A really pleasant day again today. Nice and warm, wonderful sunshine and once again, just a hint of a breeze. Wandered back into town this afternoon looking for a small electrical part for the model railroad empire. Checked Radio Shack, but there was nothing there that would really work for me.

   Not all was a waste though, as it gave me a chance to wander around the old part of downtown Johnstown and take a few pictures. It's a wonderful old town with a lot of nice old stone and brick buildings. It is unfortunate that old sections of towns like that are slowly dying out while everyone runs to the local mall to do all of their shopping. Don't get me wrong, I am as guilty as everyone else when it comes to going to a big box store for a lot of my shopping needs. I wish more communities would do more to make these old areas more appealing to shoppers looking for those little shops that don't try to cater to everyone. I have been to a few that have managed pretty well. It's always fun to see an area like that alive with people again. Today it was pretty much just me and a couple sad stores that are just barely hanging on. Did have a nice lunch while down there at least.

   Another thing I managed to do while in town was to remember to make a few phone calls while the cell phone actually worked, because it certainly doesn't way out here where the campground is. Talked to a couple family members and a good friend there in Colorado. Heard it was raining there today, good news for all of those people fighting the forest fire up near Ft Collins somewhere.

   Tried to find the lake I walked around the other day with the idea of throwing the canoe on it for an hour or so. But it seems that you can't always get lost in the same place from one day to the next. No big deal anyway, stopped off at a trail in one of the state forests just east of here and took a nice walk for an hour or so. Made sure to do a really good 'tick check' this evening once back at the trailer. The one thing no one really wants to get is tick fever or worse, lime disease. Either one of them just sounds down right yucky!

    Wanted to announce a new country has appeared in my readership list. Malta joined the 6 other countries, besides the USA, that have had at least one person view my Blog. Whether it was by accident or design, welcome to you if you happen to visit again.

   Here are a few pictures from one of my walks along the Erie Canal the other day.

This is all that is left of the 'Little Falls' that the town of the same name was named after. It was also the reason that the first canal and lock system in the area were built. Once that few miles of canal were open and working well, someone had the bright idea to continue on all the way to Lake Erie.

One of the many brick buildings and factories that can still be found along the original Mohawk River just below the falls. Many factories were built here in order to take advantage of the power that could be generated by the water as it fell from a high elevation to a lower one. Even today there is a small hydro-electric power plant just down stream from here that uses the 40 feet of elevation drop to run it's generators.

 

A view from the tow path looking at one of the cuts in solid granite that had to be made in order to punch the canal through. The idea of busting out nearly a mile of canal through a 60' high ridge and more than 45' wide just boggles my mind. They probably had explosives of some kind at that time, but I saw no remainders of old drill holes they would of cut to pack explosives into in order to break the rock apart. Even if they did use them, they still would of had to clear all the rubble away by hand. There were certainly no track-hoes or front-end-loaders way back then. Just lots of guys with shovels. 

Another view of the canal a little further to the west.

Lock #17 in the present lock system, the furthest one to the east. There were once 87 separate locks on the canal, mainly because they didn't have the technology or materials at the time it was built to have locks more than a few feet deep at a time. Here we see one 40' lock that took the place of, I believe, 7 original locks. You are looking at the upriver lock gate in the picture, I'm standing on the downstream lock gate. All locks work by using gravity instead of pumps to move the water, even the biggest ones in the Panama Canal. For instance; if a boat wanted to go from the Mohawk River to Lake Erie it would enter through the downstream gates which would then be closed behind it. Valves would be opened and water would flow into the lock raising the height of the water as well as the boat. Once the level in the lock reached the same level on the upstream side, the upstream gates would open and the boat would sail on up the river, 40' above where it had first started. A pretty cool system.

This picture was taken on Moss Island, a ridge of rock dividing the original Mohawk River and it's falls from the start of the Erie Canal. Look close and you can see some polished circular areas worn into the side of the rock. When the glaciers from the last ice age began to melt and retreat back into Canada the Mohawk River grew in size from all of the melt water. At this spot a water fall more than twice the size of today's Niagara Falls existed. The depressions you see, and others that are much larger, were formed when the power of the river took large, loose granite boulders, some the size of cars, and swirled them around and around for years at a time until large basins were formed. Think in terms of a mortar and pestle. It had to be some river to be able to move 40 ton boulders like that.