Slow-rolling the canals

We are tied to the old barge terminal wall in Herkimer, New York (map), having arrived here yesterday. Yes this is the Herkimer of "diamond" and gemstone fame, and a souvenir shop on the premises here capitalizes on that fact. The basin has silted in quite a bit since our stop here five years ago, and we're squeezing into the very east end of the wall in order to have enough depth, with our bow overhanging by a few feet.

Vector tied to the terminal wall in Herkimer. Tour boat at left, dam is off-camera to the right.

One consequence of the kind of cruising we've been doing since leaving Lake Ontario is that I can't type under way, and so I have to either do it from a stop, or wait until we're out of the canal system and the helm is not so demanding. Our choice to take our time and really drink in the whole canal experience means that the latter will not happen for another few weeks, and so I'm opting to do it now, at a relatively quiet stop.

Vector looking lonely at the free wall in Oswego.

Monday morning, after my last post here, I called the Occupational Health office at the Oswego Hospital and they were able to make me an appointment for 8am Tuesday morning for the physical required to renew my US Coast Guard medical certificate. That would give us just enough time to get outta Dodge before weather moved in. I spent the rest of the day on errands, including changing the generator oil and running down to the Big M supermarket, which is diminutive in spite of the name, for a few needed items. By dinner time the thunderstorms hit, the same ones that had chased us off the lake early, and we had dinner on board.

The Press Box, Oswego. A cross between Fern and Sports bars.

It was an easy bike ride to my physical in the morning, which did not take long at all, and on the way home I stopped off at The Oswego Bagelry and Bread Shop, right in the quaint downtown, to pick up a couple of bagels for breakfast. They were pretty good for being this far from NYC. We dropped lines in plenty of time to make Fulton before the brunt of the next wave of storms hit.

From across the river the purpose of the locks and dams becomes clear, with Vector floating serenely a few feet above the level of the rapids. The apartments at the top of the hill did not exist when we came through here last time.

One of our goals on this trip was to make basically every stop on the way back, hitting many places we've already been but also a few we've missed. Well, OK, every free stop -- there's no way I am paying $4 per foot to tie up behind a mediocre restaurant in Utica, or even a buck a foot in Ilion, where the restaurant is literally a hot dog joint. Nevertheless, we bypassed the very first such option, between Oswego and Fulton, in Minetto. The dock there is a rickety floating affair attached to shore with a pair of spindly pipes, and while it might be fine for Vector in settled conditions, we thought it too wimpy for the incoming weather. There's nary an eatery in Minetto, either, so we glided on by.

Water rages over the dam at Lock 3, after the storm. You can see Vector alone on the wall center-frame.

 As we approached our usual spot in Fulton after locking up through Lock 3, we found one boat already tied to the wall, and three more boats arriving from Lock 2, all headed for the same spot. Somehow they all missed the spot we consider ideal, and we had Vector alongside and secured (map) before any of the newcomers had their lines sorted. It turned out two of the three were only seeking protection from the storm until it passed, and were clearly unprepared for the weird tie-up arrangement with a handful of rings on the wall, and pins too distant to lasso from on board. The first boat was well secured; he had been with us in Oswego and I had tipped him off to the Fulton wall, and he'd already been there a full day.

Water pouring off the hillside, across the trail, and over the bulkhead during the storm. This is before we knew some hillside had washed out.

The alert that our mail had arrived, a day early, came in while we were under way, and before the rain hit I walked over to Advance Auto Parts, the local UPS Access Point, to pick it up. I brought the used oil from the generator with me to drop off. I was back on board before the storm hit, and boy did it hit. It was a huge gully-washer, with high winds that had our lines and fenders creaking. It slammed hard into all the places we just left -- Sackets Harbor, Henderson Harbor, Chaumont, and Clayton, with some damage in all those places, so we made the right call to get out of the Thousand Islands and off the lake early, before it arrived.

We came across this landslide on our way home from dinner, walking along the canal. We had to backtrack. You can see where it covers the lawn and into the canal. Boat in the foreground had front-row seats.

These storms spawned several tornadoes in upstate New York, and we were thankful they missed us, but nearby Rome was not so lucky. Fulton was not spared entirely; several trees were down, and when we walked back from dinner after all had passed, we found the canal trail blocked by a landslide; part of the hillside had washed out, crossed the trail, and over the bulkhead into the canal. We walked to the Cayuga Steakhouse for dinner, not worth a repeat visit.

Crews were out the next day to repair the hill and clear the slide.

