Canal boating in New York - one family's tale

Canal boating on the Erie, Cayuga-Seneca, and Oswego Canals in New York State

June 19-26, 1999.

We set out on our first canaling experience with a hired 34 foot canal boat Oneida from Mid-Lakes Navigation.

We arrived at their facility in Cold Spring Harbor, just north of Syracuse, NY about noon. Officially we weren't supposed to get the boat until 2 pm. However, they were done cleaning the interior, so they let us transfer food from our cooler to the refrigerator so we could head off to the market to do some more shopping. There's a large Wegmans supermarket a few miles away.

The boat was well prepared and immaculate. It had a full load of fuel and water, and sufficient propane to run the stove, hot water heater, and furnace. We didn't anticipate needing the furnace as the weather was quite hot.

All linens, blankets, pillows, towels, bicycles, etc. were supplied as listed on their web site and brochure.

Why? Why did I write all this?

In 1998 we started investigating canal boating in the U.S. We had visited some of the Erie canal locks at the Waterford flight a few years ago and were interested in learning about peoples' experiences boating on the canals of New York State. Other than commercial and lock web sites, I found only one personal journal by Dennis Bisson who described traveling from Oswego, NY to Troy, NY. I decided that I would add my 2 cents worth after our excursion. Here it is... Paul (& Ginnie) Smith, Colchester, Vermont.

A number of the pictures have enlargements available in the 1999 collection. Run the cursor over the picture; if an enlargement is available, the cursor will change. To return from an enlargement, click on the back button on your browser or click on the picture.

How?

Photos were developed by Kodak through Costco.
Snapshots were scanned with an HP PhotoSmart scanner.
Some of the 2000 photos were taken with an Olympus D-450Z digital camera.
Initial photo editing and JPEG conversions were done with Adobe PhotoDeluxe 1.1. Later work was done with IBM PerfectPhoto and Irfvanview.
1999 web pages originally generated by Adobe PageMill 3.0. They were updated and the 2000 web pages created with IBM HomePage Builder.
Maps from DeLorme Street Atlas.
GPS breadcrumb track overlays by Ron Henderson's G7towin (1999) and some homegrown software (2000).