Rest day in Medina NY

Medina is located in a horseshoe bend in the Erie Canal. It's a good place to rest up because not much is going on here. This morning we went around the corner from our hotel to get some breakfast snacks at the bakery. The bakery turned out to be closed on Mondays. Down the street and is a cookie shop, but that doesn't open until 10:00. There is an excellent railroad museum in Medina, open 6 days a week, but Monday is not one of those 6 days.

15 minutes before the cookies will be ready.

Not to worry, Rudy's Diner was open for breakfast.

Our hotel used to be the Robert H Newell & Co. shirt factory. They made shirts for celebrities such as Winston Churchill and Bob Hope. Today the first two floors house businesses, the hotel rooms are on the third floor. Rolling our bikes into our rooms was not an option.

Once a shirt factory, now a hotel that caters to Erie Canal cyclists.

At one point a Heinz pickle factory was a major employer in town. During WWII the Heinz factory housed Italian POWs. They slept in the Heinz dormitory and worked in the factory and other local jobs. After Italy surrendered, the Italian POWs went home and were replaced by German POWs.

The Medina historical society claims the German POWs went on strike because they weren't allowed to smoke at the Heinz factory. Not being able to light up does not seem harsh to me compared to conditions in German prisons during WWII.

Today the old factory buildings are used by medical device manufacturer Baxter International and for medical offices. I forgot to check if smoking is allowed these days.

Changing the name from old pickle factory to "olde" pickle factory increased the rent by 10%.

The local quarry was known for "Medina sandstone". The stone is used for many of the downtown buildings and churches.

The building across from our hotel is called "The Sandstone".

The main drag has brick and sandstone buildings. A bridge over the Erie Canal can be seen in the background.

A lot of houses and buildings have a nice looking front with square cut sandstone blocks, and less finished sides with stones that are not cut into blocks.

If your dream in life is to fix up an old Victorian house, Medina is probably a good place to find an inexpensive fixer upper.

Where was the world's smallest steam engine built? Medina.

This is City Hall, although Medina never quit achieved city status.

Medina Cold Storage was built to hold fruit like apples and peaches before the fruit was shipped out.

There are still a few tugboats working the canal. We met a tugboat crew that works the stretch between Tonawanda and Rochester. They can make 10 mph pulling a barge with a light load, but only 4 mph pulling a heavy load of mud. Mud is a common load, since the canal must be constantly dredged to maintain a 12' depth.

Two of the guys on the tug are veterans (one was a 5th generation canal man - his family goes back to the days when mules pulled the boats). They explained that the control locks we saw are used to prevent flooding if there is a breech in the canal wall. The control locks on either side of the section of the canal with a breech are closed off until the breech is repaired.

This is the crew (Chase, Steve & David) of the tugboat Dewitt Clinton.

This is not the crew of the Dewit Clinton.

But if necessary, we can take over in a pinch.

These mules are smiling because someone forgot the rope to attach them to the canal boat.

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