Life is about compromise and when you live in less than 400 sq. ft with a spouse you do a lot more compromising than any other time. This is why I spent a whole day, over 8 hours visiting the Welland Canal; a canal that is only 7 miles long and takes a ship 11 hours to get through! The canal takes ships from Lake Ontario up a mountain to Lake Erie. There are 8 locks and we got to watch 4 of them in action!!! And now you get to watch a ship being lifted in only as long as it takes you to run through my photos!!!
Lock #7
This boat was in the lock and waiting to be lifted when we arrived. We watched, ate lunch, we watched some more and finally it was at the level of the next stage of the river and could be released to move on up the river to lock #8 and then into Lake Erie.
The men who come and watch the locks in action
After that boat exited the lock I thought we would be leaving and moving to another section of the locks or better yet, off to see some Canadian Winery’s. Nope, Paul says ” there is a big boat waiting to come into the lock. We need to watch!’ So we did. Duke and I took a walk; read a newspaper and all the while Paul stood on the bleachers with the others and waited! It took at least an hour to get this next boat into the lock, tied down, and raised.
All you can see of the ship when it enters the lock
And now
Even more
At lock #7 level
It was pretty cool seeing a ship this large raise up but really, it took probably 20 minutes to raise it but over an hour for the whole process. Don’t worry we did this again at lock #4.
Lock #4,5 & 6 are two way locks – really exciting for all the guys that were watching. We watched another boat at lock #4 raise but I won’t bore you with those pictures!
After checking out lock #1 and 2 we were able to get on to some real site seeing that I was interested in. We drove along the shoreline of Lake Ontario in Canada looking at winery’s (they were closed by the time we got there!) and a couple harbor towns. Very pretty and not too touristy this time of year.
Lake Ontario
Sort of a sunset over Lake Ontario
a nickel carousel ride!
Paul a captain's helper?
Walking along the dock at this harbor a captain was trying to dock his boat. He had two helpers on the boat but neither of them seemed to know what to do. There was a terrible current so Paul and this other guy saw there distress and offered to help!