6-17-17 Loving the Erie Canal

6-17-17   Loving the Erie Canal

The Erie Canal Is everything we expected it to be and more.  It is easy to navigate…follow the river to the next lock.  No Tide or depth worries. Free walls to tie up everywhere, some even have water and power.  Life is good. Here are some sights on our way to Canajoharie.

What a neat old buidling.
The canal boats are all freshly painted and well kept. Almost all of them have the rope puddin (the thing on the front to protect the bow) and fenders. So classy compared to the old rubber tires.
Wow what a house!
These look like old rowing rowing river boats that someone made. Would have liked to seen them in use.

We went to the wall at Canajoharie, which means boiling pot in Mohawk.  There is a lovely park along the wall. The day we arrived the weather wasn’t great and it was later in the day.  We walked through town, which was another quaint town.  We will see the boiling pot in the morning.  Early that morning we got a knock on our boat by the local firemen. They were letting all the boaters know that the river will be closing from nine to Noon for their Rubber Ducky Race which is a fundraiser and celebration of the town Palatine on the other side of the bridge. As we got ready for our day we saw a couple of Amish buggies pull up.  They unhitched the horses and tied them up while they went fishing off the dock.

What a beautiful park at the free wall.
Why the long face? Hahaha

The skies were clear so we hoofed it to find the Boiling Pot on the Canajoharie Creek. It was easy to find and we knew what it was as soon as we saw it.  It is a large perfect circle carved in the rocks by water.  I am not sure how deep it is, but it looks deep.  There is an old defunct dam there with the water free flowing.  There are so many pretty falls and rapids all down the creek.  We walked a long way down the river and just kept finding more and more rapids/falls. We met a young man on the way and he told us we could walk all the way down.  However, we got to a point on the river that there was no way around.  We found some rough trails with too much poison ivy on it for our comfort. Back down to the river to backtrack the way we came.  We ran into the young man again and he directed us up a trail.  However, I was in flip flops and Scott in Teva sandals and the trail got a bit muddy.  We were able to navigate around the deep sucking mud, but still got a little dirty. When we got back to the main trail we looked at our feet and decided we needed to go wash up in the river.  I had mud smeared and splashed up to my knees.  Scott fared better than I with just muddy feet. We really enjoyed getting back to the wilderness and waters.  It was a great hike.

There is is the boiling pot. Locals told us when the water is high it really get “boiling”
Look how perfectly round the stone shore has been cut by the swirling water.
This is the defunct dam just upriver from the boiling pot.
Backwaters of the dam
The water wore these rocks smooth.
I just liked this photo.

My man by the running water.
It’s a long way down….
Pretty flowers on the trail.
Colorful critters on the trail.
After the trail. Yuck Yes I hike in my flip flops all the time.  I have burned through two pair already. My feet now hate shoes.

When we got back to the park around noon the rubber duckies hadn’t been set free yet.  Apparently, they had technical difficulties. We scratched our heads a bit when we realized they just dumped tubs of ducks from a boat.  Hmmm.  It was hot and we were hungry and thirsty.  We heard there were food stands and a car show up the hill. We grabbed some lunch, but didn’t spend a lot of time at the car show.  We got back just in time to see the ducks floating and saw the winner hit the finish line.

Looking down from the bridge at a thousand or so rubber duckies just as the winner hit the finish line. We never heard what the winning prizes were.

We chatted with several new Loopers and traded cards. We have 2 of 500 left.  More are waiting for us at our next marina stop in a few days.  Just in the nick of time. We love that the Loopers are closer together than they were in Florida and up the east coast.  Having a great time meeting new people.

I hope you enjoy the photos.

Thanks for reading,

Scott and Karen

Unique Random Photo of The Day:

Oh my! Blush. Yup we saw this on a door as we walked to the Boiling Pot.