Niagara Falls

24th October, 2010

Driving towards Niagara Falls along the edge of Lake Ontario was amazing. The size of the Great Lakes is hard to appreciate on the map, but from the edge it looks like an ocean. There is no land to be seen on the horizon.
The town of Niagara Falls itself is disappointing. We drove in looking for dinner and wondered if we were somehow missing the main part of town! In the light of day, we realised that we hadn't actually missed the town, that was it. A few large and very tacky souvenir shops, a very large casino, lots of hotels and nothing much else, including restaurants. Amazing really for one of America's biggest tourist destinations.

The Maid of the Mist

The Falls, however, definitely did not disappoint. What an awesome experience. Niagara Falls is made up of three separate falls, the American and Bridal Veil Falls in the USA and Horseshoe Falls in Canada (the border cuts through the middle of them). We did the Maid of the Mist boat ride and got absolutely drenched by the pounding spray, despite wearing the lovely blue ponchos they provide and also the Cave of the Winds (yellow ponchos and plastic sandals this time), where you get to walk along a path at the bottom of the falls. The hurricane deck is where you stand to be completely pounded by the water coming down from 50m above, while almost getting blown away from the force. Great fun and definitely one of the highlights of the trip. We found out that the day we were there (Sunday) was the last day of the season for the Maid and the Cave of the Winds, so very good fortune for us not to have arrived a day or two later and have missed this!

The Cave of the Winds

We crossed the bridge over the river into Canada and the difference was immediately noticeable. So much nicer! Very touristy, but lots of nice restaurants, a skywheel, and observation tower, and a lovely park that stretched for about 2km along the viewing area. They Canadians have definitely done it much better. The view of Horseshoe Falls is also better from this side.

Horseshoe Falls viewed from Canada

We had dinner in Canada before heading back into the USA, with a very smooth border crossing, just all the usual questions.

Lake Placid

We headed off from Vermont, crossing Lake Champlain by ferry into upstate New York. We stayed overnight in Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains. It was getting very cold here and overnight it snowed. We even woke the girls up to see it!

It's snowing!!!!

 Lake Placid has hosted the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Games, and is still the main training site for the US Olympic teams. There are large skating and ice hockey rinks, bobsled and luge courses and ski jumps that you can visit. The ski jump is 120m high and standing at the top you can certainly appreciate the skill and nerve of the athletes as they launch themselves down the ramp, hoping to fly through the air and land some 70m off the end of the ramp onto a very steep slope. Amazing!

New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont

15th - 23rd October, 2010

We spent just over a week exploring the beautiful New England area. Up until now, we had been noticing the colours of the leaves starting to slowly change, but it seemed that as soon as we headed north out of Boston the trees really started putting on the main show. The colours are just amazing ranging from green and yellow right through to orange, red and deep rusty brown. Very hard to capture in photos, but just spectacular to actually see.                                                                                                                                                              

We visited Acadia National Park, near Bar Harbor in Maine. The weather was great and the scenery lovely, although we only had a very short time there. We stayed nearby in a little cottage by the seaside. There we met a few really nice families that come the the cabins every year, so we enjoyed our stay there greatly! One of the families offered to let us stay in their log cabin in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. What a stroke of luck for us, the cabin was fantastic.

We had planned lots of exciting things to do while we we in the area, including gondola rides up mountains and then flying down again on the zipline. Unfortunately for us most things were now "closed for the season". This basically meant that the summer season was over and they were now getting prepared for ski season. We drove about halfway up Mt Washington (the road was closed to the top because of snow). So Natasha and Abbey got to see their first snow, although it was a very thin smattering and bit icy as far as we were allowed to go. They both commented how they thought it would be soft! Anyway, we had a great snowball fight before heading back down.

We also tried the cog railway to get to the top of Mt Washington. It was only going up about two thirds of the way to the top, so we saw a lot more snow, but were unable to get off the train to enjoy it!

We popped into the Mt Washington Hotel afterwards, just for a look at this amazing old place. It was built in 1903, has had past Presidents stay there and is the epitomy of old New Hampshire luxury. Amazing to walk through and imagine yourself there 100 years ago (fabulously rich of course!)

The Mount Washington Hotel, New Hampshire

Earlier as we passed through the coastal part of New Hampshire, Michael bought some fireworks (its legal in NH) so much to everyone's excitement we had our own private (and very short) fireworks show!

