Thurs Sept 16: Fairport to Palmyra free dock

 In which we turn around ...

Early this morning Dana delivered homemade bread and Erie champagne, then we helped them cast off before going on a bike ride.

Journey, executing a flawless turn, in order to head under the bridge for adventures further west.  We will try to meet up later in Brewerton, where they are also leaving their boat for the winter. 

We rode about 6 miles out along the Erie Canal Trail, until we came up on the Richardson's Canal House - where we had dinner the other night.  You can see it across the water, along with its history panel.

Once off the dock in Fairport we headed east, back the way we had come.  We will see the same waters and locks, but will stay in different (podunk) towns just to stir things up a bit.  I think we are both ready to start the beginning of the end of this boating season.

These last few locks are just falling apart - I guess they may have to redo 1-2 each year.  What a lot of work to keep this whole system working.

In mid-afternoon we arrived in Palmyra.  The town free wall is a small little pond/park at the edge of the canal. It's so small that one hand drawn map pretty much says it all!

We stayed at the edge of our pond/dock as they were doing some sort of water science involving a water 'drone'!

Famous Palmyrians - just so you know it wasn't always podunk.

I was quite taken with how much the (only) downtown street looked like a movie set.

At the intersection of Church and Main Streets is one of Palmyra's claim to fame (according to a 1938 Ripley's designation) - an intersection which features a church on each of its four corners.

I'd be more likely to visit its cute BnB.

Back to our own BnB, I climbed up to a nearby bridge (blessings upon us - it was bike/ped only) to get a picture that shows our little pocket, right off the canal.  Fortunately, there is now so little traffic that we will not be waked during the night.  Nor KILLED with TRAIN NOISE.  From where we are the train whistles sound like they should - very far away and faintly romantic.

Just a reminder to myself, and to all four of our readers - this canal was once the IT GIRL.  Here is what Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about the Erie Canal:

 "Surely, the water of this canal must be the most fertilizing of all fluids; for it causes towns - with their masses of brick and stone, their churches and theatres, their business and hubbub, their luxury and refinement, their gay dames and polished citizens - to spring up, till, in time, the wondrous stream may flow between two continuous lines of buildings, thorough one thronged street, from Buffalo to Albany.

With the help of boaters, and others, the Erie is working on its second life.....