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.