Fort Edward

After a rainy night we wake up to a drizzly morning. If it rains most of the day we will stay another day at Whitehall. We head to Breakfast at "Historic Grounds" a fairly new breakfast/Lunch eatery, that is highly recommended by a number of people. It did not disappoint. A very good breakfast and a cool old building.

Historic Grounds

After breakfast the weather starts to clear and we decide to head south to Fort Edward and their Free Wall with power, water and showers. We have stayed here a few times before, some times the showers work and other times they don't. Otherwise a very nice place to stay. When we arrive the only other boat there is a trawler that we shared the wall with at Whitehall. The couple on the trawler are from Philadelphia and have spent the summer in Canada and are now returning to Philly. 

The Lock at Fort Edward is the last lock on the dug northern half of the Champlain Canal. Once we lock down we are on the Hudson River. This section of the Champlain Canal has a series of power dams and locks. There is current and some scary looking dams that we motor close to, not a place you want your engine to fail.

New commerical gravel business on the canal

There is a new gravel barge delivery operation at the northern section of the canal. They deliver somewhere on the Hudson either Albany or a cement plant further south on the Hudson. We pass a few empty barges coming north to reload. Nice to see some commercial use of the canal.

The initial canal in 1820 was hand dug the entire length from Waterford, NY to Whitehall, NY.  Sections of the old canal still exist and the original locks are still in existence at Waterford.  The doors have been removed and the multiple old locks form a series of waterfalls. The old lock and canal was only the width of the canal boats of the day. The canal was progressively widened until 1910 or so when the Hudson was dammed and the upper section was widened further. 

The towns along the canal were wealthy centers of commerce in their day, now only a shadow of their former selves.

Fort Edwards is the smallest town on the Canal with a free dock. We usually like to go out to dinner to pay back the free dockage. Not a lot of choices here. We have eaten at the “Ye Old Fort Diner” before a very homey establishment, nothing too fancy. We decide to try the fancier “The Anvil” and split a diner since their portions are on the large size. We stop at Stewarts on the way back and get one of their monthly specials, Coconut ice cream which is their version of Almond Joy ice cream, very good.