Today is day 5 on the Erie Canal with 2 more locks behind us and 3 more to go for this leg of the journey. All the locks so far have been lifting us up. The next 3 will be lowering us back down about 70 feet in total.

We are stopped for the night in Rome, NY at their city park free dock. It’s pretty dilapidated as seen by the missing portions of the wall in the picture above, but it does have free electricity. We were able to find a place along the wall that didn’t look like there were any logs that were going to fall off or large bolts or angle iron sticking out that would bang up the boat. There is a nice, new section which was full as it only has room for 2 big boats but it does not have electrical hookups, so we feel we came out ahead on the deal.

While in Rome we visited the Fort Stanwix National Monument. Yes, Corbett and Chris, it is a stamp, 4 actually. The most interesting thing about this fort is that this current one not the original fort. The original fort from the 1700’s had completely disintegrated and the town of Rome built their downtown on top of the old site. In an effort to bring tourism and notoriety to Rome in the 60’s, the town went on a campaign to get the US National Park Service interested in reconstructing the fort on the original site. The town bought out all the businesses and land in the downtown, obtained federal funds, located the original blueprints and finally got the USNPS to buy into the plan. The current fort is a reconstruction of many of the original buildings and even has people dressed in period clothing around the buildings. There are even some re-enactments at times throughout the day.

From the fort it was a short walk to the HP Sears Service Station, a 1929 service station museum even with the old pumps. Just another quaint quirk of a small town along the Erie Canal.

Another quaint quirk was the old movie theater.

We will head further along the Canal from here and will keep you updated. Love to all, Gina and Mike