A Long Weekend on the Erie Canal

You cannot see the whole Erie Canal in a weekend. It runs some 360 miles from the Hudson at Troy to Lake Erie at Buffalo, and doing it justice by boat takes a week or more. But three days on a well-chosen line hits the greatest hits — the highest lock flight in the world, a river gorge, a string of canal villages, and the staircase that climbs the Niagara Escarpment. Here is how to spend a long weekend on the canal, east to west, whether you’re running it by boat, riding the towpath, or driving the valley with the windows down.

A note on pace: this itinerary is written east-to-west by car, which is the way to cover the most ground in three days. Boaters will do the same line more slowly and more beautifully — figure a week, and check the navigation season and hours first. Cyclists can ride any single day of it on the Canalway Trail. Pick your speed; the stops are the same.

Day 1 — The Eastern Stairway: Waterford to Little Falls

Start where the canal starts climbing. At Waterford, the Waterford Flight — Locks E2 through E6 — raises boats roughly 169 feet in under two miles, one of the highest lock flights anywhere in the world. Watch a boat lock through even if you don’t have one; the scale of it is the whole canal’s ambition in miniature.

Head west up the Mohawk Valley through Schenectady and Amsterdam, where the canal is the Mohawk River, canalized behind movable dams. The day’s reward is Little Falls, where Lock E17 — the highest lift on the system, about forty feet — hauls you up through a rock gorge the river spent millennia cutting. Tie up or park at the harbor and walk the old mill town; it earns the overnight.

Day 2 — The Long Level and the Villages: Little Falls to Rochester

West of Little Falls the canal relaxes. Past Utica and Rome — where the first shovel of the original canal turned in 1817 — comes the Long Level, sixty-plus lock-free miles across the old lakebed flats, with Oneida Lake and the beach town of Sylvan Beach along the way. Boaters cover ground here; drivers should detour to the water at Baldwinsville for a lock and a lunch.

The back half of the day is canal-village country, and it is the prettiest stretch to stroll. Fairport and Pittsford line the water with lift bridges, boat traffic, and waterfront tables — the postcard version of the modern canal. End the day in Rochester, where the canal once crossed the Genesee River on a great stone aqueduct and a daredevil named Sam Patch made his last jump.

Day 3 — The Western Climb: Rochester to Buffalo

Save the drama for last. At Lockport, the canal climbs the Niagara Escarpment on the site of the original Flight of Five — the 1825 double staircase of locks that was the engineering marvel of its day, preserved today beside the pair of modern locks that do the roughly fifty-foot lift now. It is the single best place on the canal to understand what the builders were up against.

From there it’s a short run to Buffalo and the western terminus, where canal boats once met the grain elevators and the Great Lakes trade that the Erie built. Canalside is the modern bookend to a weekend that began 350 miles east at the foot of the Waterford Flight.

Where to sleep, and how to build your own line

Each town hub above lists the marinas, docks, and places to eat and stay along that stretch, so you can anchor your nights wherever the day ends — the free town walls are the boater’s bargain, and the village waterfronts put you a short walk from dinner. If you have only two days, cut the middle and run Waterford-to-Little Falls, then jump west to Lockport; if you have a week, slow down and let the Long Level do its work.

However you run it, read a little history before you go — the canal is far more interesting when you know which of its four rebuildings you’re looking at. Start with our history features, then pick your season and your pace. The canal has been carrying travelers for two centuries. It’s in no hurry, and for one long weekend, neither should you be.