July 31, 2017 Monday
Today’s stretch of the canal was even more rural than yesterday’s with a scenic mixture of agriculture, sparsely wooded terrain, wildlife, and small towns. At Lockport we transited our last two locks on the Erie Canal, staircase locks E34 and E35, both 25 feet, together the locks lifted us 50-feet to the beginning of the Niagara Escarpment.
During the construction of the original Erie Canal, the 60-foot rise of the Niagara Escarpment was a major engineering problem. At that time the solution was to build a double set of five staircase locks, one for descending traffic heading east and one for ascending traffic heading west. In the early 1900’s the Erie Canal was modified, the southern tier of the locks at Lockport were removed and replaced by the one set of staircase locks we transited today. As we were moving from Lock E34 to Lock E35 a tourist boat was leaving E35 to go to E34, but don’t expect a picture, I was too busy getting a line to hold Andiamo against the wall.
Leaving the locks we went under the Main Street Draw Bridge which was once the widest non-suspension bridge in the world, measuring 389 feet wide and 129 feet in length.
Tonawanda, once an important lumber town, is the western terminus of the Eire Canal. As we entered the town a huge thunderstorm, heavy rain, lighting, & thunder, descended on us. For the first time on this trip, I donned my rain gear to be ready for docking. To my surprise, as soon as I started to get off the boat the rain quit. Yeah! We were at the public dock but the facilities were closed for repair so it was more like anchoring out. Signs on the dock warned us not to go into the water because they have put herbicides in the water to try to control the water hyacinth. On the positive side, the water is clearer than in the canal and we had a nice sunset.
