End of day two

My apologies to those who may be trying to follow our journey on the blog. I have had some technical problems. But for now let me tell you we have had to splendid days on the Ohio River. Each daywe have peddled 25 miles so we have paddled a total of 50 miles. The river over all has been very good to us. The weather overall has been very good to us. We had a bit of a thunderstorm today but we were able to take cover for about 30 minutes and then get back out on the river. Late in the afternoon the wind kicked up so badly that we had to spend about 2 1/2 hours on a river café.  Somehow we managed! We have found great people along the river as usual. Last night we stayed in an RV resorts. Tonight we found a bit of dryland to camp along the river.  Perhaps our favorite quotes of the trip so far is the young man at the RV resort last night who when we referred to ourselves as old said “there’s not an ounce of old between the two of you!”  We took it as a great compliment. So I’m going to sign off now. It’s very hot and humid and we’re going to try to sleep a few hours before setting off very early tomorrow morning and what we hope will be calm waters.

Exploring other waterways…

I arrived in Western New York on Wednesday, May 14,2014. Karen met me at the Buffalo airport and following a brief visit with her sister and family who happened to be flying in for a family wedding at the same time, Karen and I headed out for a fun diversion. I introduced her to the Welland Canal. Since we knew we would see no locks on the Ohio River this year, I thought it would be fun to visit the locks on the Welland. If you live anywhere near Buffalo and have never visited this feat of human engineering, you have missed something amazing. Rising 326.5 feet from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, the canal has 8 locks, some of which are twin flights so you have two locks, one right after the other, like a flight of stairs, lifting these huge vessels higher and higher as they transport 40,000,000 tonnes of cargo annually. Check out the website.

From there we made our way to Niagara-on-the-Lake where we had eaten many years ago returning from a workshop in Toronto. We enjoyed an Irish dinner in a pub. It was there that the predicted rains began in earnest. Karen had to drive for a while in pouring rain as we headed to Jamestown. We did not know at the time that the rain would force us to make some other detours from our detour. Karen’s husband Mark is our personal meteorologist and reported when we returned to their home that the rain was to keep up on Thursday and into Friday morning. With that news, we decided to postpone our trip to the headwaters of the Allegheny and instead check out the possibility of a day trip down Cassadaga Creek, the stream on which we had started some 600 miles earlier in 2001.

Tiny Ducks

Anyone know what kind of a duck would look to be the size of a baby duck…and have a flotilla of even tinier baby ducks.  We saw this site on Racoon Creek, just upriver from the Montgomery Lock and Dam on the Ohio.  Too distant to see it well but the mama duck was distracting a predator, perhaps a mink,  from her babies when we noticed her.  Thinking she was a baby duck or goose, we were surprised to discover a tiny group of critters returning to her protection when she called to them after the ordeal.  Tried taking a photo but they were too far across the creek.  We don’t think the mama was more than about six inches long.  It was almost unreal.