Saturday, June 30, 2007

Day 1

Gallery

What a first day!
We left Massachusetts, but not before taking a pic of this sign:



Hopefully we'll see the sister sign in South Dakota in a few days.

Into New York... The AAA book said Schoharie Crossing in Fort Hunter had a nice nature trail, so we stopped there. Off the highway we passed by a huge Target distribution center -- no wonder we see so many Target trucks on I-90, Laurel counted 9 today! Across from Target was a neat rainbow house.



At Schoharie we took the towpath trail for about 2.5 miles out to a picnic area. Passed two old locks on the "Enlarged Erie Canal". Saw a red-winged blackbird and some "least sandpipers" (peeps). Heard the froggies in the canal. Saw some goats at a farm. Part of the trail is called the Woodchuck Walk, but thankfully we didn't see any of those evil beasts.



We ate our lunch sitting on a dock on the Mohawk River. On the way back we walked and ran on the bike trail. It was a good excursion.

Back on the thruway... at a rest area we saw an antique truck and camper. Further along the road there was some light rain. Interesting clouds, nice rainbow. Laurel was worried about camping in the rain but there were no clouds off to the right (north) where we were headed.



We drove for about 500 miles today. Played the license plate game, saw plates from 30 different states/provinces, one was "JJS CAR".

Got to the KOA campground, set up our tent, made mac & cheese & baked beans for dinner, then took off for Goat Island to see the falls. On the way out we saw the "Power Vista" power plant, operated by the "Power Authority of New York".

There was a sidewalk that led down to the horseshoe falls, it was amazing that you could just jump over a 3-foot railing if you wanted to, right into the river right at the falls.

We got very wet on the Cave of the Winds tour. Real wet. Dan didn't wear his rainjacket hood. See?



There was one landing that was directly under one of the Bridal Falls, so water is thunderously pounding down on you. They call it the hurricane deck. Some of the walkways get torn down every fall and rebuilt in the spring.

After that we got ice cream and then went back to the campsite

Tomorrow morning we get a pancake breakfast. We'll spend the day in Niagara. There are some fancy fireworks over the falls at 10pm (if we decide to stick around that long). July 1 is Canada Day so it should be interesting.

3 comments:

Brian said...

Happy Canada Day! I expect to be in Chicago tomorrow (7/2), so let me know if you've made it that far!

Anonymous said...

I'm impressed you know bird names, especially the generic name of "peeps."

Laurie Patterson

Big Wall Nuts said...

don't be that impressed... i knew it was a sandpiper but looked it up in a bird book at the visitor center. these were so small they must have been the "least" variety. they look just like the marshmallow variety.