Messing
About in Boats, Boots, and Byways:
Archive of Erie Canal Journal entries for 2004: 23 July
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One
of our favorite destinations is the Erie Canal, which originally
began in downtown Buffalo, and later when the canal was widened
and renamed the Erie Canal Barge Canal, the canal began, and
still begins, at North Tonawanda on the Niagara River where
Tonawanda Creek empties into the river.
We have biked in five-mile bites from Lockport to Brockport,
and we've rowed a time or two, too.
Reality
and other approximations
For
a few years, now, we have been looking for the lost boat
ramp that we remember using for a row that we took in the Weekend
Skiff.
Try
as we might, we couldn't find it, until a few weeks ago when
we were riding our bikes west from Knowlesville on the canal.
Turns
out, the boat ramp is in the shadow of the Medina Guard Gate,
which is in the shadow of the Bates Road bridge over the
canal.
This
has opened a four- or five-mile stretch of the canal, from
the lift bridge at Medina to the lift bridge at Knowlesville,
for our enjoyment in the Harmonica.
On
this evening, the water was like glass. We enjoyed to cool
air after a few days of heat and humidity. Got some good
pix, too. The days went from light to dark and from familiar
to strange and wonderful. The pix capture the changes.
