GEESE, GRAVEL AND ERIE CANAL

Tony's View

 We started today at The Reid Group; they are clients of mine through Aileron. I have been working with Paul and Bonnie since last October. Paul is the president and Bonnie is their HR Director (with an additional new role of Culture Champion.) Yes, I know they must be great people to put up with me that long.  Seriously, they are so nice to allow us to park our truck there for 12 days. They are actually keeping it behind a fenced in yard.  Since we are coming back on Sunday, Bonnie is nice enough to come up early and get our truck out of the locked fenced area. Thanks, Bonnie, for going out of your way for us! You are a Champion!

After leaving The Reid Group, we immediately ran into these cool Locks which are shown behind Joan.  The picture really doesn't do it justice. The Locks are 3 stages high and side by side, so they can have Canal Boats traveling in both directions at the same time.  Major Lock setup and really cool to see. We stayed and looked around in the museum. It then began to sprinkle, so we covered everything up and took off. Luckily, it really never got any worse and we made it through the day without rain.

In the pictures below is where the Geese and the Gravel come in. The Erie Canal trail was pretty much all gravel, a fine limestone gravel.  Tyler, I wanted to let you know even without tack coat, the gravel was pretty structural sound (an inside joke at Choice One). The gravel really wasn't too bad, so we decided to stay on the trail and not take the roads.  Anyways, there were a lot of geese on the trail, and they were very reluctant to move, so Joan had to yell at them so that we didn't hit them.  Good thing Joan is so mean, 😀

We could hear a roar of water along the trail and came to this major waterfall
It is our mini–Niagara Falls. The picture to the right of this is the geeky engineer's excitement. This is right beside the Falls, and it is a canal bridge over the river feeding the Falls. How cool? A bridge for water over water. Good thing I didn't write this till later, because I have settled down by now and I won't go on and on.

We stopped to eat lunch at Rudy's Diner in a downtown off the canal trail. It was popular with the locals and the food was good. After a salad, I got an ice cream cone, and get this, the flavor of the ice cream was yum, yum cherry pie! It tasted just like cherry pie and was delicious. This picture shows where we put our bike when we are eating, just on the other side of the window, so we can keep our eye on it.

After stopping for lunch, we found this big apple along the trail and Joan really wanted it. I told her we couldn't bring it along with us. It wouldn't fit in our bags. Joan loves apples.

Below, is one last thing I wanted to share with you before turning it over to Joan. The majority of bridges across the canal were lift bridges. The really interesting thing was that they had stairs on both sides to allow people to walk across the bridge when it was up, and boats went through. I guess back then, a lot of people walked to where they wanted to go, and they had to accommodate them. 

Joan's View

Lots of critters on the bike trail today- gaggles of geese (one goose wanted to play chicken), baby ground hogs, a snake, a mouse, ducks, deer, a buzzard, hawks, a blue heron. 
Lots of crops viewed from the trail today - corn, beans, apples, grapes, tomatoes, wheat, and some that we were unsure of.
A follow up note on the lift bridge - the accountant had to tell the civil engineer what the stairs on the ends of the bridges were for. 😎