Foggy, Rainy Canal - Day 32

  Today was awesome canal stuff, but mostly bad pictures because of the fog and rain. I chose to hike in the rain today because tomorrow is going to be even worse with cold and high winds. I'm taking tomorrow off. We are moving the trailer again, and doing one fun thing, and will try to get some other things done.

But today's miles were mostly on the Miami-Erie State Trail, which has reclaimed a lot of old towpath along the canal. The canal itself is in various conditions, but you can almost always see where it was.

This is a spillway in Delphos. It's also marked as Lock 24. I was trying to figure out how this could be a lock and a spillway.

The answer was on an interpretive sign with an actual photo from when the canal was in use. The spillway was to the left of the lock. The actual lock has been removed and filled and is now where the trail is. The builing on the far left is a mill that used the power from the falling water at the spillway.

The city has kept the spillway intact because it acts as a dam to keep the water at the level above the lock. This means that the canal through town has enough water in it to actually look like a canal.

Spencerville has done the same, but the canal goes through more commercial areas there, rather than residential- at least on the side of the road where the path is.

A lot of the walk today was in a perfectly straight line on a graveled towpath. You might think this would be boring, but I thought a lot about the horse or mule drivers walking that pathway. It would not have felt quite that desolate to them. There would have been talking and the shouting of commands from the boat. There might even have been chickens on deck. The drivers might have been singing. And, there was most likely a small town at about every other lock. Locks on this canal were anywhere from half a mile to maybe 2.5 miles apart. (That's a long distance with only a 10 foot elevation change, but I know Locks 17 and 18 were 2.3 miles apart.)

I was wondering what businesses usually came first, but I found a sign that gave the answer! Of course the lock-tender's house was first. Then usually a stable, tavern, and mill followed. I have read that the food at some of the taverns was barely edible, but they knew they had a captive audience. I've also read that some unscrupulous inn-keepers would demand payment up front, then delay the food delivery until the passengers had to get back on the boat or risk missing their ride!

Fares were a nickel per passenger mile. Thus to travel from Cincinatti all the way to Toledo would have cost a little over $10 per person.

I also walked through Deep Cut today. You can see that this is not an area of flat farmland stretching from each side of the canal. Here the canal channel was hand-dug, 52 feet deep through a hill! The canal had to be a minimum of 26 feet wide at the bottom and 40 feet wide at the water line, with a 4 foot depth of water. That's a lot of digging!

Here is the view down the length of Deep Cut from the bridge that now crosses the old canal prism.

I was thinking of hiking only 15 miles today, even though I got a good early start, because it was raining quite hard. However, I was highly encouraged by finding a place to eat lunch where I was sheltered from the rain. I was clearly trespassing, but would have begged for mercy if I'd been caught. The roof did not leak and the chair held my weight. That bit of shelter spurred me to go for the longer mileage.

Miles today: 17.5. Total miles so far: 471.3

BONUS SECTION- the other trail system.

Look at the far bank of the canal. See that line about 2/3 of the way down the bank that looks like a tiny benched trail wandering up and down the bank? Well that's exactly what it is. I was reminded of Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Lucy looks at the bottom of the sea and sees a whole other world with roads winding through hills and valleys.

These trails, about 6 inches wide and semi-benched, went on for miles and miles, both on the far side and my side of the canal. They had junctions and byways. See the Y junction through the trees?

I saw some muskrats. Is that what made these trails? Nope. All these little roads traveled from woodchuck burrow to burrow! And I saw a lot of woodchucks. I think this is amazing and charming. I wonder how far any particular woodchuck travels from its home den. There must be a story in there!

So tomorrow is a day off from hiking, although there won't be too much resting.

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