of the Tonawandas. There is Tonawanda, and North Tonawanda, separated by the canal, and they are in different counties.
I couldn’t get a good shot of this because there was construction barriers in front of it. It’s a nice little park on the canal.
This was an interesting steeple on a church. It’s missing the pointy steeple part! It’s the St Francis Assisi Catholic Church.
The church was constructed in 1862 predominantly by the fathers of young men fighting the Civil War. These dedicated volunteers built the church with stone from the Lockport-Medina quarries, creating stone walls eighteen inches thick without the aid of contractor or architect. Cool, huh?
Back over the bridge to the North side. “Home of the Carrousel” is because the Herschell Carrousel Factory was here, and the museum here still carves wood carrousel figures and even has wood carving classes!
Some bright pink petunias, because you need to smile at how bright and cheerful they are. Do you know what they smell like? I do, and I love it! To me, the fragrance takes me back about 55 years ago to my grandparents back porch in Portland Oregon. They had petunias in their garden, and EVERY time I smell petunias, I think of my mom’s parents and how I loved spending time with them at their cool old home where I had a tiny special room upstairs just for me with a dormer and slanted ceilings. And they always had a huge vegetable garden where I could go out and eat as many snap peas as I wanted, right off the vine.
OK – back to Tonawanda, New York. The other thing that comes from here is the Wurlitzer. The what?! It was a kind of portable organ used for fairs and carnivals with a distinctive sound.
Which fits right in with the carrousel stuff. And Mr. Herschell was involved with the wurlitzers, since it was all carnival/fiar related. And you didn’t even know that you didn’t know that, or needed to know that, huh?
I finished my big walkabout and headed back to the boat. I saw hotdog vendors setting up two blocks away from the canal park, and various churches and others were charging $5 for parking. There were people walking with folding camp chairs everywhere. There were more boats now, and one even snuggled up right under Island Girl’s anchor.
We were way at the eastern end of the wall. I took a walk to the west end, and the farther I went, the more boats and people there were.
There was an opening band, and then the main band started at 8:00. They weren’t terrible, so there was quite a party going on. It was kind of funny that there was no food or drink or alcohol allowed to be carried into the area. Yet down on the canal promenade, (which is just to the right of these bushes) the boaters had all kinds of food, bbqs, coolers, blenders, etc going on. No wonder so many people come by boat!
The weather was in the upper 60’s and comfortable. But I checked on the weather, and rain was forecasted for about 9:40pm. The concert was due to be over at 10:00. Well…. let’s just say that it wasn’t hard to get people to leave! It poured down rain just before 10:00.
It’s forecasted to rain most of the day tomorrow, so that is why we are staying here for three nights. Tomorrow will be a sleep in day and cleaning day, without much else on the agenda. Friday weather looks better, so we’ll go see Niagara Falls then. Saturday looks great out on the Big Lake Erie, so we’ll put some miles under the hull on Saturday.