All of the little villages and towns along the Erie had done what they could to make their hamlets inviting and accessible to boaters. We were amazed that the city of Utica did not have any real facilities along its shore. The view from the canal was very industrial. We passed one restaurant that had a dock for canal traffic, but it was all closed up. We did see this pretty tiny waterfall right in the heart of the city on the north shore.
Lock 20 would be our highest point on the journey at 421 feet above sea level. It is located just outside the village of Marcy. Up until this point, we had been fighting the turbulence inside the lock basins as they filled rapidly with water to lift the boat. Once through this lock we would begin to ride the more gentle down elevator toward the lower level of Lake Ontario. The lock is situated inside a grove of evergreens. As Niki steered us from the spillway into the basin, there appeared to be a short thick log floating across our bow from starboard to port, between the open lock gates in the middle of the channel. As we got closer to the gates, the log suddenly reversed direction and floated back to starboard. When we came alongside it we could see that it was a large beaver loitering just outside the lock. He was not at all intimidated by us as we coasted past into the lock. His slow cruise past the boat gave us a great view through the water at his fully stretched body and big fat paddle of a tail.
The city of Rome has spent some money for a small park and a long seawall for boaters to tie up. Here is a shot of that area from the web.
Just beyond the west end of this park the Mohawk River spills down into the canal from the center of the city.
We passed a number of state work boats on this stretch of the canal. One small tug was pushing a barge full of tree stumps up front while towing a barge full of dredge pipes behind. All afternoon the wind and clouds began to fill in. The predicted weather front was moving in. The downhill rides in Locks 21 and 22 were as smooth as could be. The water drains out from the bottom of the lock basin when locking down, so the only turbulence created is outside in the spillway. It was a different view pulling into to a lock of water and looking over the edge of the gates to the lower countryside beyond.
A few miles past Lock 22 we turned the corner into Verona Beach. We could see beyond the canal past the breakwater and out into Onieda Lake. The wind was bowing a steady 20 MPH with gusts up to 35 MPH. Whitecaps were visible far out to the horizon. We decided to stay at Holmes Marina, which sits back in a deep pocket behind a large grove of trees. The trees shielded us from all but the highest gusts of wind.
We walked into town and crossed over the last few feet of the canal on the Highway 13 bridge into Sylvan Beach. We had to hold onto our hats to keep them from blowing away in the unprotected winds coming straight off the lake. Sylvan Beach is an amusement park town on the eastern shore of Onieda. It felt more like a ghost town to us. All the rides were shut down for the winter. The wind was whipping sand off the beach and making small dunes in the middle of the street. The only thing missing was a few tumbleweeds.
As we walked back across the bridge, it felt like rain was starting to come down. It turned out to be a different kind of water falling from the sky. The wind was whipping so strongly across those whitecaps out on the lake, that it was lifting water off the lake, up into the air, and onto us. All through our early dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, we kept talking about the high winds and wondering if it would calm down enough by morning for us to attempt the 20 mile crossing of the lake tomorrow. We decided to turn in early, and if the winds and chop abated, to try for an early morning crossing of Oneida Lake.
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