Thirty-five miles! Wow! We are really becoming fast walkers! Actually, we took a local bus from Little Falls to Utica. In most of this stretch, the trail isn’t complete and you must road walk on a very busy hiway. We had already done that earlier on the walk and we’re not at all comfortable with it. We ended up walking on back roads for about 3 miles, which are fine. We walked for 18 miles after the bus ride. The day was very hot and luckily the trail along the barge canal was shaded for the most part.
Here’s a picture of “Clinton’s Ditch” or the original canal. It’s all overgrown now and home to critters like the one below.
DeWitt Clinton was the New York governor who carried the vision of the Erie Canal. On the day the canal opened, he rode on a barge from Buffalo to Albany carrying a bucket of water from Lake Erie, which he poured into the New York Harbor, symbolizing the “wedding of the waters” and a viable means of connecting the interior of the US with the rest of the world. The Erie Canal made New York the greatest industrial port in the world.
All the best,
Ann
Bellingham Walks 