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Published: August 9th 2012
Carla: On Friday we pushed the boat out (literal boat and metaphorical one) and spent some cash on a proper 'tour' of Niagara Falls. This meant we didn't have to drive ourselves around and find parking spots for a massive great van all the time. There was also the smooth sales patter from the tour tout who promised us two free ponchos each plus some plastic sandals. How could we say no? I was probably amongst the small minority of people in the world who didn't realise Niagara Falls is two sets of falls – one lot are called the American Falls and the other (Horseshoe Falls) are sometimes called the Canadian Falls. We were worried that we would be banned from the Canadian Falls due to our dodgy passports but it turned out that half of Horseshoe Falls are in the States actually so we could visit freely. First stop was the Whirlpool Rapids which are down-stream from the falls. These are scary looking sections of whitewater which culminate in a slowish moving whirlpool. The whirlpool is caused by the sheer force of the water hurtling downstream in a narrow gorge of the Niagara River. This causes the water to
go round on itself as the river turns a bend. The water at this point is 190 ft deep. A number of daredevils (or as you might call them, idiots) have tried to swim the rapids here. These include Captain Matthew Webb who was the first person to swim the English Channel. Unfortunately this was a challenge too much for him and he drowned in the rapids despite being world-reknowned swimmer. The second visit of the day was to the American Falls and the attraction known as the Cave of the Winds. The American Falls account for 20% of the total water cascading over the falls; there nonetheless still 570,000 litres of water going over them every second. The water that passes over both the sets of falls originates in the Great Lakes of Michigan, Huron, Superior and Erie, which all empty out into the Niagara River; it accounts for one fifth of ALL the freeflowing fresh water in the world. Blimey. There is a narrow section of the American Falls called Bridal Veil falls as it is long, thin and white (I guess!). Here you can walk at the base of the falls and experience the turbulence and spray
caused by this relatively small waterfall. The wind created by the water falling can get up to 80mph here; that is why this area of decking is called the Cave of the Winds. We donned gorgeous plastic yellow ponchos and proceeded to get completely soaked. Happily it was a hot, sticky day so it was a welcome soaking. After a quick shufti at the top of the Horseshoe Falls, our final activity of the tour was a ride on one of the Maid of the Mist boats; namesakes of which have been operating since 1854. We got some more attractive ponchos (this time blue), Niagara Falls plastic shoes, and off we went. The ride is only 20 minutes long but they try to get you as wet as possible by going into the curve of Horseshoe Falls and twirling around in the spray. You get a pretty spectacular view along the way. The boat is apparently named after a Native American princess who threw herself over Horseshoe Falls rather than marry a man she didn't love. Other people have chucked themselves off the falls deliberately and accidentally. One of the first modern daredevil was a 63 year old retired schoolteacher
named Annie Taylor who got in a barrel to do the journey in 1901 and survived. She made a good living after that having her picture taken with people and charging them for it; which I suppose is what teachers had to do in the old days before the union managed to get them a decent pension (sorry is that a contentious issue? I seem to vaguely remember it might be!) A bonus of the boat ride for Ruby was that we crossed the imaginary line in the middle of the Niagara River which separates the US from Canada for about 2 or 3 minutes, so she has unofficially been to Canada and has been to as many countries as George. Thank goodness for that. For me the Falls were definitely one of the highlights of the US part of our trip although I think they should be designated a national park as the state park areas are uncluttered and pretty but are surrounded by tat shops and cheap-looking, expensive motels. Still we all enjoy a bit of tackiness every now and then I guess. The next day was my birthday and I was lucky enough to get some lovely
gifts and home-made cards from George and Ruby and (not surprised, as I'd chosen them) but still pleased to get two pretty pairs of earrings from a nearby gift shop from Alex. We left Niagara and drove to a part of Upstate New York called the Finger Lakes. If you look on a map you'll see why they're called this – they are north-to-south running long, thin lakes that fan out like the fingers of a hand. They are glacially-formed just like the Great Lakes. The region has recently become known for its wine production and around the largest lake where we stayed (called Seneca) there are 34 vineyards and wineries; goodness knows how many there are in the entire region but as we drove around we seemed to come across one every half-a-mile. The wine business started here in the mid-nineteenth century but was virtually wiped out by Prohibition but has been recently revived by incoming Europeans looking for pastures new, as well as some worn-out New Yorkers looking for the good life, as we found. My birthday treat was a meal in a fantastic lakeside bistro called the Ports Cafe. Following a fruitful stop in another great Goodwill
store, a stroll and a lake-view aperitif in the pretty town of Geneva, we cabbed it to the restaurant. We enjoyed the best food we have had so far in the US and a lot of it was locally-sourced including the wine and beer (of course). What a tasty treat followed by a night in a motel (another treat) where we marvelled at the large bed in a real building!
