Day 28, 6.23.18 Rome and beyond!

Saturday brings rain and cooler temps with a stiff east wind. With a late start we visit the Rome Historical Society Museum, which is quite impressive for a city of this size. It's a quiet day there, and the curator personally shows us around. Rome exists where it does as the 'Oneida Carrying Place', or the height of land between the Mohawk river flowing east to Albany and the Hudson; and Woods River, flowing west then north into Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence Seaway. Anything carried by boat was carried overland about two miles from one watershed to another. This was important militarily, as a route for the french between French Canada and their colony in Luisiana on the Mississippi, for the American Colonists getting to the rich farmlands of Ohio and beyond, for the British and territory they held and wanted to keep from the Americans and French, and for the Native Americans who lived here. Treaties were made and broken and battles fought. Tis a history well worth learning about. 

Portage of bateaux at the Oneida Carrying Place

Gary absorbed in the museum

Jervis, one of our pioneering civil engineers started here in Rome, then went on to engineer the Boston and New York water systems, railroads, canals, and more. 

Radiators were built here, for cars, aeroplanes,  dirigibles, trucks, etc. 

About 3pm we cast off and motored down a very straight canal for about four miles, but upon arrival at the lock, we were denied passage, as we couldn't complete both Lock 21 and 22 before the lockmaster's quitting time.

This journey is actually on the NY State Barge Canal. But here is a small piece of the old Erie Canal, that we were able to motor in to. It's all silted in and blocked by a dam, but we're actually on the real Erie Canal! 

So here we are, tied to the wall alongside a very big motor cruiser awaiting morning. There's a park here, and we meet Peter, a cyclist on his way from Seneca Falls to Albany. Being fellow cyclists, we invite him aboard for dinner.