Here are some information signs we found near the canal. It's pretty interesting and hard to imagine how they built this canal system so many years ago. Lucy Mack Smith led a party of Saints from Palmyra to Kirtland using the Erie Canal and the boats which in those days were pulled by mules along the canal bank.
When we got to the canal bank lock #29 was at its low point. The west gate (the higher water) was closed and the east gate (the lower water) was open making the water in the lock the same as the low water on the east side. These pictures show what the canal looks like from the edge.
As we were looking around, the lock tender came out of his office and I ask if it was okay to walk across the lock to take some pictures. He assured me that it was okay. I gingerly walked out on the closed, west lock (it has handrails) and took this picture looking east straight down the center of the canal. I was excited to see this boat coming into view just as I took the picture.
I was excited to see how the lock works. I tried to take enough pictures to get the "action" of it all. This is the boat just entering the east end of lock #29. The lock tender went to that end of the lock to give direction to the people on board. As they came into the lock, they tied the boat to one of many hanging tie-downs. The tie-downs are up fairly high and had to be reached with a long pole. There is a reason they are high up on the wall of the lock.
Once the boat was safely in and tied down, the lock tender closed the east gate. I got 4 pictures of that as it closed.
The lock tender walked back past us and I asked, "How long will it take to fill the lock?". To our surprise his reply was, "Seven minutes". WOW, that's a lot of water in just seven minutes. I began to take pictures as the water began flooding in. It comes in under gravity flow, no pumps involved, amazing. There are several, I didn't count them, pipes feeding the water into the lock. They are on the south side of the lock where we were standing and feed in from very near the bottom. We couldn't see the pipes but we sure could see the water as it poured in. Watch the boat rise by comparing the waterline to where the boat sits.
The boat continued to rise fairly rapidly. I was wishing I had my camera on video.
Isn't it amazing how this works....or am I just over the top on this? I admit I'm so interested in this mode of traveling. By the way, I've asked several "locals" whom we work with this question: "Which way does the water flow in the Erie Canal?". Do you know? I didn't and some of the "locals" said east and some said west. The real answer is it doesn't flow. The Erie Canal is more like a lake. It flows which ever way the locks are opened and shut. Now you have the answer to a trivia question if you ever need one.
Hope you find this fun. As you can surely tell, I did and do. The boat came up to the level of the Erie Canal to our west and begin to move along the canal. As the pictures show, it moved right through the now open west gate. The gate is open and below the yellow handrails which, when the gate was closed, I held on to as I took some of the first pictures from the center of the canal. Notice the gate and handrails in the second picture where the boat is leaving lock #29.
Here you can see the boat moving away from lock #29 and the west gate is again closed. You can see the "bridge" with handrails from where I took the first pictures in this journaling.
After watching the boat move through the lock, we walked down to the east lock and took some pictures. On the far side looking north there are always lots and lots of geese. If you look closely, you can see a few of them. I've added a picture I took by zooming in. These are Canadian Geese like "our" Goose-goose we have at the office.
The last picture is of Bill at the east end of lock #29. The gate is again closed, I took this picture from the same place I took the previous 2 pictures, only this time I'm looking west up the stairs.
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