The canal boat ride at Coshocton

Hi, thanks for checking in with the blog. I have more great photos of the fox doing exciting things like hunting (and not chickens) plus updates on the lavender harvest, my experiment with taking cuttings, and general garden updates. However, first the day trip for Andrew's birthday:

If you are one of my high school classmates, you probably haven't thought of Ohio canals since Mr. Lincicome's Ohio History class and those weird filmstrips.

Filmstrips.

Anyway, nothing beats the real thing I suppose:

I'm sitting on a bench of the Monticello III canal boat watching the world go by wondering when I'm going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. We are here for Andrew's birthday day trip. He loves history.

I'm not sure this scraggly lemongrass prevented mosquitoes throughout the whole boat but I didn't get bitten. The canal boat can only go up to 4 miles and hour so it's not like we were really outracing them.

Here are some other shots of the two mile round trip ride.

Here is Andrew listening to canal boat enthusiast Finney tell us all about canals and canal boats.
I do not have much to report. Not because I was bored but because lots of bored children were running around and it was hard to focus. I can tell you however, that the man leading the horses is referred to as a hoggie/hoagie. President Garfield was a hoagie as a teenager.

 

I was much more interested in the horses.

In this video they are turning the canal boat around to head back to where we started. For those on email you can find the link to all of the videos in this blog to their own playlist on YouTube because I am getting fancy.



These horses are Percheron, which  I thought always stayed black or dark brown, but can lighten up to various grays as they get older.

I'll admit I was most interested in these because of the family tree. My Grandma Perdue who I have mentioned recently on the blog, was the youngest of five children. So much younger than her siblings that her father, Mathias Brehm was often tasked with looking after her. Great grandfather Brehm was a hostler...well that's the closest term I can find for what he did. Rather than looking after horses at an inn, he worked large farms with teams of Percheron horses. To hear my Grandma tell it, this man no taller than me acted as a horse trainer and farrier.  Grandma says he built a box for her that fit on a Percheron's back, and she would ride and nap in the box lined with a horse blanket while Mathias worked the fields.

You can learn more about Percheron horses here

and here

Here are some other videos of the ride:

I have to admit I could have ridden on the boat longer than we did. A homemade lemonade to sip would have made it perfect. Here is Andrew listening to Finney tell us all about canals.

We depart and Andrew takes some pictures. Finney (I'm not sure if it is Mr. Finney or just Finney) is helping transition to the next group of ticket holders. He has ridden on every canal boat in the Eastern United States. Apparently there is a canal boat in Piqua and one in Toledo.

And me saying hello and good-bye to the Percherons.

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