Lockport Locks & Erie Canal Cruises

05/28/2025

Video by Gil Eaton

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05/27/2025

Annual Memorial Day flag raising of our new flag and the retirement of the old. The latest will fly for a year, and the old will be ceremonially burnt on Flag Day in June with 30-40 others. Participants were Scout Troop 431, St. Leo The Great Church, Amherst, NY. Leader official Lt. Col. (Ret) Ken Knox. Scout Master: Mark Knox Asst. Scout Masters: Luke Murphy, Jake Bumeier, Tom Kirchgessner, Rita Bennett, Andrea Clark, Noah Bumeier, and Troop members. Thank you for honoring us with your participation.

05/26/2025

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by looking.

What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the38th parallel.

She or he is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another or didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat, but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs.

He is the parade riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb of the Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket-palsied now and aggravatingly slows who helped liberate a N**i death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being, a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say "THANK YOU." That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words mean a lot, "THANK YOU." (by Father Edward Denis O'Brien)

05/24/2025

Thanks to Heidi Wolf for passing this along to us.

05/20/2025

Adults do not get to see it, but this is the Erie Canal instruction area we have for school field trip presentations. It is located inside our 1840s-built stone building.

05/13/2025

Capt. Roger at the helm for the first cruise of the 2025 Season

05/13/2025

Replica of the original 1825 canal boat, the Seneca Chief, parked in the forebay of Lock 35

05/11/2025

Happy Mother's Day to every Mom who has ever been. From the Lockport Locks & Erie Canal Cruises Family.

05/10/2025

2025 Season is set to begin on Monday

04/28/2025

Lockview VI was the last boat in the water. It is on a 10 minute video. I'm sorry for my index finger in the upper left. I left my DJI Osmo Action Camera 3 grip at home making it tough to not have my finger intrude.

04/28/2025

Lockview V, second boat in the season.

04/28/2025

Lockview IV first boat into the Niagara River to await the Canal opening for its 200th Anniversary.