Bicycling New England, the
Erie Canal, & around Lake Ontario 2005
Rome to Syracuse, NY

July 7, 2005
Distance 47.8 Miles

Today we again woke up to threatening skies. It looked like it was trying to rain. The Weather Channel showed that there was rain in the area but it was south of Rome and headed northeast. We ate breakfast, loaded the bicycle and headed for a museum that was about 3 miles away. We arrived at 8:45 AM and waited for the employees to arrive which they did about 9:00 AM. We entered the gift shop only to find out that the museum did not open until 10:00 AM. We decided to hit the road to Syracuse. We decided to ride on the Erie Canal towpath which went at the back of the museum. The bicycle path was terrible, large stones which made the bicycle go every which way. We changed our route and headed onto the road which ran parallel to the Erie Canal. For the next 20 miles we traveled on roads that were next to the Erie Canal and we were able to see the canal in many places.

We arrived in Chittenango and stopped for a good quick lunch. We then rode over to the Post Office to mail a package, on the way we had our picture taken by the high school photography teacher. We then rode back to Chittenango Landing where they have a museum where they could dry dock canal boats that needed repairs. The system worked like this, they would open the gates to the dry dock and water from the canal would fill the dry dock. The boat to be repaired would enter the dry dock and they would open a door which allowed the water in the dry dock to empty into a creek which was lower than the bottom of the dry dock. The water entered the dry dock by gravity and left the dry dock by gravity. They had a place where they built new canal boats as well as three dry docks where they repaired leaking canal boats.

After we left Chittenango Landing we started down another road parallel to the canal only to find it ended in ½ mile. We turned around and got on the bicycle path that was built on the old canal towpath. We spent about 10 miles on this beautiful bicycle path.

We came to the end of the bicycle path in Syracuse and there were no signs which gave any indication of which way to go, right or left. Two choices and we went the wrong way and got lost again. We finally bought a street map of Syracuse and were able to determine how to get back to the route through town as well as how to find our evening motel. We ended up traveling on 4 and 6 lane city streets until we were back on the route.

After we checked in to the motel Jim walked to a bicycle shop and bought a water bottle. After showers we walked to a restaurant and then came back to the motel to finish our computer work.