This is one of the few times Captain John let Warner pilot the boat. Captain John pulled up at the Clyde city dock at 10:30 am. No one was there, but a pleasant sign welcomed us and set out a few rules:

• No open fires

• Overnight camping allowed

• Alcoholic beverages prohibited

• Dogs and cats welcome… on leashes

• No firearms, weapons, motorized vehicles, swimming, loud radios, or littering.

Just our kind of place. We tied up Fantessy, battened down the hatches, and walked into town hoping to find a place to eat lunch.

The Village of Clyde, New York, dates back to 1722 when a trading post was built by the French on a river halfway between Lake Ontario and the Finger Lakes. The first permanent settlement was in 1817, north of the Clyde River. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, Clyde became a mini- boomtown. An insurance company (1825), a glass works (1828), and a typewriter manufacturer (1852) soon set up shop just as the first railroad (1853) pulled into town.

Linda always follows instructions. The village takes great pride in producing the first Mason jars (1858), being one of Abraham Lincoln's inaugural train stops (1861), manufacturing early steam tractors (1868), housing one of America's first food processors (1878), and having a village football team (1896) that defeated college teams from Brockport, Hamilton, Hobart, and Colgate.

All we found in 2008 was a depressed bedroom community of less than 3,000 people who worked in either Rochester or Syracuse. The town was empty. The only place open was the laundromat/bait shop. By noon we were back on the canal.

The house adjacent to the Erie Canal in 1908. The same house in 2008 which proves Clyde has a very good preservation program or, more likely, nothing ever changes in Clyde. Warner checks out Clyde's famous mineral spring.