Alex: As we enjoyed the Finger Lakes region so much we decided to stay an extra day to look around more. We drove around Seneca lake and stopped when we saw a sign for a 'Garlic Festival Today'. Not too surprisingly there were lots of stalls selling lots of garlic. I never knew there were so many different types – Giant Elephant (my favourite), German Red and German white amongst others, but annoyingly we had just the day before bought a multi-bag of (general) garlic from the supermarket. Still, we managed to buy some coffee and jam (neither of which contain garlic) and ate lots of samples of local produce including cheeses, dips, jams, pickles and fruit juices and listened to the
blues band. The festival was held on the premises of the Fox Run Vineyard, so we went inside for some wine tasting – 6 tastes for $2 while George and Ruby ran amok in the gift shop! The white wine was nice so we bought a bottle. Afterwards we continued on around Seneca Lake and arrived in Watkins Glen, the town at the very southern tip of the lake. We walked down to the marina, past the 'True Love' sailboat that was used in the film 'High Society' (with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly), which Carla was VERY excited about. We walked out along the harbour wall, past the fishermen, to take a look at the lake. A rather poor pub band playing in the 'Harbour Inn' rather intruded on the calm atmosphere, but it was lovely all the same. We stopped by the Eremita Winery on our way to the campsite. The tasting rooms are in a converted church in Lodi built in 1873. George and Ruby opted to stay in the back of the RV (watching DVDs on the laptop) whilst we went in. (Social services take note! Ed.) The advert for the place had suggested
it had beers to taste as well as wine, but they were still waiting for their license, so he just gave us a free beer to try, brewed by his best mate in Ithaca. He had only been working on this project for a couple of years, and it was fairly small scale (only producing 1000 cases this year) but the wine was really good, even better than the previous tasting – so we bought another bottle. Lots of wine for us!
Carla: We found it hard to leave the Finger Lakes and as we drove north to the Adirondacks on Monday we got side-tracked by one more place. It was Seneca Falls, a small town at the north of Seneca Lake, here we found that we had stumbled upon the birthplace of the US women's rights movement. In a Weslyan Chapel here in 1848 some amazing people including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Coffin Mott drafted a hopeful document asking for rights for women in the USA. Some of the women had been inspired to do this when they had visited London with their husbands to take part in an Abolitionist conference (against slavery) and the men had
voted that the women should not take part in the conference and should sit at the back of the hall. This included Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband – nice marriage! The visitor centre at Seneca Falls was engaging and free and explained the history of women's rights in the US really well; George and Ruby liked the exhibit on stereotyping in children's toys. We met a friendly woman in the gift shop who apologised for the comments made by Mitt Romney about the London Olympics and said that her children prefer visiting the Smithsonian to Disneyland – we concluded that we had met a real, live middle-class East Coast intellectual-type. At least according to our 'Guide to Types of Americans' that we carry with us at all times! At last we dragged ourselves away from the Finger Lakes and headed north. We deviated from the highway to seek out a bakery for our picnic lunch and stumbled upon another significant place in American social history. It was a village called Mexico which turned out to be a centre for the organisation of the 'underground railroad' which was the name for the route used by escaping slaves from the southern states who
were helped to find sanctuary in the north and Canada. A bloke called Starr Clark was one of the central organisers of the railroad and he had a tin shop (not quite sure what that is) in Mexico village and used it to hold meetings and arrange assistance for escapees. I read the plaque whilst Al bought bread. Another improving 10 minutes spent in New York State. We stopped for lunch at a state park on the shore of Lake Ontario and enjoyed the practically perfect cooler temperature and beautiful view of the lake. It was quite wavy like a little sea and reminded us of Superior a bit. So our final Great Lake was ticked off the list – the celebrations went on all night! We continued on to within spitting distance of the Canadian border (a not entirely planned stop, see Al's explanation below) and enjoyed a peaceful night under the stars disturbed only by a couple of skunks (real ones, not an insulting name for our neighbours) passing by. I was (again) very excited as I haven't seen skunks before. So along with beavers, chipmunks, gophers, prairie dogs, red squirrel and elk, the USA has provided me
(and Al) with another wildlife 'first'. Lovely job.
