Middleport, Lockport, Amherst, Dunkirk, Erie...where are we and what day is it?

Rainy day in Middleport

I guess I am behind a couple of days on my blogging.  It's hard to believe how many places we have been in the last month.  It's hard to remember what day it is let alone where we are now.  But I will go back a couple of days to our stay in Middleport, NY.  Our stay there was nice and quiet.  It rained for most of the day on Saturday so we hung out catching up on email, baking cookies doing some general cleaning and just relaxing.  We left Sunday morning and worked our way over to Tonawanda in hopes that we would be able to find a space to dock for a day or two.  Hah!!! More about that later.

Mike and Moose checking email and facebook.

Yes cookies where made, yum!

On our way to Tonawanda we went through Lockport.  We traveled through their awesome locks (72 foot rise in two locks).  Next to the current lock was the original 5 locks.  We traveled through these two locks like pros, much different than we did coming through the first time.  While coming through these locks this time we looked up to see about 40 people watching us.  It seemed we were the subject of a tour group.  Oh lord don't let us screw up now.

It was a beautiful site coming through Lockport and seeing the massive bridge with the locks in the distance.

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The old and the new, what a difference.

What an awesome lock this was, specially when you finally
know what you are doing.

We made it through the locks and were on our way to Tonawanda.  We knew that the Canal Day festival was happening in Tonawanda and thought that by Sunday afternoon mosts folks would be on their way home, well we were WRONG!  what we didn't take in to consideration is that evening their where fireworks and it seemed like everyone that owned a boat was there.  Some rafted out 5 boats wide.  Ugh!  Not our idea of a good time so we made our way back to Amherst and was able to find a private dock that had a couple of transient spaces available.  Spent the night there.  The next morning we left bright and early with hopes to by pass Tonawanda and make our way out to Lake Erie.

The graffiti along the way was intriguing.  It really was art in it's own way.  

The canal was beautiful, the water was like glass.

This was the first time we had seen any deer along the canal.  This was a sweet family of 4.  The babies still had their spots.

Boat houses along the canal.

The weather couldn't have been better and we made remarkable time making our way out through the Black Rock Canal and out to Lake Erie.  We passed massive bridges, which still amazed me that they raise these huge things just for us to pass.  We stopped just outside Buffalo to put our steadying sail back up as we knew we would need this crossing Lake Erie.  We found a nice area took tie up and got to work.  We learned a valuable lesson at this stop.  When working on taking things apart (the stand for the steadying sail) attach screw drivers to the Captain's arm so they aren't lost in the river.  Yes two of those little buggers slipped into the river while dismantling the braces.  Third time we tied the screw driver to his arm.  This worked just fine.

Something humbling about passing under these large structures.

This bridge was raised just for us.

Mike working on dismantling the brace for the steadying sail and feeding the lake a diet of screw drivers.

Problem solved!

We were originally going to stop in Buffalo for the night but decided since the weather was so good we would push on to Dunkirk, NY and spend a night at the great little yacht club there.

More graffiti

Hard to believe in July that it was chilly enough on the lake to wrap up in a towel.

Sunrise at Dunkirk, NY

Our stay in Dunkirk was delightful as always.  Why is it the smaller places that don't have much "cash flow" are always so much more welcoming and helpful (and free) than the ones that charge you out the....well you get the idea.  We left Dunkirk before 8:00 a.m. to another day of perfect weather.  The lake was the calmest either of us had seen it.  Lake Erie being so shallow is for the most part a bit choppy (even on a good day).  But today it was like being on the canal again.  You could actually see the reflections of the clouds on the lake. We experienced a little fog earlier in the morning but even that was just mesmerizing.  

It was hard to make out where the water and sky came together.

The water on the lake was like a mirror.

We arrived six hours later in Erie, PA and decided to spend the next two days here at the Erie Yacht Club.  Which at this point I can't say much for.  The place is beautiful, but poor Mike spent most of the previous day trying to get through to someone to make a reservation.  After about a dozen phone calls he was able to get through but they said someone would call him back.  Which they never did.  We ended up just pulling into the gas dock, talked to some young man that well by the end of the experience I just wanted to smack.  He informed us that the reciprocal agreement that was stated in our book had been cancelled as of a week ago and he would have to charge us the full rate.  Ugh, for a budget boater that is not good news, but we were here and decided to stay.  We were able to fill up on diesel and pump out the holding tank, which by the way they charged us $5.00 to do so.  Again I go back to my earlier statement of why is it the smaller yacht clubs treat you like royalty while the "fancier" ones treat you like yesterdays trash.  Oh well lesson learned and we at least have a dock to wait out the storm which is currently brewing outside my window.  Our next stop will hopefully be Ashtabula where we are hoping to catch up with some friends.