July 29, 2017 Saturday
Today we took advantage of the free bicycles at Brockport City Dock to ride the Canalway Trial to Holley. When building the original canal Holley represented a unique engineering problem for the builders because of the unusually deep ravine formed by the east branch of the Sandy Creek. Engineers decided to diverge from the canals general; east-west route to minimize the amount of construction required by creating a sharp loop more than 2,000 feet to the south. The sharp curve required boaters to slow down, which made a promising location for canal-oriented businesses, thus the Village of Holley grew.
Surplus water from the canal and the steep embankment has created a beautiful waterfall and the Village of Holley has enhanced the setting creating a lovely village park.
Bicycling the trail was both pleasurable and entertaining, we now call this section of the trail “Butterflies and Grasshoppers.” We had butterflies flying with us the entire way home and grasshoppers hopping about, one even hopped on Rick’s arm and rode with him for about a mile.
Back at Brockport, in search of a store, we added another five miles of walking, we could have continued using the bicycles but Rick’s had a very uncomfortable seat and he said he would rather walk.
