Niagara Falls--Slowly I Turned.....

We scheduled a short stay in Erie, PA to give us fairly easy access to Niagara Falls by car while still staying on the basic route to Ohio.  HeM had seen the falls many years ago, but SheM had not.  We found a KOA and made the stop.

We had scheduled 1 day to drive up, see both the USA side and the Canada side of the falls, and drive back.  We opted to park on the US side and walk across the bridge to Canada.

The falls are as we've all seen in so many pictures.  Viewing the falls are much better from the Canadian side.  Here are the American Falls:

And here are the Horseshoe Falls:

We were very impressed with how nicely Canada has landscaped the pathway along the viewing area.

And their Welcome Center is attractive.

We saw very little effort for the same level of attractiveness on the USA side.  For instance, the US Welcome Center is awash with blatant commercial advertising.

And this is the first thing you see as you step off the bridge from Canada entering the US.

We would like to see a lot more pride in our appearance exhibited by the US, but it doesn't seem likely.  We did enjoy seeing the falls.  We didn't take the time to don rain gear and trek down to the falls themselves, but maybe on another visit.  After all, it isn't that far from Ohio.

Speaking of Ohio, that's our next stop.  Our adventure is starting to wind down now as we approach the end of our 3rd year doing this.  We'll start looking for stationary homes in Ohio and Texas.  That will be another adventure altogether.  In the meantime, we'll make a couple more stops before we call this adventure complete.

Finger Lakes of New York

We spent 3 weeks in Bath, NY in the Finger Lakes area of the state.  Its scenic rolling hills and lakes, along with lots of vineyards made it a pleasant and relaxing stay.

The vineyards were a big draw in our decision to stop here.  We sampled several of the many, many local wineries.  Wines in this part of the nation tend to be sweeter than our tastes, but we did finally find a couple that we liked.  Our preference is still solidly with California wines, though.

We visited several neighboring towns.  The first on the list was Ithaca.  This was Carl Sagan's home base for many years.  He taught at Cornell University in Ithaca, and is buried there.  HeM has admired Sagan for many years and was keen on visiting.  We had seen that the Sciencenter of Ithaca has a Carl Sagan Planet Walk plotted in the city.  It's a scale model of the solar system which gives walkers a representation of the distance between the planets.  It starts in the center of the city with an obelisk of the sun.  Obelisks for each planet are appropriately placed along the 3/4 mile trail and ends with Pluto (the trail was established before Pluto was demoted) at the Sciencenter.  Our plan was to start at the sun and walk out to Mars.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find the sun.  Ithaca is in the middle of a major renovation of its downtown common area and the obelisks have been temporarily removed.  Even though we were assured that there were clearly marked posters for the sun, Mercury, Venus, and Earth at their usual obelisk stations, we had no luck finding them.

We had the address for the cemetery where Carl is buried, and paid him a visit.  It's common practice for admirers to bring blue marbles, representing the 'Pale Blue Dot'.  We did the same.  We also took a picture with HeM's 'Pale Blue Dot' paperweight.

Elmira was on the way from Bath to Ithaca.  We had seen that Mark Twain is buried there.  Since we were apparently on a grave tour, we made a stop there, too.

Corning is about 20 miles from Bath.  It's obviously well-known for its glass manufacturing history.  It's home to the Corning Museum of Glass.  We had seen commercials on the local TV stations, clearly targeted at children, to come see the glass-blowing exhibits, etc.  We went expecting to be underwhelmed with the museum, but were pleasantly surprised.  It houses a huge collection of glass dating back from Egyptian times through modern times.  The collection is so big, we ran out of energy trying to take it all in.

We took a boat ride on Seneca Lake one Sunday morning.  The ride included a buffet brunch.  The food was what you might expect, but the scenery was nice.  The narration by the captain gave us a few fun facts about the lake.  It's the largest of the Finger Lakes.  It averages 2 miles in width.  It's about 37 miles long.  Its depth averages about 300', with the deepest point being about 600'.  It's spring-fed, the constant motion giving it little chance to freeze over.  However, in 1912 it did freeze and an adventurous individual skated the entire length of the lake.

Watkins Glen neighbors Bath.  The weekend that we arrived, NASCAR-fever was evident.  Watkins Glen has a 'world-famous' race track, and NASCAR was being telecast nationwide from there.  The RV park we were in was absolutely packed.  After the weekend, the population at the park reduced significantly.  We aren't NASCAR fans, so Watkins Glen wasn't an attraction in that vein.  What we did want to visit is the State Park there which has a walking trail along a gorgeous gorge.

Bath itself does not have much in the way of  'things to do'.  There is an airplane museum which we could not get enthused enough to go see.  SheM did get an inexpensive haircut there (she's looking forward to getting back to her regular hairdresser in Texas).  One thing that we did enjoy was the county fair that was held there.  We went for some local color, and were pleasantly surprised by the quality and variety of the exhibits--especially in the botany department.  This year's focus was apparently on roses and gladiolas.  They were absolutely stunning.

Our next stop is a short visit in Erie, PA as we are making our way to Ohio.

Cooperstown, NY--Not Just Baseball, But A Lot of It

We made a short stop (no baseball pun, intended) in Cooperstown, NY.  We arrived a few days after the annual National Baseball Hall of Fame Inductee festivities, so we imagine the crowds had thinned.  The townspeople were still basking in the afterglow, claiming that this year's event had been one of their best.  We have to admit that we're not big professional baseball fans, so the timing of our arrival so near their 'big day' was simply happenstance.