Next we headed towards Vermont where many things awaited. First we visited the Cabot Cheese Factory and did a tour to learn how cheese is made, and then of course got to taste some. They also make butter and yoghurt. The company is a Co-op, started in 1919 by 94 dairy farmers who paid $5 each to create what is now a huge company, still owned by farmers.
Next stop was a maple syrup farm, but as the syrup is harvested in spring when the sap begins to flow there wasn't much action going on. We also visited Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory (also including taste testing), before the much awaited Vermont Teddy Bear Factory where we got to see how the Bears are made. We now have two new additions to the family.

Boston

12th - 15th October, 2010

We took the Amtrak train from New York to Boston. It was a relaxing ride along the coastlines of Connecticut and Rhode Island before entering into Massachusetts. We stayed in a hotel that was literally right next door to Fenway Park, home of the Boston Redsox baseball team.

Fenway Park

We decided to do another Duck tour, since the one in Seattle was so much fun, and Boston didn't disappoint either. The tour took us past sights such as Paul Revere's house and the site of the Boston Tea Party, MIT and also other local icons such as the State House with its gold-leaf dome and nearly all of the 115 Dunkin' Donut stores in the city!

Harvard University

We visited Harvard Univeristy, the oldest and probably most famous of all the American universities (across the river and technically in Cambridge). What an huge campus and we didn't envy the new students arriving for their first day and trying to find their way around. Saw some of the original old buildings as well as some amusing sights, including at least two Professors wearing bowties riding along through campus on their bicycles, coat-tails flying.

Here we said goodbye to Jo and Mike as they headed back to Kansas and their RV after an enjoyable time with them. We picked up our car (a Jeep this time and nowhere near as big as our previous Chevy) and headed north looking for those famed fall colours.

New York, New York

7th -12th October, 2010

From the minute we got into the cab at La Guardia airport, we knew New York was going to be an adventure! The cab driver drove like a maniac, narrowly missing a number of cars on the 30 min drive to our hotel in Times Square. We soon realised that he was just driving like everyone else in this city!
Leah's sister Jo and her partner Mike, who have been travelling in the USA since March met us in New York and together we explored the city.
Our hotel was great, with a view of Times Square from the window. Times Square is an amazing place, so many people crammed into a few blocks (mostly tourists), so many lights and full of action day or night. Quite overwhelming to be in the middle of such a huge city. There were long queues for everything from restaurants to buying something in the stores.

We toured the city on the hop on - hop off buses that stopped at all the major sights and then some! We saw all the places you think of when you think of New York - the Statue of Liberty, went to the top of the Empire State Building and visited Central Park, which was a nice escape from the crowds, saw a show on Broadway, saw Carnegie Hall and Wall Street, and of course went into Tiffany's...just for a look. We did a night lights tour also, which was quite spectacular from Brooklyn looking back to Manhattan.

South to Denver

5th - 6th October, 2010

After leaving Yellowstone we headed through Buffalo Bill country in the Wild West of Wyoming. Some spectacular volcanic rock formations (from the Yellowstone volcano) and an amazing gorge that followed the river. As we headed further south, the land flattened out into the open grassy plains of Wyoming and the roads were much quieter.
Leaving Wyoming, we stopped in for a very short visit to the Rocky Mountains National Park in Colorado before making our way into Denver for our flight the next morning to New York. Even under cloud, we could appreciate the size of the mountains here. We visited Bear Lake, which was awesome. A beautiful still day and the reflections were lovely as we walked the short trail around the lake.

Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain NP

Yellowstone National Park

2nd - 5th October, 2010                                                                                                                              


We spent two days driving around the "Grand Loop" road through Yellowstone NP. As soon as we entered the park we started to see elk and bison. It wasn't hard, you just had to stop where all the other cars had pulled over to take a look! Lots of steaming hot springs and geyser basins that you could drive right up to and then get out and walk around the boardwalks.

The Grand Prismatic Spring

Despite our best efforts, the only bears we saw were in the Bear and Wolf Discovery centre in West Yellowstone. Natasha and Abbey became honorary bear keepers and got to go into the enclosure and hide the food for the two very large Grizzlies, then got to watch the bears find the food.

Old Faithful

We also saw "Old Faithful" go off, a must see in Yellowstone. The geyser goes 21 times every day, on average about 75 minutes apart. It shoots hot water nearly 20m  into the air and the average eruption time lasts for between 2 -5 minutes.
 The Old Faithful Lodge is amazing to see! It is the largest log cabin in America and possibly the world. Inside there are at least three levels in the main building that then lead off into the accommodation areas.

