Welland Canal

When we decided we were attending the Gerhardt symposium at the St Catharines seminary, we needed to figure out what else we'd do here. Niagara Falls was an easy decision. But what else?

Turned out that about a month ago, we were reading some schoolbooks on transportation which fleshed out a history book we were reading about "American stories." Having read mini-blurbs about the Erie Canal and the Transcontinental Railroad, we extended our reading on those topics. A book on the St Lawrence Seaway had lots of information about the Welland Canal. Well, we'd never heard of it, but it looked like it might be in the same general vicinity. It wasn't just in the general vicinity. Turns out that the canal is only about a mile from our hotel. Yesterday, driving around, we saw one of the locks.

Today we ventured over to the nearest lock. There was a visitors center and a viewing platform. Looked cool. We stood and stared, and we read the signs. We drove past the "flight locks," where there are three locks back-to-back, climbing up the steepest part of the heights (over which the falls crash a few miles away). Happily, there was road construction on the narrow little street directly adjacent to the canal, so we had to stop and look, even though there was no place to park and get out to walk around.

No ships were due through for another 5-6 hours, so we decided to go to a winery and then go back to the hotel to swim. On our way back after the tour, we decided to buzz past the canal, just to see if that ship had started into the lock system on the further end. We were stopped at the drawbridge, waiting for the Winona to pass. Then as she headed upstream, we headed around the corner to Lock #3. We watched her enter the lock. We observed all the things we'd read about earlier: tying up the ship to the bollands, closing the gates, filling the lock with about 22 million gallons of water (which we figured would be ALL the water that about 1000 people would drink in their entire lifetimes), and then saw the ship exit on the south end of the canal. Then we saw the lift bridge raise up for the ship to pass under.

I feel like such a tourist ... but that was SO very cool!