Early-morning light on the Erie Canalway Trail this morning. It’s a spectacular trail. It was paved to Lockport, with a few sections on traveled roads, then unpaved (granite dust) from Lockport to Albion.
I got a fairly early start this morning, leaving my hotel in North Tonawanda around 6:45 and peddling to Lockport, about 15 miles away, for coffee and breakfast. The coffee shop I stopped at first had great coffee, but only sweets; I couldn’t eat the entire cinnamon bun, even after scraping off most of the icing. I found Tom’s Diner across the canal and had a real breakfast there, accompanied by a mural of the Rolling Stones from the 1960s.
Note the Rolling Stones mural on the wall in this awesome diner, where everyone is “honey.”
Lockport was pretty amazing. I spent probably two hours learning about how the locks there work and the history of building—and rebuilding—them over the years. One set of the five early stone locks have been fully restored, as they were in 1825, though boats today use the newer concrete and steel locks known as Lock 34 and 35. This year is the 200th anniversary of completion of the Erie Canal, so there are various celebrations happening this summer and fall.
Shown here is the upper (double) lock that is used for raising and lowering boats today.
The early locks are known as the “Flight of Five.” It took boats about two hours to make it all the way through—raising or lowering boats a total of 50 to 60 feet in five locks. Each of those 1825 locks provided up to 12 feet of lift—any more would have been too much water pressure for the wooden gates (though they were massive and made of oak).
The locks raised (and lowered) boats over the Niagard escarpment (made famous by Niagara Falls). Originally there were two sets of these locks, but only one was maintained when the new Locks 34 and 35 were built in 1918. Operating the Flight of Five locks took a team of more than a dozen men; today a single operator manages Lock 34 and 35. These 1918 locks are still fully functional today.
The stone walls and restored oak-timber gates of the original Flight of Five locks from 1825—two hundred years ago, this year.
This video shows the lower lock (#34), which was built in 1918, being closed to allow 3 million gallons of water to flood in, raising the water level 25 to 30 feet for the boat that has entered.
Fun fact: Lockport also has the widest bridge in North America—399 feet wide with several streets on it. It’s appropriately known as the “Big Bridge.” I biked over it looking my real breakfast.
Following my visit to Lockport, including checking out a museum about the locks there, I biked on to Middleport, where I spent over an hour nursing iced tea in an air conditioned coffee shop, recovering (some) from the hot biking in full sun! I was riding into a headwind all day today, despite my west-to-east travel (which is supposed to be better, relative to wind).
View through the window of my favorite Middleport coffee shop—Alternative Grounds Caffe—as I recovered with a large glass of iced tea.
My next stop was the two of Medina, which is an awesome town. I locked my bike at an information booth (where the kind proprietor offered to keep an eye on it) and walked both sides of Main Street and a couple side streets. I had a great lunch and mocha frappe at a coffee shop there, lingering as long as I could justify before getting back on my bike for the last 15 miles or so.
Lunch at my favorite coffee shop in Medina: the Coffee Pot Cafe. I was joined by visitors to a bird feeder at Sapsucker Woods—via a live-cam from the Cornell Ornithology team!
When I biked my more epic 1900-mile ride from San Diego to Houston in 2011, I don’t remember getting as tired and sore!
On the last leg of my ride today, a passed this feature and had to stop for a photo. It’s a road that passes under the Erie Canal—the only place on the Canal where that occurs. Originally built in 1823, the tunnel was rebuilt several times as the Canal was widened. Carefully cut stones provide the strength to hold the water and earth above.
I made it to my planned destination of Albion by around 5 pm, having biked about 45 miles. I’m back from dinner at a pizza joint that was a 15-minute walk away. I’ll ride a similar distance tomorrow (if all goes as planned), getting to Jer’s cousin’s house in Pittsford sometime in the afternoon.