We had a slow start today, partly because the breakfast restaurant we planned to visit, Funk 'n Waffle, didn't open till 9:00 AM. And since we didn't leave the hotel till 9:30 . . . well, we really weren't on the road till 10:30 or so. Our first stop was back at the Erie Canal Museum so Jerry could buy some postcards (very quaint but very old-fashioned!), and then we headed east.
It started out flat but got a little hillier as we made our way to the outer limits and over the interstate to the canal towpath, initially following the original course of the now-covered alignment but then veering southward along more friendly roads. After 6-1/2 miles, we were at Butternut Creek and on our way.
After winding through Syracuse for about 6-1/2 miles, we finally reached the towpath.
It was nice to be on the trail again. Our entry to the city had been along a semi-industrial corridor, and our exit had been more residential in nature. But either way, the sound of the crushed stone, the water, and the sights along the way were a real pleasure.
An old bowstring truss. Not as old as the Whipple truss we saw in Palmyra, but still pretty old. I estimated it to be from the 1930s.
At MP 17, in Chittenango, we fell in with Vince, a local cyclist who made sure we didn't miss the restored drydocks on the far side of the canal. We would have missed it but for him and the historic markers . . . which, today, we were diligently stopping to read.
Hard to see in this picture, but on the far side of the canal are restored drydocks for repairing canal boats. There were maybe a dozen of these along the canal, but these are the only ones uncovered to date.
He rode with us as far as Canastota, where we stopped for Gatorade, and Jerry made a run to a grocery store (ALDI) for fruit and trail mix. That jaunt, a "short" way down the road, became a 3/4-mile sidetrack each way! Short means different things to different people. But Canastota made us feel welcome.
The town of Canastota took some pride in their part of the trail and erected this nice gateway . . . that, on a bike, was not easy to get to!
Shortly after passing through Canastota, we crossed another aqueduct carrying the canal over a local stream. This picture, taken from the towpath, gives some sense of what that must have felt like. You can see the stream crossed in the distance.
After Canastota, we were on a mix of local roads and towpath that eventually led us north to the Barge Canal, the final widening and still-operating part of the Erie Canal. Along the way, we also met Ken and Francie, a doctor and nurse who had flown with their Co-Motion tandem, equipped with S and S Couplers, from Seattle just to bike the Erie Canal. Like us, they were headed for Rome for the night.
Sometimes it just didn't make any sense to ride the trail, especially when it's a single track like this and there's a nicely paved road nearby . . . which I jumped on for about a mile!
Since 1883, the entire New York canal system has been free to use, allowing this little, tiny boat to fill this massively huge lock so it can continue downstream.
We arrived in Rome, late by our standards, at 4:30 after a 48-mile day! But we lingered a bit along the way. It was also super hot today, 90°F! Tomorrow is expected to be cooler . . . and shorter!
Today's ride: 48 miles (77 km) Total: 1,020 miles (1,642 km)
