Day 199 (A note from Otto)

Daily stats
Start: 7:00 AM - Conojahari, NY
Finish: 7:00 PM - Little Falls, NY
Time: 8;00 (4 hours in little falls)
Daily dist: 21 miles
Total dist: 3700+
Companions: Otto
Weather: Mostly cloudy, high of 80, rain late in day
Notes: Little Falls is worth the stop

Hi everybody, this is Otto filling in for Jake. He’s too tired to write tonight… I think I wore him out.

It was such a lovely camp ... why did we have to leave so early.

I woke up this morning at 6 like any normal person might, but of course Jake had already been up for two hours. After about an hour of preparation we hit the water leaving our lovely campsite island at lock 14. We made good time through the first lock of day, lock 15, as we paddled on placid water. On our way to lock 16 we decided to take a break near what used to be an aqueduct and walked through the shallow water covering it’s ruins.

Lock 17 has been my favorite of the locks, and also the largest of the ones I’ve traveled through. The lock had a different gate than other locks on the canal, instead of opening up outwards, this one raised and lowered the gates. After a forty foot lift we left the lock and decided we wanted to visit the town next to it. The seawall made it difficult to land near the lock, so we paddled a little farther to the municipal marina. There the employee told us of a good spot to camp at so that we could beat out the rain that would come later on in the day.

We had to paddle under the lift gate still dripping water.

40 foot lift in lock E17

Excited about having a dry place to sleep tonight we set out to the town of Little Falls (mainly because Jake was craving ice cream). A quick walk led us to Ol’ Sals, a place that had a little of everything, so Jake could have his ice cream. After eating our ice cream we went out toward the lock to see the whole thing close up. Next to the lock are the Gneiss cliffs, which provided some fun rock clambering for a little. We met the lock master on duty, and had an interesting discussion with him. He left us with advice to go to this good pizza place in town. We eventually found the pizza place, but it was closed. As we walked down main street, we asked two girls where else we could get pizza. They both recommended different places (Jake thought they were cute). We ate pizza at one of the girl’s recommended spots then headed back to the marina where we had tied our boats up and headed about a mile to a boat ramp that has a large gazebo, and set up camp. Jake started dozing off as the rain lulled him to sleep, so he suggested I write the blog tonight. I did and I hope this isn’t too bad. All in all this was a great day on the canal.

My favorite kind of pizza...LARGE

A dry spot in the rain