Old Faithful Lodge

While on our way driving to a really nice dinner in the lodge, we were held up for quite a few minutes by a bison that insisted on walking straight in front of us on the road. The bison happen to be VERY BIG and we didn't want to take it on head to head so we had to wait it out.

Heading East

30th September - 1st October

From Seattle we drove via the town of Snohomish (Michael was in heaven there, the entire town consisted of antique stores) to Spokane (Washington). Dinner was at a local Diner, with the guarantee on the menu that, you guessed it, no one ever leaves hungry.  They were right.   The waitress was very friendly, as was the Texan across in the next booth.  He had just flown in to visit his son at Uni and, spur of the moment, had bought a Red Corvette from a nice little old couple (75 years old) for $10,000.. He seemed quite moved when he was chatting to us, and explained that watching us muck around in the dinner reminded him of his family when the kids were much younger...  I suspect he was also a bit teary knowing that he would have to explain his recent purchase to his wife when he got back, as well as the cancelled return plane ticket...

This morning we had breakfast at a classic "Train Diner" which consists of a very old Train carriage that has been modified.  I've heard of these things and it was a really great meal.  We stuffed ourselves and headed off.

Today we went through three states, Washington, Idaho and Montana. We drove along through some beautiful pine forests and the "fall colours" are certainly beginning to show. Lots of yellow leaves starting to happen.

We stayed at Butte (pronounced Beaut, and not Butt) Montana, at Copper King Casino and Convention Centre which can lay claim to having not only an indoor pool, but also an indoor water slide to heighten that winter experience.  I knew it was a cold place when I noticed  the snow shovel next to the door of  the Safeway store.  Currently it's a pleasant 6 degrees C in the evening... so I'm still wearing shorts and T-Shirt.  My Yeti-style-hairy-legs are working well to ward off the cold.  The 'frailer ladies of the trip' are wearing more conventional gear and look a lot less out of place to the locals.

While we have noticed a number of casino's over the last two weeks, it's only here that there has been a larger number of the gaudy signs ...  our dinner tonight consisted of Two "Family" sized pizzas...  each of which was larger than the combined circumference of both Natasha and Abbey's heads.  This particular meal was available from the Pizza/Casino restaurant at a cost of just over $18, which, naturally, included an indoor games area for the kids... the usual stuff really.. oh, and a circus Merry-Go-Round..  Lunch will consist of the remainder of the pizza.

Supersize  Pizzas

Tomorrow our journey continues, and we hit Yellowstone National Park.  My bet with Natasha and Abbey that we will be greeted by Yogi Bear and Boo Boo is looking shaky...

Comments on the trip so far...:

MT:  The American people are really quite nice here at home...    not that I didn't expect that, but I didn't expect them to be that nice.   The tourist/hospitality trade really survives on tips, and perhaps that helps explain why that group is so over the top with being nice to you (and the other locals), however people in the street are equally nice. While we are not silly enough to assume all Americans are as nice as the folk we have met to date, there is no denying that they are a very hospitable people.  We've been offered a free place to stay in Seattle, met random folk who were more than happy to help us out, and even been waved to by some nice folk when driving on the wrong side of the road (well I think they were waving). Last night, at Spokane (Washington) we met a Texan who had just flown in.  He was almost tearful as he watched our family muck around in the diner as it reminded him of his own family.  You could not meet a more gentile and pleasant man... although he did hesitate at swapping his Red Corvette that he had just spontaneously purchased that day for our Sherman tank of a rental...  oh well...    did you know that $10,000 buys you a nice 1988 Red Corvette here ?  amazing...

Food is cheap, I mean real cheap...   and it's not only "Home Brand" that is cheap.  The $1 shop, where $1 buys you anything in the shop was an eye opener.  A wide variety and range of brands were available.  We are not really 5 Star lifestyle people, but we are amazed at how well you can live here on what seems to be a lower income.  Housing, food, petrol, electricity... all much cheaper than Australia.

Internet hot spots here are everywhere.  I bought a SIM card for my Ipad, and it has worked for 95% of our trip...  Yosemite even had patches where the Ipad could find signal...   Every motel we stay at has free WiFi...  it's a place saturated with connectivity.

The little townships have so much character, the locals are very chatty, and the history is well celebrated, including the truths of how the original Indian peoples were treated...

The roads are pretty good.. we would love to avoid the major Interstate highways as much as time allows, but  there is a limit to how far you can travel in a day off them.