Even though we already had our mail, arriving as it did a day early, my carefully laid-out schedule had us in Fulton for two nights, and so we opted to stick with it and stay the extra day. The remaining boats cleared out, leaving us alone on the wall for the remainder of our stay. A crew from the city came out and spent the day cleaning up the landslide, and I ran errands. We walked over to Tavern on the Lock for dinner, which is still the best place in town.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck along the Oswego Canal?

Thursday morning we dropped lines for the short cruise to Phoenix, just the other side of Lock 1. After clearing the lock we pulled over to the old bridge control tower, where the city maintains a free self-service pump-out, and we took care of business, along with taking on water and doing some laundry. After we wrapped that up we moved just another hundred yards to the free city dock (map), where we had a 15-amp outlet to keep the batteries topped up and a spigot to finish filling the water tank. We strolled over to Duskee's for dinner (good riggies) after finding no comfortable seating at Lock 1 Distilling.

Vector at the town dock in Phoenix.

In keeping with the theme of slow-rolling and making more stops, on Friday we turned onto the Seneca River when we reached Three Rivers Junction, instead of the Oneida. This is the start of the western portion of the Erie Canal, forbidden fruit for Vector because of low bridges. We wanted to go as far as the turn for Onandaga Lake and Syracuse. We'd love to make that stop, but an 18' bridge bars the way. A little over an hour after turning off the Oswego we were in sight of said bridge, and we turned around and headed back. It was a pleasant couple of hours just cruising. We ended the day at a new stop, the lower guide wall of Lock 23 (map), where there is a very pleasant park but little else. We grilled a couple of pork tenderloins for dinner.

Lock 23 Canal Park. Grills and tables line the guide wall.

The stop at Lock 23 made for an extremely short cruise in the morning to Brewerton, where we again stopped at Winter Harbor Marina to take on fuel. The price had dropped 20 cents, and we put 330 gallons in at the cheapest price we'll see from here to Virginia. After fueling we continued another mile to the free dock on the north side, where we again had a nice spot with 50-amp power (map). I once again had packages waiting at the Amazon locker here.

I stopped at the Circle-K in Phoenix for a couple things. The Crowdstrike global outage had knocked out their POS system.

The power outlet was handy because we again spent two nights here. This time mostly on account of the annual Pirates Weekend going on in Sylvan Beach, across the lake, which would pretty much guarantee we would not find a spot on the free wall. We needed to delay our arrival to Monday, when the whole town would be sleeping it off. Saturday evening we walked to Wild Horse Bar and Grill, which was a lousy walk (no sidewalk) but had decent food and some nice drafts. Sunday we ate at Waterfront Tavern right next to the dock; both Jake's and Wild Horse are better choices but it was threatening to rain.

Phoenix mural.

We had company at the dock both nights, including the skateboarders Sunday night who were a bit surprised and embarrassed when I popped out after midnight to suggest they were making too much noise, considering people were asleep ("we didn't realize anyone was on these boats"). Honestly, I was just as concerned that a skateboard would be accidentally launched into our new paint as I was about the noise. We were all alone by the time we dropped lines Monday morning to cross the lake.

Vector in Phoenix from Lock Island. The guy from the blue skiff behind us has been tent camping along the canal; we saw him again at Lock 23.

The amusement park and many other things in Sylvan Beach are dark Mondays, and we again got a great spot at the east end of the north wall (map). The down side being that many eateries are also closed; we ended up having Pizza King pizza at the Drunken King tiki bar, which was not bad. We had a nice stroll around a very quiet town, which had done an amazing job of cleaning up after Pirates Weekend.

The "beach" in Sylvan Beach. A calm day on the lake.

Tuesday morning we got a fairly early start toward Rome, in the event we'd have to wave off and continue east, either due to continuing shoaling and dock decay since our last visit five years ago, or due to some consequence of the tornado. As we locked up through Lock 22, the very friendly lockmaster picked a few cherry tomatoes from a plant he's clearly been tending and handed them to Louise, who reports they were delicious. He moved seamlessly through the flock of Canada geese grazing on the lawn, and we have since nicknamed him the goose whisperer.

This Accuweather graphic depicts the storm system that hit us in Fulton and caused a tornado in Rome. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Past Lock 21 we could see lots and lots of downed trees; the ones on the south side now lying in the canal, and the ones on the north side toppled landward and showing us their root balls. My camera could not really capture it. By noon we were in Rome, and I worked my way in to the bulkhead at dead slow. While the old timber fendering, complete with protruding rusty bolts, had deteriorated quite a bit in five years, we had no trouble with depth or any debris on the bottom. We picked the spot with the most intact timber (map) and Louise was able to get us secured enough by lassoing old pilings for me to step off and take lines to rings and pins on the concrete bulkhead. We found the 50-amp pedestals still in working order.