Alex: Driving on towards the Adirondack Park we discovered, looking at the SatNav and a map, that we had stayed in the wrong campsite. We had phoned up and reserved a site at the 'Adirondacks 1000 Islands Camp' earlier on the previous day, we then found the 'Thousand Islands Campground' in the SatNav and set that as our destination. When we arrived they didn't have our reservation but the manager dismissed that as due to her incompetent son not recording it. It wasn't until the next day that Carla noticed that the big lake by the campsite shouldn't be there, and we had in fact gone to the wrong place. The two campsites were about an hour away from each other, our overnight stop being not even close to where we should have been. That'll teach us to just blindly following the SatNav. En route to Lake Placid we stopped at Cranberry Lake State Park. A leaflet told of a 2 hour (3.6 mile) round trip walk up to Bear Mountain, and the beautiful panoramic views of Cranberry Lake. The walk was hard work, quite steep and lots of roots, boulders
and fallen tree trunks to navigate, and when we reached the summit, we found it entirely enclosed by trees – we could hardly see the lake at all! We discussed what to do next and eventually decided to continue with the loop back down to the lake-side and were soon rewarded with much better views of the whole of Cranberry Lake. You could also start to see just how much the Adirondacks is completely covered in trees. Just in every direction as far as you can see, everything that is not a lake is tree covered. After 3 hours we arrived back at our RV parked by the lake shore, all a bit exhausted. We had a picnic on the beach and quick paddle and then back into the RV and on to our next campsite. The drive through the park area was lovely, after all the flat farmland we have crossed in the last few weeks, it was great to be going round some twisty, densely-forested mountain roads again with lots of little towns and fast flowing rivers and lakes.
George: On Wednesday we are going on a gondola to take us to the top of little Whiteface
Mountain. The cable car that we get in into is not very fast but it goes a very very long way up. The doors take a long time to close, me and Ruby are nervous that they won't close at all. When we get to the the top there is a great view of Lake Placid. Ruby and I get 25 cents each to put in a telescope. I see lots of little boats in the water and a nice big mansion on one of the islands. Then we go back down in another cable car. On the way back down Mum takes a video of how high up we are for Uncle Chris to watch. On the way back Mum tells us about a disaster film where a family get stuck in a cable car 200 ft above the ground. Scary.
Alex: After the trip up Whiteface Mountain we went on to Lake Placid (not where the horror/comedy movie about a giant alligator was based – that was in a made up Lake Placid in Maine, but I was still concerned). The town is actually built around Mirror Lake, slightly south of Lake Placid. The winter Olympics were
held here in 1932 and 1980, and the town still holds skiing, and ice skating competitions in the facilities and recently started hosting Iron Man competitions. It's also the location of One Direction's 2
nd video (according to Wikipedia)(Actually Al knows this because of his subscription to the One Direction Twitter feed. Ed.). We parked the RV and went for a coffee in a lake side café, then had a picnic lunch and a long swim in Mirror Lake, followed by an ice-cream. A bit like being on holiday then! On our way down to the beach we passed underneath the toboggan slope – a slide for your sled that sends you speeding out onto the frozen surface of the lake. It looks brilliant – but obviously not open in August!
Carla: Finally on Thursday we made the trip across Lake Champlain by ferry into Vermont. We nearly didn't get on the ferry as we were worried about the clearance on our RV. We are 11.5ft and we were told that the maximum was 11.3ft – however the brilliant ferry guys told us to ignore that and guided us on and off safely. They also used us as a handy
calibrator for their measuring stick which had never been stretched like that before! The ferry docked in the charming town of Burlington and we took the opportunity to have lunch on the lake and then stroll round the town centre. I would be happy to return to this town for another visit – it had a great vibe of alternative-ness, great food and drink, and lots of lovely old buildings.
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Len and Marion Holden
non-member comment
Wow! Them falls look pretty scary!!
Well what a wonderful piece of video footage of the falls. They reallly look amazing. Glad you had a good birthday Carla and picked up our electronic card. I expect you are now edging your way to Saha and David's place. Give our love to them. Nanny and Grainpips