Erie Canal Day 5 - Newark to Clyde

Morning in Newark. That's our little Nomad over there. This was a nice time of year to do this, so little traffic!

10/14/2016 - Newark to Clyde. 15 miles, 3 locks (28B, 28A, and 27). Another beautiful day, and we'll start out with a little more history. 

Remember these great murals I showed on the Day 2 post? Here they are again in case you missed them. 

They're on the abutment of the bridge shown above, with more on the outer wall of the boater services area, on the canal-level floor of the white building (the dockmaster's office is upstairs). They give some interesting historical information. Here are a couple of samples: 

This one's a little hard to read due to the texture of the wall and the angle of the morning sun, so I'll transcribe:

Jesse Hawley 

Grain (?)  Merchant

While in prison for debt, because he could not find an economical way to ship his goods, he published fourteen essays on the idea of the canal from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Hawley's essays were to prove immensely influential on the development of the Canal. 

This was a particularly good day for birds - I got my best heron shot of the trip, plus a nice one of a red-tailed hawk (anybody ever wondered if a redtail's hawk is really red?), and at one point a bald eagle flew low over the canal right in front of the boat. I was driving but TQ grabbed my camera and got a shot as the eagle circled over the trees.

We passed the Grouper again today. I'd brought the photo of the Grouper that I'd posted for my Day 2 trip report to the attention of Tugster, I only knew this tug's name because I'd seen her over there. I mentioned that I thought she had really nice lines, and he responded, "there are dozens with the same lines. Grouper has many siblings. At least one will survive if not she." Click here to visit Tugster's post showing a number of Grouper's sister Great Lakes tugs, a fleet dating back to the early 20th century, many of which are still being maintained and operated.

BTW, Tugster also said, "Btw, one could buy grouper now for $1, a 1912 machine for 100 pennies." I swear, if I knew either a little bit more or a little bit less about old boats...but on the off chance somebody who DOES know what they're doing happens to stumble across this, Click here for Tugster's email to get more info. He would really love to see someone take on this project! 

Back to the locks. Here are a few more pictures of locking through. I've understood the concept behind locks for as long as I can remember, I'm sure that was one of the nautical things my dad told me about when I was a kid, but seeing them at work I was really kind of blown away by the brilliant simplicity of the concepts - the big gates meeting at a slight outward angle so that the pressure of all those tons of water itself hold them firmly shut, and then the raising and lowering of the water level being done by simply opening valves and letting the water seek its own level, as it does. Pretty amazing, and very cool to see it in action. Lock 28 A. 

The lock masters were all very nice and almost every one of them asked us about our destination for the day - if we were going on to the next lock, they would call ahead so that the next lock master would know we were coming and have the lock all ready for us when we got there. As I'd mentioned, the lack of traffic was one of the benefits of an October trip!

Instructions

In Lock 27 at Lyons. Coming from upstream, we start with a nice view of the Canandaigua Outlet.

Going

Going

Gone! :D

Back to the Peppermint Capital of the World - 

And now we're down on the level of the outlet.

Erie Canal workboat waiting its turn

Workboat in Lock 27

Something tells me this might be Clyde.

Another nice waterfront park here

A couple of views of the town of Clyde

TQ had noticed that they had his favorite kind of park grill, so we hunted down a couple of steaks and some charcoal in town; I packed up some brussels sprouts and potatoes in foil packets to go under the coals while he got the fire going, it ended up being a terrific dinner. 

Lovely evening light

The big show here was the moon, nearly full here on our last night out on the Erie Canal.