Canal Towpath to Newark

Total for this ride: 31.6 miles
Total for this year: 1277.7 miles

This was supposed to be a short ride along the canal from Macedon to Palmyra with a group of families from church.  But nobody signed up, so I turned it into a longer ride along a section of the towpath I hadn't explored in a while.

It was much the same as I remembered it, except for the fact that in a few spots approaching Newark the surface of the trail changed from the usual crushed stone to loose cinders.  Might have been areas where the Canal Authority had been doing some maintenance.  I believe one of the sections had been washed out last time I had gone through there - in that same pot it looked like they had recently added a new retaining wall.  Anyway, the cinders made the going a little tougher.

At Lock 28B in Newark I stopped to peek inside the building that used to be the "power house" for the lock - a building that contained a couple of hydroelectric generators that produced the power needed to operate the motors that opened the lock gates.  The generators aren't used any more, but at this lock they have been meticulously preserved.  The building wasn't open, but I got a good look at them through the windows of the power house.

Picture below... remnants of an aqueduct that carried the canal over a creek near Lock 29 in Palmyra.