After a fun 3 days of "making memories" at Camp Sandusky, it was time to move on. We purposely planned it so we would move out on Labor Day Niagara Falls was our next destination and we wanted the crowds gone before we showed up. :) This is half of the reason why we took our time the first week and stayed in places 2-3 days at a time.
Monday we packed everything up. We wanted to leave by about 9, but it ended up being about 9:45. I actually got talking to our neighbor for awhile before we left. They were from Cleveland and we kept seeing them on and off all weekend, but we never spoke to them. They were interesting to talk to! They saw that we were from Nebraska, so they were curious what we were doing and how long we had been gone already. The mom also said, "So I assume you homeschool?" You are correct!
Once we were packed up and the camper was hooked up, we loaded into the truck and headed out. On our way out, we came to the conclusion that if the owners cleaned up the junk around the campground, it would be a very nice place to stay!
Within an hour, we drove through the first big city of our trip- Cleveland! (We had always driven around the cities before.) Along the way, we saw that Cleveland was founded in the late 1700s (like 1791?), we were surprised, so of course, we had to look it up and see the history behind the city. :)
A little bit later, we entered Pennsylvania and then soon we were in New York! I tell you, I was pretty happy when we entered New York state- one step closer to the Statue of Liberty!!
Our goal was to get to Niagara Falls before 4 pm. One of the buildings, the Discovery Center, closed at 5 pm and was not open during the week. We were hoping to get there and go through it before 5.
As we pulled into Niagara Falls area, I learned that Niagara Falls is actually the name of the city where the falls are located. The waterfalls are located at Niagara Falls State Park and the waterfalls are not called "Niagara Falls." We pulled into the park and found a parking spot for our camper.
We all climbed out of the truck and kind of looked at each other! We had a map of the grounds, but we didn't know where we were on the map! Eventually we started walking towards the people and found out that we were jut by a restaurant that overlooked Horseshoe Falls. We went in that direction and then we saw the mist from the falls! WOW!!! We totally forgot about going to the Discovery Center and headed to see that humungous waterfall!!
This is what it looked like from far away. You can see the people down in the middle of the picture- we weren't quite sure what was down there, but we headed down there anyway!
As we got closer, you could see things better. It was one of the waterfalls! This waterfall was called "The Horseshoe Falls" because the cliff it fell over was in the shape of a horseshoe. Now that we knew where we were on the map, we knew which waterfall it was. :) In this picture, you can see the "Maid of the Mist" boat tours that will take you down by the falls.
We stared at this for a long time and took lots of pictures! We were amazed at all the people that were there from other countries! I told the girls to stay close and not wonder off! Christian was in his stroller, so that helped a lot.
We decided that we would follow our map and see what else there was, it was almost 5, so we knew we weren't going to make it to the Discovery Center. We had found this on the map and it was a long ways away, so we decided to explore the park some more. We walked down a little ways and soon discovered that there was another waterfall almost just as big as this one plus another smaller one! This was not what I expected!
I totally thought that we would go and see a waterfall and be done, but there were really three waterfalls! This was a whole complex, not just a little area where the waterfalls were located. The state park spread out over at least a half mile and it took a lot of walking to get around. I was really surprised! The kids kept wanting to get on the trolleys that were transporting people around and we kept saying, "No, we will ride those tomorrow."
We headed over to the other falls called "The American Falls" and watched that one for awhile too.
I took this picture as were approaching this waterfall. We eventually went down to where those people are in the picture.
We stayed at Four Mile Creek State Park that night and this was about 20 minutes north of Niagara Falls, right along the edge of Lake Ontario. By the time we got there and set up, it was already starting to get dark. I made supper and put the kids to bed. Honestly, I don't think the kids got to bed until around 10:30 or so!
After Matt and I had the kids in bed, we started talking amongst ourselves. Matt asked me, "Do you really want to go back to Niagara Falls tomorrow or do you just want to move on?" The weather was only supposed to be in the high 60's and I wasn't too anxous about getting wet on the extra activities and I didn't think the kids would enjoy getting wet either. We agreed that we would save our money that we were planning on spending at the park and spend it on the east coast somewhere. I was honestly going to bring it up to him anyway- he just read my mind. :)
So now, plans changed. We were not going to go back to Niagara Falls on Tuesday and Matt had to start working 4 hours a day. This part of the trip was not planned out yet!
As we were talking about Tuesday, he brought up another concern he had. He had read somewhere that he needed to be at least 10 miles away from a foreign country, otherwise he could be charged for roaming not only on our cell phones, but also on his hotspot that he needed to work. We were about two miles from the border! This concerned him a bit, so overnight, he came up with a plan on how to get away from the Canadian border. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment