Author: Jackie Schanz

We start the day bright and early and get to the Medina Lift Bridge at 8 am, the agreed upon time for the opening with the bridge tender. The bridge tender is a bit late, so for 20 minutes we idle beside the bridge and watch some women in the canal park participating in a…

The lift bridge operators start at 7 am. We arrive at 7:30 am. The bridge promptly opens. At the lift bridges, you see what it spans. Sometimes it is a town, sometimes it is just a few buildings and sometimes it is just a road. Its always something though! 😁 In Broadsport, one of the…

Our trip, this day, is only 20 miles to the quaint town of Fairport. While we could have traveled further and knocked off more miles, our goal is to stop and explore different areas along the way. We pass through 2 locks today, 29 and 30. To be honest, locking is getting tiresome and I…

It is another beautiful day as we leave Winter Harbor and travel west on the Oneida River. We travel to the Three River area in which, imagine this, three rivers meet (just like in Pittsburgh!). The Oneida, which we are on, will meet with the Oswego and Seneca Rivers. We will continue on the Erie…

It is a beautiful, but very HOT Saturday on the Erie Canal. Our plan this day is to leave Little Falls, head to Sylvan Beach to anchor, float in the Oneida Lake, and then find a marina for the night. Sylvan Beach dock wall has no power hook ups, so tying up to public wall…

We say goodbye to the Amsterdam River Link Park, their ski jump and their ski boats, and head to Little Falls. We will pass through 7 locks today and one guard gate. Each lock works the same and given the number we have gone through, they all start to blur together. Contrary to how it…

The Erie Canal The Erie Canal, at 363 miles long, was built between 1817-1825 and connects the Atlantic Seaboard to the Great Lakes. It was spearheaded by New York Governor DeWitt Clinton. Skeptics called it “Clinton’s Ditch”. Even Thomas Jefferson called the project “just short of madness” and refused any federal money for its development….

We head out early Tuesday morning to head to Waterford, NY where we will spend two nights before beginning our trek through the Erie Canal. On our journey today, we pass by two Hudson River Lighthouses. There actually is not much river traffic on this Tuesday, which we quite enjoy! Even in Albany, New York’s…

The further up the Hudson, the terrain changes a bit and we encounter rocky hills and cliffs. The bridges travel into the hills while trains pass through. On this day, our travels up the Hudson take us past West Point. We travel north and encounter a very scenic lighthouse., framed by the Catskills. We make…

We bid a fond farewell to New York early Sunday morning. Not many of the ferries are running yet so the New York Harbor is relatively calm. We enjoy a very scenic cruise on this beautiful day and see additional interesting sights of New York and New Jersey that we didn’t see by land. Further…