Niagara Falls, Canada

A few days ago I sat down to blog in Port Dover, Canada and my mind was completely blank -- I had no idea what to say.   But now after arriving in Niagara Falls there is almost too much to write about.  Today we rode 75 miles from Niagara Falls, Canada to Albion, New York.  I spread out  my sleeping pad an hour ago in the gym of the local High School.  We will spend the week riding through New York and should find ourselves in Lake Placid next weekend.

Seven weeks finished -- only two more to go with something like 3500 miles behind us and about 700 more to go.  This week takes us through New York and the final week we wrap up riding through New England.  I've not been to the east coast often so this is very interesting to me.    A great way to end the trip on a high.

I've not been to the Niagara Falls so I found it great fun to go down and look at it -- and later in the evening checked out the IMAX theatre (still using the 1987 film though) with some other riders.   Pretty much as I expected -- stories about tight rope walkers and those going down the falls in a barrel.   Given the choice I think I would prefer to walk across it on a rope.  Secretly, I've always wanted to be a tight rope walker.

Sunday morning I went with Eve (Georgia), Martin (UK), Jan and Marnix (Netherlands) to ride on the famous Maid of the Mist boat ride taking us right up to the falls.   I did all I could do on Sunday to stay completely off the bicycle for a good rest day.  Glenn, a rider from Colorado, joined me in attending a local Baptist church at 11 a.m. on Sunday.   It was a small church (approx 50 people?) with a least 20 percent of those attending their for the first time -- no doubt also coming to see the falls.

The thing about Niagara Falls, at least on the Canadian side, is that it is both a beautiful natural wonder and at the same time a tourist trap similar to some kind of combination of Las Vegas, San Francisco and New Orleans all mixed together.    After seeing the falls I walked on a main street with huge signs selling cuban cigars and promoting the House of Frankenstein, right next to Ripley's Believe It or Not and a half dozen wax museums.   The place is completely crazy once you get off the main area of looking at the falls.    I found it best simply to enjoy the Niagara Falls and to try to avoid the other distractions.

What is so cool is that we have bicycled from Seattle to Niagara Falls!   I can't believe it myself.   And, although we have two more full weeks of cycling, this feels like a major accomplishment and we all are very conscious that our time together is getting shorter and shorter.   Today's ride was an "easy" 75 miles so we ended up at an ice cream shop with several riders and began talking about the seven wonders of the trip to date.  I'll share them in a future post to be sure.  

Writing from the Albion Swan Public Library.