For my parents' 50th anniversary I rented us a boat on the Erie Canal and we all took the train out to east coast. Except my mom cancelled at the last minute due to extreme Heatdome fire risks at the homestead. But it was still fun!
Train travel in the time of the panini.
The full sleeper room was pretty comfortable. The roomette wasn't bad, but definitely tight for 2 people with carry-on luggage.
The toilet on the Lakeshore Limited roomette was... alarming.
But it did have great controls and a cool fold-out sink.
And the upper bunk was amazing, with its own window and a little storage nook. Serious capsule hotel vibes.
We picked up the boat in Macedon, NY. It's a widebeam, by UK standards, but the Erie is not a small canal. We couldn't take it out the first night, as it was having bow thruster problems, but that gave us time to go get groceries and settle in.
The Erie Canal has been upgraded many time, with the current system having mostly demolished the older ones. But there are still some sections of the mid-1800s version visible, this one serving as an overflow channel for one of the locks.
Before being given the boat, you go out on a training cruise/are-you-a-complete-idiot screening. (We passed.)
This gives you a chance to get used to going through locks, which is nice. We ended up doing 18 total lock passages, and got pretty good at them by the end.
This was my view for most of the week, puting along at about 6 knots.
This whole this being my idea, I did most of the piloting. Plus, new skills to learn!
Plus, I got to close a circle by wearing a Panama Canal tshirt on the Erie Canal after wearing an Erie Canal tshirt on the Panama Canal last year. So that was good.
We got to go through a double lock, which I found quite exciting. The doors sound exactly as ominous when they close as you want them too.
Got to go under I-90, which has served as an axis for all of my life. (Except the 2 years in Vancouver.)
Ruins of an aqueduct from one of the previous incarnations of the canal. The towpath was on top of the arches, and then the canal itself was in a wooden trough spanning the piers on the far side.
The weather was pretty great, except for a couple absolutely torrential rainstorms.
We went in the slightly less populated direction, but there were still towns regularly along the way, all with moorings offering power and water. Only once did we find them all full and had to push on to the next town.
Some days were hot and still.
Fireflies are real! We don't get them on the west coast. (Except for one that glows in its larval state, apparently.) I wasn't 100% sure they really existed before this.
A few times we had to wait for a lock, but usually they were open by the time we got them, having called ahead on the VHF.
One of the old locks is still there in Newark, so of course I had to go climb around it. Really no sign of the old canal beyond that, though. I thought a lot about the devastation and violence infrastructure upgrades can do to a city.
The lockmaster of lock 29.
A week after we picked up the boat, we were back at the marina and unloaded.
The next day vix and I checked out Niagara Falls, met![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eeyorerin for lunch, and flew home.
Train travel in the time of the panini.
The full sleeper room was pretty comfortable. The roomette wasn't bad, but definitely tight for 2 people with carry-on luggage.
The toilet on the Lakeshore Limited roomette was... alarming.
But it did have great controls and a cool fold-out sink.
And the upper bunk was amazing, with its own window and a little storage nook. Serious capsule hotel vibes.
We picked up the boat in Macedon, NY. It's a widebeam, by UK standards, but the Erie is not a small canal. We couldn't take it out the first night, as it was having bow thruster problems, but that gave us time to go get groceries and settle in.
The Erie Canal has been upgraded many time, with the current system having mostly demolished the older ones. But there are still some sections of the mid-1800s version visible, this one serving as an overflow channel for one of the locks.
Before being given the boat, you go out on a training cruise/are-you-a-complete-idiot screening. (We passed.)
This gives you a chance to get used to going through locks, which is nice. We ended up doing 18 total lock passages, and got pretty good at them by the end.
This was my view for most of the week, puting along at about 6 knots.
This whole this being my idea, I did most of the piloting. Plus, new skills to learn!
Plus, I got to close a circle by wearing a Panama Canal tshirt on the Erie Canal after wearing an Erie Canal tshirt on the Panama Canal last year. So that was good.
We got to go through a double lock, which I found quite exciting. The doors sound exactly as ominous when they close as you want them too.
Got to go under I-90, which has served as an axis for all of my life. (Except the 2 years in Vancouver.)
Ruins of an aqueduct from one of the previous incarnations of the canal. The towpath was on top of the arches, and then the canal itself was in a wooden trough spanning the piers on the far side.
The weather was pretty great, except for a couple absolutely torrential rainstorms.
We went in the slightly less populated direction, but there were still towns regularly along the way, all with moorings offering power and water. Only once did we find them all full and had to push on to the next town.
Some days were hot and still.
Fireflies are real! We don't get them on the west coast. (Except for one that glows in its larval state, apparently.) I wasn't 100% sure they really existed before this.
A few times we had to wait for a lock, but usually they were open by the time we got them, having called ahead on the VHF.
One of the old locks is still there in Newark, so of course I had to go climb around it. Really no sign of the old canal beyond that, though. I thought a lot about the devastation and violence infrastructure upgrades can do to a city.
The lockmaster of lock 29.
A week after we picked up the boat, we were back at the marina and unloaded.
The next day vix and I checked out Niagara Falls, met
eeyorerin for lunch, and flew home.