Niagara Falls, Here We Come!

Friday, October 12, 2012

Niagara Falls, Here We Come!

This day started with me telling Tom, as he was almost at the door of the trailer to go to the wash house, that it was raining. So what else is new? And it continued to rain almost to the last things to do before we pulled out of the camp site. Poor Tom! He had to work in the rain to get us ready to go. We did get to walk to the wash house for the last time before we got into the van to leave. Geesh! But Tom was heard to say later, “Could have been a downpour this morning. That would have been worse.”

It was 42 degrees outside at about 6:15 am at Turning Stones, NY, and about 54 degrees inside. It was much warmer inside the sleeping bag. I had a hard time getting going this morning so we left a little later than we would have liked to leave. It was about 10:08am. There were small patches of blue in the sky that we could see as we started west on Rt 90. We were hoping that there would be more. The rain stopped completely about an hour into our trip.

It seems that the colors are starting to be coming to the middle of NY state. They are not vibrant yet, but they are visible in some spots. We enjoyed looking for those spots today.

Some milestone info:
11am - passed the 2500 miles for the trip
12:05pm - passed the 100 miles for today’s trip
About 12:30pm we stopped for lunch. We went into the trailer to make and eat lunch as we have done so many times before. Only this time it was 48 degrees in the trailer. We made our lunch and then took it back to the van to eat it while the sun was shining thru the front window and warming both us and the inside of the van. Nice.

On the final visit to the restrooms we saw a sign that told us that there was an information center for Niagara Falls at the next service area. We decided to stop to see what they had to say.
The woman at the information center was helpful with information about Niagara Falls and suggested taking a tour of either or both sides of the falls. When she talked of parking in the Niagara Falls Park area at $25 we sort of choked. She told us the cost of the tours, both the American side and the Canadian side. We sort of choked again. She told us that there was a tour company that made stops at our intended campground. So we had something to think about as we finished the drive to the campground.

We found the campground and the signs for tour information. We registered and went to find our site all the way in the back of the campground. Literally. Although there is barely space for one camper next to us the only thing farther back is the road around the campground and the tent area.
As we were going to check out the tour information at a place that would really know something about it, we were watching a small motor home (looks like an upgraded conversion van) was driving around the campground. I made some assumptions that it was to be our neighbor on the itty-bitty spot and was either trying to find it or was looking for another place. Both were true. The van stopped next to us and the driver was wondering way they were assigned all the way in the back with practically all of the rest of the campground unoccupied. I said that I thought that spaces were being assigned according to the size of equipment. We weren’t that large so we were assigned a space in the back shortened by the turn in the road. He asked about asking to have another space. We never thought of it. So he was going to ask. When we came out of the tour office we saw that they were in one of the front spaces. Oh, by the way, did I mention that the restrooms and showers are all the way in the front of the campground?

We decided to “bite the bullet” and take both the American and the Canadian tours. We take the 8:30am Canadian tour tomorrow morning. I keep thinking about how cold it will be that time of the morning. And we are going to go on a tour where the splashing of water is involved. We will take the tour of the American side on Sunday afternoon.

Talking about temperatures, at 8pm tonight it was 30 degrees outside by the mechanical thermometer on the awning post and 38 degrees on the electronic one with the sender in the hitching hardware of the trailer. I suspect the true temperature is somewhere in between. Now, at 9:30pm, Accuweather says the temperature outside is 35 degrees and the low for tonight is 37 degrees. I think something is off somewhere.

After dinner we packed the things we want to take with us tomorrow and decided what warm clothing we will need. The one good thing is that we can leave things on the tour bus while we are out seeing the attractions.

Off to bed to get some good sleep before we leave. We have the alarm set. We just have to hear it.