We were based in an RV park that was just a few miles from Cooperstown Dream Park.  This is home of the American Youth Baseball Hall of Fame which hosts summer tournaments for teams of kids age 12 and younger.  Some of the participants in the tournament were camped in the same RV park where we were.  The small baseball diamond in the campground constantly had kids of all ages playing/practicing on it.  It brought back a refreshing nostalgic feeling of  "baseball, Mom, and apple pie", rather than a lot of the negative aspects so often associated with professional ball teams.

We did go by the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  And walked the busy streets of Cooperstown.

Besides baseball, the area hypes its Cooperstown Beverage Trail of local breweries and wineries.  Of course, we had to sample.  We visited the Cooperstown Brewing Co., not a fancy establishment by any means, but very good brews.

We wanted to bring some of their very nice porter brew along with us to share later, but they were in the midst of getting new labels approved by the State of New York, and bottle sales were not available yet pending that approval.

We also visited Brewery Ommegang.  This brewery hosts large concert events as well as brewing beer.  They tout their 'greenness' by donating the used grains for feed at a local dairy and the used yeasts to local farms for fertilizing fields.  (They found that feeding livestock the used yeasts resulted in a bunch of drunk animals.)  We enjoyed their brews as well, and were able to bring some along with us.

Cooperstown Distillery makes hand-crafted bourbon, vodka, and gin.  And we came away with samples of each--no surprise.

 We were close enough to New York's capital Albany to add another Capitol Building to our list.  We were greatly impressed with its exterior.

Its interior is simply massive with lots of stairs and hallways.

We would have to say that it is the most majestic Capitol we've seen.  The history of its construction costs is not at all unlike any government projects these days.  The original estimate in 1867 was $4 million.  In 32 years it was completed and the final cost exceeded $25 million, making it more expensive than the U.S. Capitol.

Our last outing at this stop was a drive into the state of Vermont.  Our goal is to visit each of the 48 continuous states before hanging up our wheels.  The town of Bennington was the closest so it was our choice.

This small town has a museum that it claims has the largest collection of Grandma Moses paintings.  We were asked to not take pictures of the paintings, but they were all of the same style--scenes of old-fashioned farms, towns, and countryside.

Bennington is also site of the Vermont's tallest structure, the Bennington Battle Monument in honor of a Revolutionary War battle that occurred here.  It's just over 306' tall, and it has over 400 steps to the top.  As the steps are closed to the public these days, an elevator took us up for a view.

We are continuing eastward, and will enjoy a lengthy stay in the Finger Lakes next.

New England States

We spent the month of July in the New England states covering Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.  Our RV park stops were in Foxboro, MA; Littleton, MA; and Bangor, ME.  We also spent a few days around the Fourth of July in a hotel in Boston, and a week in a condo in Bar Harbor where a special young family from Austin joined us.

We had targeted Boston as our July 4th location so that we could experience the annual Boston Pops celebration there, looking forward to hearing the howitzers firing across the Charles River as the orchestra played The 1812 Overture.  We booked a hotel close to the Esplanade so we would be in close walking proximity.  Everything was set.  Then Hurricane Arthur showed up.  The celebration was moved forward a day to July 3.  The performances were cut a bit short in order to get the fireworks in before an approaching drenching weather system hit.  Fireworks were completed and all that was left was the overture and the howitzers....but, alas, it was not to be.  Based on a  Weather Service report, the order was issued that the Esplanade be cleared immediately at that point, and it was not a moment too soon.  Within just minutes the clouds opened and everyone there was soaked.  As it turns out we watched all this unfold from our hotel room, comfortable and dry, drinking our glasses of wine.  We were discouraged from being on the Esplanade after being herded through the streets to get to the entrance, and discovering that we were behind many hundreds of others waiting to be cleared through security.  We had seen the stage close up earlier in the day when things were being set up.  We knew that we could see the fireworks from our hotel room, and a live broadcast was going to be available on a local television station.  The hotel seemed like the better idea, so away we went.  And glad that we did.

Boston has so much to see, where does one start?  A very small sampling of the many sites we visited:  USS Constitution, Bunker Hill, Fenway Park.

We drove to Plymouth and saw a replica of the Mayflower.  Plymouth Rock is much smaller than one would expect.  It's history is rather sad, including breaking apart when it was originally moved, and souvenir pieces being taken over the years.  This is what is still left.

We drove a short ways up Cape Cod, stopping in Hyannis Port.  There is a small JFK Museum there, and we visited it.  We had hoped to be able to see the Kennedy compound, but it wasn't possible.

We visited Lexington and Concord where the "shot heard round the world" was fired on North Bridge.  There is still a bridge there, albeit not the original one.

We added 3 more State Capitols to our list:  Providence, RI; Concord, NH; and Augusta, ME.

Some major renovations are taking place on the Maine Capitol, as you can see from all the scaffolding.  When we were in Maine, we had hoped to see a moose.  The only one we saw was a stuffed one inside the Capitol.

Maine is a very friendly state--at least, that was our experience.  It's a very patriotic state--US flags are seen flying everywhere.  And it has a strong grassroots movement to increase 'Mainely Made' products.  Perhaps it would be a good example for the rest of the nation.

Our week in Bar Harbor was a fun one.  We saw a lot of iconic scenery.

When the tide was out, we enjoyed exploring the tide pools.

We went on a couple of boat excursions where we could see and touch local sea creatures.

The 7-year-old and 4-year-old that was with us proudly became Junior Rangers at Acadia National Park.

We enjoyed walking around the small town of Bar Harbor, and tried to have fresh seafood wherever we went, of course.  The week went really quickly.

Maine was our northernmost and easternmost stop.  We're now making our way back south and west.  Upstate New York is next.