Monday, July 2 & Tuesday, July 3

Monday was a day to regroup.  We cleaned the boat inside and out to make it shiny for our next crew, Dan and Sally!  Krystina even helped put on new fender covers :)

Look closely; who's REALLY wearing the new fender cover? :)

After our cleaning was done, we took a dinghy ride.  Ended up getting pulled over because we didn't have our registration numbers displayed (hard to do, when we JUST received them in the mail before coming on this trip).  Turns out in New York, you need a fire extingisher, anchor, whistle, AND flare kit in even a dinghy!!!  We told the sheriff we were from Wisconsin, and weren't used to such rules:)  He was a great guy, and let us go if we promised to go back and get our fire extingisher!   

After a relaxing cruise, we headed back to the boat.  Turns out Dan and Sally were in town and on their way to visit us!  We were so happy to see our new guests :)

We found out that Dan was VERY interested in continuing our journey by taking the Erie Canal westbound through the whole state of New York.  However, in order to do this, we needed to make sure we could clear all of the bridges.  That required team Dave and Dan to create a way to make sure the biminy, and radar arch could successfully be lowered.  Through MANY mosquitos, and another hour of work on Tuesday morning, they had accomplished their task!

So after a tough "good-bye" to the girls :( Krystina and Jacqui were off to the airport and we were underway to go WEST on the Erie Canal!

According to the sign, we needed to travel 192 miles, or a little over 3 days, to make it to Lake Erie.  Some sights we saw were:

Beer gardens!

EVEN, private planes!  {Thinking of you, Andrew :)}

Beautiful homes with waterfalls :)  AND boats!


As we enjoyed this beautiful ride on the Erie Canal, we came to our first bridge.  Dave and Dan wanted to make sure all of their time-consuming measurements were accurate (or at least within an inch like they thought).  HOWEVER, to all of our disappointment, someone was off a whole FOOT . . . and we're pretty sure it wasn't Dave and Dan :)  We thought maybe the pool was high, but when we talked with the first lockmaster, he said the pool was actually down 3/10ths of an inch!  So, there were inconsistencies in what our books were telling us vs. what we were actually measuring.  What to do?  The bridge we were most worried about was another day away.  What if we didn't fit under it . . . then we'd be a total of 4 days behind.  Soooo, after much discussion, we decided to play it safe and turn around to take the Oswego Canal to Lake Ontario. 

Sorry Dan, northbound to the Oswego Canal (notice the brown sign in the background once again?)

Lock 1 of seven on the Oswego Canal . . . down we go!

Wow, quite the interesting exit from Lock 1!  We even get a car bridge lift :)

Cool falls as we lock through #2!

We end the day in rain, but we are successful in pulling into Oswego, New York, at 8 p.m.