Tying to the rickety fenders in Rome. We had to step gingerly across them to get on and off the boat.

I took the e-bike into town to have a look around, get some groceries, and scope out dinner options. The damage is heart-wrenching, even after a dozen years and some 20-odd deployments to disaster relief operations. At least there were no fatalities here from this EF-2 twister. While the Grand Union supermarket had no refrigerated items due to storm damage, I found the Aldi mostly intact and was able to pick up what we needed there.

This caused flashbacks for me. Disaster relief and distribution site.

I rode through the Little Italy district, along Dominick Street, the only neighborhood in walking distance from the dock. I was sad to see that all the restaurants there were shuttered, from long before the storm. The Vingneto, where we ate last time, and the iconic Savoy had both gone out in the last few years, the properties still for lease, along with Coalyard Charlies across the highway. The lone place I found open for dinner was a bar a little further down Dominick called De Matteo's. That proved to be fine, but it makes Rome a one-night stop.

Two massive churches lost steeples and roofs.

As it happens, Rome was only on my itinerary for one night anyway. However, we awoke to a forecast for more thunderstorms with strong winds, which would not only make for unpleasant docking, but would also preclude getting the scooters down at our next planned stop, a short scooter ride away from Utica. With some pad in the schedule, we decided to just stay put in Rome, where we were already well-secured and where we had 50-amp power.

Look closely to see a row of four 18" trees snapped off like toothpicks (the trees have already been carted away) along with the steel lamppost that was in the foreground.

The storms ended up being a non-event; they were hitting all around us, but kept missing Rome. We only had a sprinkle. Keeping an eye on the weather radar, we had a nice walk around the park, and I took the e-bike across the canal to the historic train station, still in use as an Amtrak stop. Just before the brunt of the forecast, a 70' sailboat, made even longer by having its mast strapped on deck, squeezed in just ahead of us on the dock, sending us scrambling to add lines so there was no chance we'd ease forward into the pointy end of their mast during the storm. I spent the afternoon replacing a blown inner tube on the bike, and we had a nice dinner on board.

All alone in Rome, before the riff-raff moved in.

Thursday morning we again got a fairly early start, with the situation at our planned stop at Lock 20 a bit unknown. It was a challenge to get away from the bulkhead without moving forward into the sailboat mast. Once away from the dock it was an uneventful cruise to Lock 20. There we found a small towboat and another barge pushed up into the spot where we had stayed in the other direction -- there was really no room for us on the long upper guide wall to the south. Instead we squeezed in to the much shorter angled wall on the north side (map).

Historic Rome Station. Unstaffed but amazingly devoid of graffiti or vandalism.

While the wall appears long enough for Vector, it shallows fairly quickly toward the end, and there are few tie points. It took us quite a while get the boat in position, and when it was all done, we decided that our bow was too close to the traffic "funnel" into the lock for comfort, knowing some of the low-skill skippers along this stretch, and getting the scooters out from behind the fence along the lock wall would be a challenge. We ultimately decided to wave off and head for Lock 19. There's plenty of room on the lower guide wall for Lock 20, but there is no access to get the scooters to the road from there.

Station floor, in a high-traffic area (the hallway to the tracks). Terrazzo lasts forever.

The pool between Lock 20 and Lock 19 has the shallowest stretches on our whole journey, and it was slow going. We once again struck a log embedded in the bottom at one point, causing it to pop up behind us, but we made it all the way to the lock without further incident. We called the lockmaster for permission to stay on the upper guide wall for a couple of nights, which was granted, and I spun Vector around to bring her in port-side-to immediately astern of the pocket tug Port Jackson, tied to the end of the wall (map).

This former church in Phoenix has been converted to apartments.

Since the last time we stayed here, the Canal Corporation has added a pedestal with a couple of 50-amp receptacles. There were no restrictive signs and so we plugged in, using every last bit of our 100' power cable. I walked across the lock gates to scope out the rest of the grounds and refresh my memory. I knew I had gone out on the e-bike last time for milk and veggies, and I remembered a gate that closed when the lock shut down at 6pm, but I had not remembered the sign saying "closed to the public" and so I had a chat with lockmaster Bill about it. He said we were all good coming and going and that we could walk around the end of the fence when the gate was closed. He said they were having a lot of trouble with stolen equipment and did not recommend leaving scooters outside the gate.

A small group of folding chairs was left over from Pirates Weekend in Sylvan Beach and this one caught my eye.

With that in mind, we opted to leave the scooters for daytime exploration, and take an Uber to downtown Utica for dinner. I made a reservation at Ancora!, adjacent to the historic Stanley Theater. Dinner was good, and afterward we strolled along Genesee Street, the main drag, taking it all in and ending at Oriskany Street, where we grabbed another Uber for the ride back. The driver seemed quite baffled to be dropping us at a locked gate in the middle of nowhere. The lockmaster had given me a good street address to use for the return trip.

