8 Aug. 2011 Today we left Niagara Falls and drove up to Lockport, New York about 30 miles away. Why Lockport you say…to cruise the Erie Canal of course. Lockport has the only set of two locks that are left on the 363 miles of the Erie Canal and it was just too close to pass up. Our goal for a parking location was again with the Elks and it proved to be a great spot. The parking lot for the Elks in Niagara Falls was a parking lot that they shared with a large Factory Outlet complex. Yes, they had a great 30amp electrical hook-up and were great people but this location is different. First off the Elks location here in Lockport is about 3 miles outside of town, the town is much smaller, it has a very famous Erie Canal running right through the middle of it, and there are 4 cement pads with a good 30amp service just for our comfort.
It’s still amazes us how much the economy has hurt this summer’s tourism. Looking back on our trip so far, Chicago is the only place that the streets, tourist’s offices, tourist buses, and tourist hot spots showed things were good, not hot but good. Even Niagara Falls was down considerably. At times around the falls, it looked busy enough, but 200 yards away it was like a ghost town.
Well enough….we’re here and we’re going to enjoy it all. After parking the coach and hooking up , we drove into town to see which Canal tour we could get on. There are only two tours going out each day now and the first one was just leaving the dock so we purchased our tickets for the next one 2 1/2 hours away. To kill a little time we drove into town to explore the streets and see what kind of “trouble” we could get into. Again the town was empty of people even in the visitor center. We were there by ourselves. Following our time in the VS we stepped outside and found a tour bus with a lady driver sitting in one of the seats visiting with a friend…. As we walked up she got all excited and invited us to get out of the rain and and take a free tour of the town with her. Well we didn’t have anything else to do for the next couple of hours so we jumped aboard. It was a good tour and “Debbie” was a great tour operator that really liked her job.
It’s still amazes us how much the economy has hurt this summer’s tourism. Looking back on our trip so far, Chicago is the only place that the streets, tourist’s offices, tourist buses, and tourist hot spots showed things were good, not hot but good. Even Niagara Falls was down considerably. At times around the falls, it looked busy enough, but 200 yards away it was like a ghost town.
Well enough….we’re here and we’re going to enjoy it all. After parking the coach and hooking up , we drove into town to see which Canal tour we could get on. There are only two tours going out each day now and the first one was just leaving the dock so we purchased our tickets for the next one 2 1/2 hours away. To kill a little time we drove into town to explore the streets and see what kind of “trouble” we could get into. Again the town was empty of people even in the visitor center. We were there by ourselves. Following our time in the VS we stepped outside and found a tour bus with a lady driver sitting in one of the seats visiting with a friend…. As we walked up she got all excited and invited us to get out of the rain and and take a free tour of the town with her. Well we didn’t have anything else to do for the next couple of hours so we jumped aboard. It was a good tour and “Debbie” was a great tour operator that really liked her job.
With Debbie’s help we walked through the 2 hours quickly and then made our way back to the dock for our cruise. Lockport Locks has two tour boats and for $26 we enjoyed a great hour and a half ride through the double locks and canal. A lot of the Erie Canal was built by blasting out the 20 foot high stone walls with gun powder left over from the War of 1812. The original canal was enlarged twice up to today. The use of the canal has changed considerably with the commerical barge changing places with the pleasure boating crowd.
The total rise over the 363 miles of canal is 570 feet once it reaches the Great Lakes from the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean. Today while we were in locks 34 and 35 we had a rise and fall of 49 feet and all that was done by closing both doors on the locks and allowing the water to flood in and out without any help from pumps. Nothing has changed in that regard since the opening of the canal.