Saturday, November 7, 2015

Gering / Johnson 2015 Road Trip - Days 8, 9, 10 - Cooperstown, NY to Niagara Falls

After touring the MLB Hall of Fame museum we took our Danny's Market sandwiches on the road and headed to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.  Charlie navigated another scenic route and we saw beautiful autumn trees and old barns along the way.  Also, not too far outside of Cooperstown we saw one of the locks for the Erie Canal.  They say life is all about the journey and not the destination, well on this trip we certainly enjoyed the journeys from each destination to the next, time to visit, nap, and see lots of beautiful scenery!

Charlie found us another great hotel!  These shots were taken from our hotel room windows!  The hotel had positioned a comfortable chair so that it faced looking out the window, I spent a lot of time in that chair!  Bobby even joked that the second morning he woke up early so he could sit in the chair and I was already in it watching the sun come up!  We slept with the curtains open just like in Philadelphia, loved being able to glance out and see the Falls!


We had a really good dinner and breakfast the next morning in the hotel restaurant.  After breakfast we booked a tour for the afternoon, the tour was a great investment, a knowledgeable guide and a bus to take us to each attraction! The tour guide told us lots of information as we drove from stop to stop and even showed us pictures of the Falls from long ago.  Our first stop on the tour was Skylon Tower, next was Journey Behind the Falls, and the final stop was the infamous boat ride that takes you up close and personal to the Horseshoe Falls.  Guaranteed  to get you wet!  


View of the Horseshoe Falls from Skylon Tower:
 View of the American and Bridal Veil Falls from Skylon Tower.

Journey Behind the Falls



This was one of two tunnels that looked out from behind the Horseshoe Falls. 
Pretty dang cool!

A picture taken from the observation deck at Journey Behind the Falls of the boat we would soon be boarding!

Gotta love those rain ponchos!
A view of the American Falls from the boat.  Getting close...
 Horseshoe Falls.  Getting closer.....

Closer yet.....right before we were slammed with mist from the Horseshoe Falls and all the cameras got put away. This boat ride was probably my most favorite thing of the entire trip, exhilarating!

Apparently rainbows are a relatively common sight due to all of the mist.  We witnessed a full rainbow when we first pulled into town and then this smaller one on the second day.

Dinner that evening was at Tony Roma's, another great dinner and a bizarre encounter with two traveling nurses who were extremely friendly and wanted to take Teresa's picture because they thought she was Jean Stapleton the actress who played Edith Bunker!  The whole thing was kind of odd especially when they also took a picture of Bobby and me. 

The next day we headed to Niagara on the Lake, a town 45 minutes or so north of the Falls on Lake Ontario. There are many wineries in this region and we passed several of them on the way.  When we first got into town we drove around some of the residential areas (something we had done at almost every destination), it was interesting to see the political signs in the yards as Canada was conducting a Federal election that very day. There were lots of fun shops and eateries in this town and we had a good time shopping.  We picked up a couple of bottles of local ice wine in the liquor store.


The Falls and Niagara on the Lake were two more destinations where we could have spent several more days.  I kept referring to this trip as a 'vacation sampler' because we sampled so many places but could have really made an entire vacation out of each destination!

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