Hamming it up for friends at Drunken King, Sylvan Beach. Louise is pointing to the very long row of tap handles.

Lock 19 is perhaps the quietest stop on the whole canal, owing in large part to the fact that it is not also a public park along the canal trail, as are most of the locks. The one evening in town felt like plenty of time in Utica, but the quiet appealed to us and we had a good spot with power, so we decided to keep to our scheduled stop of two days. In the morning I deployed my scooter do do some sightseeing along the Mohawk Valley. Unsurprisingly, given what happened in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, it would not start.

Vector at Lock 19, with scooter rampant, behind the Port Jackson.

I ultimately spent two hours fiddling with cables and batteries to get it started, and then I went online to determine if they had the correct size battery at the local Walmart, just a ten minute ride away. They turned out to have one in stock, and so I went straight there, knowing that if it died on the way I would not be able to re-start it. The battery was, indeed, on the shelf and I brought it out straight away to make the swap. I immediately discovered that the existing lugs on the cables, formed in a U to mate to the battery terminals, did not fit the larger terminals on the new battery, but I was able to get it to work just by tightening the bolts until they were squeezed into position.

If it doesn't fit, force it.

I returned immediately to the store to return the old battery for my core deposit, and to fill the half-dozen items on the provisioning list. After dropping the provisions off at the boat, I used what time I had left to ride along the Mohawk, checking out Frankfort, Ilion, and Mohawk on my way here to Herkimer, where I stopped off at this dock, lead-line in hand, to check the depths alongside. I found it too shallow where we had tied last time, but with plenty of depth here in the last 60' of bulkhead. I studied the tie-up options and took some photos.

Sunset over Phoenix.

I did not have time to return to Utica for any more sightseeing there, opting instead to be back at the boat early so we could take the scooter to the very closest joint, Mcgill's Whiskey Tavern and Grill, for an early dinner. We left the lock at 4:30 so we could be back in the gate before 6. The food was decent, they had draft beer, and the place was surprisingly busy at that hour. We ate on the pleasant deck, with our friends Jake and Elwood Blues, looking a bit shop-worn.

We're along the Great Loop, but we are not in Joliet, Illinois. I don't know what Elwood and Jake are doing in Utica.

We were back through the gate before 6pm, and after the lock closed, I brought the scooter back across the canal to work on the battery terminals. The Dremel made short work of cutting off one of the ears of the U on each terminal, and all is right again. The scooter starts right up. I ran out of time to put Louise's scooter on the ground to sort out the rough running; we went to dinner two-up.

I opened the boarding gate wide in Fulton to load the e-bike and this chip came off. Another item for the Derecktor list.

Visiting these places five years apart drives home the reality that these towns continue to wither on the vine. The closures in Rome, the shuttered infrastructure along the Mohawk Valley, and the dearth of eateries and other services make it all palpable. Looking ahead to Little Falls, our next stop, I could find but a single restaurant that will be open during our stay, with the small handful of others dark two, three, or four nights per week. The situation is not helped by the recent closure of the centuries-old Remington Arms plant in Ilion, less than two miles from here and which I passed on my ride, putting 300 out of work.

Scofflaw. At Ancora! in Utica.

My itinerary had called for a single night here in Herkimer, assuming we could land here at all, and two nights in Little Falls, where the landscape is more interesting. But after assessing the restaurant situation there for the next two days, we opted to just spend another night here instead, and just a single night there.

Glass calm last night here in Herkimer. I love the reflections.

Yesterday we cruised down through Lock 19 and just seven miles to get here. I had sounded the dock, but the basin was still a question mark, and so once again I worked my way in dead slow. The big challenge was getting tied up with the very limited hard points; we have two lines around a single bollard, a bow line off some steel staple of unknown purpose, a stern line on a metal stake someone drove into the ground, and a stern safety tied off to the bottom of a fence post. While we were docking, the mate from the nearby tour boat came over to warn us about the shallow stuff, but I think really he was marveling at the gall of someone bringing a deep-draft boat alongside. The tour boat draws 18".

Our creative mooring skills improve every year.

I rode the e-bike around town yesterday and then stopped at Walmart for a few items. Last night we walked across the bridge to Mohawk and ate at Tren de Villa, a Mexican place in space formerly occupied by a railroad-themed bar and grill; the theming is all still in place. The food was good and plentiful, and they had just installed taps for drafts. Tomorrow we will move along to Little Falls, another familiar stop, and after that some new venues.