Day 115...Mechanicville, NY to Waterford, New York

SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2012

     Here is one of the famous Mechanicville street lights.  In the guidebook we use they say be careful and don’t dock directly under them at the wall because during the summer millions of bugs are attracted to the brightness.  It says they die and stick to your boat.  We saw what they were talking about.  Medium-sized tan bugs were all over the boat the next morning even though we did not park directly under any of the lights.

     We knew we were going to have a very short day today so we waited until 9:45 a.m. to leave. Hopefully by the time we get to Waterford, the boats that are leaving would be gone and there will be space for us at the dock.

     Lock 2(down 18 feet, rope and cable) was next.  It is the next to last lock on the Champlain Canal.  We were out of this lock by 10:20 a.m.

     Look at another blue and white tug we saw.  Gary estimated this cute, little blue tug to be about 12 feet long.  I wonder if it goes faster than our TRAVELLER with that big motor.

     As we approached our final lock on the Champlain Canal, we noticed LOCK-1 CHAMPLAIN CANAL painted in large letters using the bright yellow paint that is one of the official colors of the New York Lock System.  Bright blue along with white are the other colors they use to paint their houses and equipment on the Erie, Oswego and Champlain Canals.  

     We locked through our final lock in the Champlain Canal.  We exited Lock 1(down 14 feet, rope and pipe) on our way to complete our Little Loop Trip at Waterford, New York.  Here's that bright blue and yellow again.

     This is the bridge we walk over to get to Hannaford supermarket.  Also I took pictures of the words New York and Waterford (that I took from the bridge last time) from the water.

     Where else but Waterford would you see a floating dock that is for customers of the Price Chopper Supermarket.

     Here is the bright blue Erie & Champlain Canals sign that I first took a picture of when we started our Triangle Loop journey way back on Day 69 of our trip.

     We reached Waterford closing our loop at 11:23 a.m. on Day 115.  Some call it the Triangle Loop while others call it the Little Loop.  Whatever you call it, we're done.  Today we traveled 9 miles in 1 hour and 38 minutes.  We have traveled a total of 2284 miles since we left Ortega on March 31^st.  Now we have to backtrack the 1483 miles back home to Florida.