As we left Little Falls, we felt fortunate to have had such beautiful clear crisp weather for our cruise. In order for us not to become too indolent watching the scenery unfold, we set up the Salty Dog gym on the bridge for those long stretches of calm water.
The strange thing about most of the Erie Canal and particularly this stretch of it is that places to stop with any reasonable marina facilities are few and far between and highly sought after. We arrived at Utica after passing only two locks today, Erie Canal Locks 18 and 19 bringing us up to 404 feet above sea level.
Erie Canal Lock 18
Erie Canal Lock 19
The Utica Marina is actually run by a restaurant Aqua Vino which appears to maintain the docks, but doesn’t seem to manage the coming and going of the boats. We arrived simultaneously with three other boats that also locked through with us at Lock 19 and we all had the same idea to stop here – taking up nearly all the dock space available. Lucky us. Somewhat later in the day a boat we knew from a few previous marinas arrived forlornly looking for a space to rest, so we let them raft to us.
We rode the bikes some 2 miles along the dusty Genesee Street into Utica - the city barely acknowledges its connection with the canal or the river. The surprising thing about Utica is that it is a big clean city with attractive old buildings but not a whole lot going on. We searched in vain for a sight to see – but the internet only told us about things we knew were closed or fun runs and the like.
The city is an historical one, but has the same sad tale of economic decline as the rest of the Mohawk Valley towns and cities. Most industries pulled up and went elsewhere – the Mohawk Valley just didn’t offer the advantages of transportation and population as other locations after World War II. Companies left, and then the people followed.
The last place we visited before heading back to Salty was the Utica Union Train Station. A huge decorous wedding cake of a building with an elegant but vacant interior reminds of a busier more prosperous time when this was a premier destination. Likely, this was the last place a lot of those early 20th century Uticans saw of Utica before they left for new lives.
