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Planned Trip route
Eire and Oswego Canals
Waterford City to Oswego, NY
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Waterford city dock at Waterford, NY was a pleasant surprise. The city supplied a free wall and a floating dock for transients. The floating docks were equipped with water and electricity. Clean restrooms and showers were available for a
five dollar key deposit.
The first night was spent on the wall waiting for our turning for a
spot on the floating dock.
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Meg the volunteer at the visitor’s center was helpful in directing us to the local sites. Meg knew all the menus of the local restaurants and greeted everyone as if she had known them for ever.
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We spent two days exploring the area and were given a tour by Nick, the lockmaster, of lock two. We were amazed at how much machinery is involved in locking a boat thru.
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One gains a different perspective from the top looking down instead of from the bottom looking up as we have been.
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Adjacent to lock number two
were the remains of the old locking system. It was surprising to see
how marrow they were.
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We left the next morning ready to take on the Erie Canal and locked thru five locks in the two hours.
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We tied up to the wall at lock eight at Schenectady, NY for the
night.
"Lift that bale, tote that barge, fifteen
miles on the ERIE CANAL"
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The next day was spent locking thru and enjoying the scenery along the canal.
We docked at the city dock in
Canajohan, NY and toured the town and discovered that the founder of the Beechnut Company was a benefactor to the town library which had one of the largest collections of Winslow Homer’s works in the United States. We spied off in the distance the golden arches of McDonalds and decided to indulge.
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Little Falls Canal Harbor in Little Falls, NY was our next stop. Shortly after we docked Gerry, a local business man, stopped by to welcome us to town and offered to take us on a tour of the towns eating places and watering holes. Lee accepted his offer leaving Allen to do the routine cleaning and
maintenance on the boat. Later that evening we rode our scooters to town for dinner. The restaurant was packed for their Wednesday night special all you can eat Sirloin. Our order was placed and we went to the abundant salad bar and had our fill. An hour and a half later we were still waiting for our meal and realized that it was getting dark and we were on scooters without lights. We are still wondering if the steaks were as great the salad bar as we dined on baloney sandwiches back on the boat.
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The next day we navigated one lock and traveled a record breaking eight miles to Herkimer, NY where we docked at Gems Along The Mohawk which was a restaurant and a series of gift shops.
We arose early the next morning to catch the taxi to the Herkimer Diamond Mines. Three hours had been allotted for digging and to find our fortunes. We met Diamond Jim a prospector who had been digging in the mines for seventeen years and he showed us what to look for and how to go about finding the diamonds, which are really crystals. Back to the mines we went in search of our fortunes. By three in the afternoon all cut up by flying rock chips and worn out by all the hammering on rocks we decided it was much easier to run aground than to be prospectors and returned to the boat.
Back at the landing we were refused service at the restaurant by Rocky the manager until we went back to the boat and got Winston who was given full run
of the place.
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Our next port was to have been the free wall at Oneida Beach, NY only to find out that it was full and boats were rafted off to attend the Fourth of July Festival.
Mariners Landing at Oneida Beach proved to be a restful place for us to recuperate from the exhaustion of the previous days mining.
While walking to town we saw a sign for a free lawnmower and spent
the rest of the day discussing how we could use it. We decided that
we could establish a business cutting grass on boats. We have
already had one person offer to buy stock in our proposed new
business.
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The Oswego Canal was our next adventure as we continued up the New York Canal System. Lock three at Fulton, NY offered a safe tie up, for the night, and a chance to stock up on groceries.
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Oswego City Dock in Oswego, NY was our next port. As we docked we were met by Fred the harbormaster and director of tourism for the city. He welcomed us to the city and drove us back to Schenectady, NY to a Boat US store to purchase a Canadian courtesy flag and a quarantine flag then gave us a tour of the city and a historical overview of the area.
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We arose the next morning to overcast skies and predictions of thunderstorms. As we waited and listened to further weather forecasts the sky in the west began to clear and south east winds were prevailing so we decided to cruse the fifty miles across Lake Ontario to Trenton Marina in Trenton, Ontario.
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