Portage to Portage Paddling Project
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • Where to from here?
  • Equipment List
  • Who's Following Jake?
  • Trip Log and Location
  • Where I'm going
  • Calendar
  • Links
  • Photos
  • Extras
  • Best of the Blog

Day 196

6/19/2010

1 Comment

 
Daily stats
Start: 9:00 AM - Entrance to Erie Canal - Troy, NY
Finish: 10:00 PM - Outside of Schenectady, NY
Time: 13:00 Hours
Daily dist: 23 miles
Total dist: 3600+ miles
Companions: Pam joined Bill and I through the flight of 5 locks in the morning
Weather: Hot mostly sunny and windy
Notes: It took an unusually long time to go thorough the first five locks because they were short staffed today.

In only about two miles of horizontal distance, the “Flight of Five” locks at the east end of the Erie canal lifts boaters, I’m told, higher than any other series of locks in the world. To experience this unique feature of the canal, and to share a bit of my journey, Pam joined Bill and I at the put in this morning. By 9:00 we were all launched and ready to go, however, before we entered the canal Pam and Bill suggested that we take a quick side trip to check out a local waterfall. A few minutes of paddling up a branch of the Mohawk river brought us to a very beautiful channel wide water fall. After grabbing a couple quick pictures we headed back out to the canal and resumed our journey west.

Picture
Pam
Picture
Pam in the lock
Picture
Because of a short staffing issue, the locks took much longer to negotiate than normal and we ended up not clearing the top lock until 1:00 PM. Bill and I knew we’d never do the twenty odd miles we’d planned until after dark but we wanted to put in the miles so we settled in and made it happen. It wasn’t just a mindless grind though, the area is stunningly beautiful and our route was marked by two more locks. To mark our last day on the water together, Bill and I decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the “Jumping Jacks” burger stand which is located right off the canal. The place was crowded with tourists and locals alike all enjoying one of the first truly nice weekend days in a while.

With bellies full of excellent burger stand food, Bill and I pressed on to and through Lock No. 8 before pulling over at a local community park to camp for the night.

Picture
Bill at rapids
1 Comment
TREVOR DEWHIRST
6/21/2010 12:20:08 am

hi,jake.there is a five rise locks on the leeds and liverpool canal, near bingley west yorkshire .england fished there before coming to the states.all the best and safe paddling.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Best of the Blog
    Freezing temps, theives, pepper spray, manatees,  gators, & tornados.
    Get up to date by reading blog highlights from the trip so far.

    Picture
    Photo by Michael Franklin

    Author

    Jake Stachovak
    The Portage to Portage Paddling Project guy
    .

    SPONSORS

    Aqua Adventures
     
    Seda Kayak

    Kokatat

    Werner

    North Face

    Snap Dragon

    Nigel Foster Designs

    Seal Line

    MSR

    .

    Need help with the lingo?  Click here to go to the Portage to Portage blog vocabulary site.

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    May 2012
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009


Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.