Really just a nice day today. Woke up earlier than usual and sat watching the sun come up through the pines with my hot cup of tea. A little breakfast, some time to read the comics, check messages and all that, before it was time to hit the road. Just felt a need to be out and about for some reason today, and lucky for me it was a nice day to do that.

    Checked in at Fort Klock first off and actually found a real person there. Unfortunately she was able to tell me that they didn't actually open up for the season until Memorial Day Weekend, so that was a big disappointment. Drove away not knowing what to do about that since it had been a long drive just to get here to see it. Wasn't long though before I realized that it would be easy to come back here for a day or two after the dance in Oswego in two weeks. I could come down here spend a good day seeing every thing and still make it into Lexington, Kentucky before the next dance on the 8th of June. So now I feel good again.

   Ended up over in Little Falls again this afternoon. Had wanted to go back to see more of the town and explore a little bit more around the 'Falls', thinking that there had to be a good story there. As it turns out, it is the eastern terminus to the Erie Canal. Found that you had to do one of those  "go right in order to go left" kind of things to get on the bridge over to 'Moss Island' which is where the start of the canal is. This island is at the base of the original falls, which it turns out aren't all that little, being more than a mile long with a drop of 40 vertical feet. The original canal was built so that early river traffic could make it past the falls and continue on up the Mohawk River. Once built however, many people decided that it would be a great idea to just keep digging a canal all the way over to the Great Lakes. What was original a canal 40' wide by 4' deep eventually ended up being a minimum of 75' wide and 12' deep. Not big enough for ocean going craft, but more than large enough for common tug and barge traffic today.

    Parked the truck right where the end of the falls are and walked down to the last lock in the system. (They start counting from the west end evidently, so this was lock #17). What once took 7 locks to get boats up and over the falls is now done in a single 40' deep lock. Pretty quiet boating day so nobody locked through while I watched, but it was neat to see the whole thing. Walked back along the old original tow path for a couple miles. Of course it is all built up along that area now, but it was easy to visualize what it must have once looked like. Wish I had worn my tennis shoes instead of my boat shoes, but oh well. One sign along the path said that when the glaciers from the last ice age finally started to melt, the falls there in town would have been bigger than what Niagara Falls are now. Seems hard to believe until you look at these huge scoured out holes in the granite of Moss Island that were evidently done when boulders the size of trucks were spun around and around for years at a time. You don't spin 40 tons of granite around with just a trickle of water. Looked like huge Indian Metate's, just needed a little corn for grinding. About the only downside to the whole day was getting that grade school song 'Working on the Erie Canal' stuck in my head while walking. Finally had to get in the truck and turn the head banger music on extra loud, in this case Jethro Tull, way up.

    Picked up a roasted chicken and fresh loaf of sour dough bread at the grocery store before heading home, so that, along with a fresh pineapple that has been ripening for a couple days,  was dinner for the night. One of my all time favorite meals. The best part is that I boned out all the rest of the chicken and it's going to be time for some chicken and dumplings tomorrow evening. Yum!

   Will most likely stay put tomorrow. It's time to get some laundry done again and I need to fill the other propane tank up as well as do some routine maintenance and cleaning stuff. Talked to the owner here today and he said it might be worth while to drive up into the Adirondacks for a day and look around. He said it was mighty pretty up there, so it might be something to do in a day or two.