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| View of Little Falls |
July 4, 2012. On our
second day of this year’s Erie Canal trip, a few of us walked into St.
Johnsville to have breakfast at Grandma’s luncheonette. I ordered the pancakes and received two
pancakes that were as big as hubcaps and a good three inches thick as
well. After gorging on Grandma’s
delicious homemade fare, we returned to Little Falls to launch for the day.
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| Little Falls |
When we arrived, the “kayak motel” was open
and our kayaks were waiting for us. I
climbed up into the converted train station—now a storage facility—and began
the work of hauling the kayaks to the launch.
As I grabbed the first kayak, I turned to see two strangers standing at
the door of the storage room. Without
any hesitation or even introductions, one of them said to me “How can we
help?” They immediately grabbed the
kayak from me and began hauling it to the launch. There were others helping too--the
harbormaster, local volunteers, and seemingly anyone else who just happened to
be there. The hospitality of this town
was incredible.
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| Little Falls - Our new "Favorite" town along the Canal |
When most of the kayaks were in the water, Chris called me
over and introduced me to Dave, the local high-school technology teacher. His students had built a “jet-powered” kayak
which we had seen in the storage shed.
Dave was also up on the local history and geology and he had offered to
paddle with us for a while and give us a guided tour. He didn’t demo the jet kayak, but he did give
us a local perspective on some of the sites and he gave us the low-down on Lock
17.
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| Lock 17 is a 40 ft. drop and has the only "Guillotine" style door |
Lock 17 is the single largest lock on the Erie Canal with a
drop of 40 feet. It is the only lock on
the canal that uses a guillotine door and when it was built, it was the largest
lock in the world.
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| Leaving Lock 17 |
We were also introduced to crew of the Urger, a 111 year-old
tug boat that the Canal Corp. operates as a floating museum. The Urger was heading out toward Albany and
then down to New York City to give tours of the tug. Captain Wendy wanted to make sure she knew
where we would be so the tug didn’t throw off too much wake for us when they
passed by. (Yes, the people up here are
actually that nice.)
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| The Urger- We would see her again the next day. |
After a great morning of paddling, we stopped at the
Herkimer homestead to east lunch and get some shade. The day was very hot, and very humid. After passing through Lock 16, we were just
about done for the day.
When we arrived
at St. Johnsville, we were exhausted from the heat. Lucky for us, the Parkside drive-in was only
a short distance from our campground. We
sampled some delicious home-made ice cream and decided that we would go back to
the Parkside for more ice cream every day—which we did.