Tues July 13: Ft Edward to Whitehall NY town wall

 In which we have to duck ...

Another day on the Champlain Canal, and our last full day of locks.  I had the weekly 2-hour work call in the morning so Rick rattled around the boat alternatively drinking coffee, reading, fixing or cleaning something.  He does have trouble sitting still.  

He even used the panini press to make breakfast sandwiches. I don’t think there can be many boats out there with panini presses.

We finally dropped our lines around noon, and headed to Lock 8, which was within sight of the Ft. Edward free wall.  Once again the lock master was waiting for us and we had our private lock experience!

Rick’s balls are getting squashed!

This canal has a LOT of very short bridges - we have a general idea of how tall we are, but Rick likes to get nervous and stand on the back of the boat to double check.   We did get pretty close on a couple of these!

Rick can almost touch!

This one made me nervous - doesn't it look like a guillotine???  There is something about the solidity of it that makes it look lower than it is.  I had to close my eyes as I drove under.  That's the kind of co-captain I am.

The remainder of the day saw us go through locks 9 and 11, which were the first locks to start lowering us back down to Lake Champlain.   A major railroad corridor between Canada and the US runs right along the canal, and all along the Hudson River valley, and we saw multiple trains traveling both north and south along the tracks.  The border may be closed to non-essential travel, but there sure is a lot of train traffic between the two countries. 

It’s beginning to feel like Vermont-Red barns and cows!!

Very narrow - and there is this optical illusion that the water falls away off a cliff at the end...

We ended the day at our final free wall at Whitehall, NY.  Once again the town had provided a place to tie up with power and water.  

Hello Whitehall-how did you know I’m a sucker for a red building set in greenery?!

Once tied up, Rick took a walk, while I worked, and found another potentially cute town that seemed to be shutting down.  We literally could not find any place to spend our money. Oh well.  

Whitehall and Vergennes have an on-going disagreement about where the Navy was truly born.  While the idea was dreamed up in Whitehall NY, the actual first boats were built in Vergennes VT.

While Rick was out walking Melanie had a pleasant surprise.  Another BOAT showed up and tied up on the wall next to us.   It was such a surprise not to be alone! 

 The boat was crewed by a family of 2 grandparents, 2 parents, 2 children and a dog.  We chatted with them some and found out that they had been in many of the same places that we had - NY for the 4th of July, and in Newport.  They live on Lake Champlain and gave us a list of places to visit. It was fun to see people again.  I had kind of made up this scenario where we were the only boaters left alive.

I had fun with camera - the reflections were amazing...