“I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal, fifteen miles on the Erie Canal/She’s a good old worker and a good old pal, fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.” From Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal by Thomas S. Allen.

Today my route took me to the Erie Canal Trail, where I actually biked for 20 miles, not 15 (for a total of about 36 miles). But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let me start at the beginning of the day, in Pultneyville, site of a famous “battle” or “skirmish” (depending on which account you are reading) between the Americans and the British during the War of 1812.

There is a brass plaque on the shore of Lake Ontario in the center of town, placed there by the U.S. Daughters of 1812, that memorializes the event. On the morning of May 15, 1814, British warships showed up on the lake across from the town, and soldiers on the ground under General Swift did their best to defend the town from plundering by British soldiers. (Interestingly, the plaque contains a typo, misspelling “Pultneyville” as “Pulteyville”–I confirmed with the owner of my B&B that the town is named after an individual named Pultney and was never known as “Pulteyville”).

Here is a detailed chronology of the event, if you want to know more.

Here is the site of the marker, where I looked out on the lake and tried to imagine what it must have been like to see it filled with British warships.

Here I am at breakfast at the B&B with Dottie Howland. She and her husband Perry are retired teachers and have lived in town for many years. Their property is on 10 acres that continues to be worked as an active apple orchard. They are looking for ways to make sure that the property will be maintained as a working orchard someday when they are no longer around rather than turned over to developers. As she does with all her B&B guests, she read for me an entry from the diary of the prior owners from August 2, 1954–it was a single sentence along the lines of “picked cherries today.”

I drank this entire pot of coffee.

Dottie gave me some fresh-baked snacks for later in the day, which I ate on the Erie Canal. Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to that in a minute.

You may recall from my post of 7/15 from Haverhill, NH, that New England was the site of numerous stops on the Underground Railroad, in which slaves were concealed on their way to freedom in Canada. This part of New York also has a number of such sites, which can be explored on an audiovisual tour. See two of many examples I saw of such sites along my route.

I made it to the Erie Canal Trail around 1 p.m. The trail was mostly hard-packed dirt and small stone, but there were some larger stones scattered around and areas where some of the trail had washed away. It was not ideal for a road bike like mine, but nice to be away from traffic, and it was quite peaceful alongside the canal. Here are some photos showing the different ways the canal presents itself in the area. Here is the canal at the bridge crossing where I met the trail in Palmyra.

Here is an area of the canal, or backwaters of the canal, along the trail. As you can see, it is completely covered in green algae.

Here is a close-up of the log in the previous photo, where you can see a turtle, somewhat camouflaged by a coating of algae.

Much of the trail looks like this.

But the canal also passes through towns, and this how it appears in Fairport, NY.

Tonight’s stay was in Pittsford, NY (pop. 1,365). My route tomorrow (8/3) will continue along the canal trail past Rochester, NY to Holley NY.