The recession here is hurting business.  The retail shops are hardly empty, but, with the exception of Walmart, $1 Stores, and Factory Outlets, the number of customers does not seem very high.  The number of sales assistants seems very high, but that could revolve around low minimum pay levels and a higher level of staffing here regardless... it's hard to know.   Talk on NPR (National Public Radio) is all about the recession, and how many home owners are under water with their home loans.  While the stock market seems to keep rising, the economy is barely floating...   The flip side of how weak the US dollar sits, however, is that many Americans are travelling in their own country rather than O/S.   Accommodation places have done really well this year, and Yellowstone has had it's largest number of visitors ever on record. There are RV's everywhere here...

Seattle

27th-30th September

Visited the Pike Place Market - wow! The place is amazing, fish, meat, fruit, flowers, souvenirs and much more. The market started 103 years ago because the locals were fed up with the huge profits the middle men were making, so the farmers started selling their produce direct to the people and it continues on today as the oldest public market in America.

The Seattlites must always have fresh flowers at home - $5 for a small bouquet,
$10 for a large one.

1% of any new construction in Seattle CBD must be also spent on Art..  as a result there is some funky art all around the city...  being the home of many famous bands, it also lays claim to the Rock and Sci-Fi museum, otherwise known as experience music and science fiction museum http://www.empsfm.org/ ("where Rock meets Spock")

Despite our vowing to never take one of those silly Duck tour rides... on day two that's exactly what we did..  and it was fantastic...  the entire duck was ours, and all proceeds on that particular day went to Starlight Foundation for kids, so it was all good Karma.  "Chuck Wagon" our guide was full of knowledge, and despite the fact that our duck could have carried another 40 people, he still put on an amazing show as we drove, around and floated past the sights of Seattle... including all of the "Sleepless in Seattle" movie hotspots.

Naturally, we 'did' the Seattle Needle, and it was far bigger than I had expected...  the thing was built in the 1960's for a world science fair, and has been updated to include some really cool additions... including multiple video cameras that you can control from multiple screen in the viewing level, and a revolving restaurant that allowed you to appreciate the full vista.

Our visit to the Boeing Factory was interesting for Leah and Myself, although the girls were not that excited by the enormity of it all.  The Factory itself is the largest building (by volume) in the world. It is 500m wide, 1000m long and 11 stories high. It is full of planes under construction, including the massive 747's and the newest in the fleet, the 787's. At one stage, Boeing employed one in every 5 people that lived in Seattle. There is currently something like 70,000 staff at the Everett plant that we visited, working a 24hr shift, 365 days per year.

We stayed at a more upmarket motel in Seattle, Ramada, which taught us a valuable lesson...  the previous places might have lacked the lobby, but they made up for it in honest keenness to please.  There was a real heart warm honesty that showed us these owner operators were genuinely keen to ensure our stay was the very best their humble abode could provide.  That was sadly lacking at Ramada, where the automatic response to anything being broken was 'sorry, that's broken, have a nice day'...  Abbey, naturally, latched onto that saying, and along with the USA twang, it rang out for a number of hours all the way East as we left Seattle.

The Pacific West Coast

24th -27th September
So we say goodbye to Yosemite and begin our journey towards Seattle, the northern most point of our West Coast USA tour... sorry fans in Canada, our tour can not visit ya'all this time around.

After leaving Yosemite we headed out towards the west coast through Sacramento. We ended up a little place called Fort Bragg.  Our very friendly (and chatty) Travelodge owner went into great detail about how it was famous for it's Skunk Train, as well as it's "Glass Beach"... which sounds a lot better than a steam train that used to be run on green wood, so it stank all the time, and a rubbish tip that was right on the beach, which was eventually cleaned up, but the broken glass bottles were smoothed by the waves and left pretty rocks for the children to collect. The restaurant that he recommended was closed for a function, and the best sunset in the country looked like most other sunsets we had seen... Despite howls of protest from the children, we headed off far too early to fully appreciate the splendour of those two attractions.

The Redwoods are big enough to drive through!

The next day we drove along the stunning coastline and through the magnificent Redwood National Park. Some of the trees here are thousands of years old and all are huge. We stopped at Florence, a pretty little place, which gave us a real taste of fishing village/holiday town atmosphere.  We had our first rain of the trip as we woke in Florence, but we quickly moved away from the rain as we headed inland towards Portland. Just east of Portland is the Columbia River Gorge. The highway runs along the river, but there is also the scenic by-way that we took where the waterfalls run year round.

Multnomah Falls.

From our overnight stop in The Dalles along the Columbia River Gorge we headed up towards Seattle, past the snow capped tops of Mt St Helens and Mt Rainier. It would have been great to do some exploring there, but with only eight weeks to see a large list of things, we continued on.