Vacations take work. You might not realize this as a child, but as an adulthood you really grasp the difficulty that is vacation planning. I mean, you have to plan it yourself. Gross! I miss those days when my parents would say, "We're going here, pack your bags" and I'd just go and enjoy myself. Anymore I have to decide where I want to go, how much money I have to spend going there, what I want to do, and if I have enough vacation time to do it! Blechity blachity bluhhh. Who knew that even the R&R times mean different things to adults? Thanks a lot, Real World, with your restrictions and responsibilities. I'll follow you till the end! Thank goodness for friends who'll plan for me :). Well, that's kind of all they can do when we decide to go camping. I don't camp. I don't know the first thing about it. If you want me to camp you have to treat me like a child and tell me where to go and when and what to do when I'm there. Oh, and how to do it. With that said, you should know I had a simply splendid time camping at Niagara Falls over Labor Day Weekend...
Oh, so beautiful! Right?? Look at all that pure, un-tampered-with natural stuff. Why, I could have just happened upon this stunning view whilst on a hike (well, only if I were into hiking and that sort of outdoorsy thing.) But it's majestic and glorious, right? Um, not as right as you'd think. Correction, not as right as
I anticipated. Dear gussie was this place a surprise. Have you been here? On the Canadian side? To Niagara FallsVegas? I know a couple different cities that tack on "Vegas" at the end for kicks. It's kind of annoying, too - Lex Vegas (Lexington, KY), Nash Vegas (Nashville, TN). I've spent quite a bit of time in both these cities and neither, in comparison to Niagara Falls, merits the suffix "Vegas" in its nickname. No, indeed! People need to start calling this town, on the Canadian AND U.S.A. sides, FallsVegas cause boy oh boy it is. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Before I tell you about the wonder that is FallsVegas (besides the amazing falls, naturally), let me start at the beginning...
Here were the plans: two roommates and I were headed to Niagara Falls to camp on the NY side for two nights. Friday night - drive to Kane, PA, to stay with a former roommate and her new hubster. Saturday - drive to falls and splash around in them, perchance. Sunday - falls. Monday - drive home.
Here's what happened: Friday at 5:40pm - call from one of the roommates that, in essence, said this, "I'm sick, go without me." What the horse apples??? To go or not to go? That was the question. The other roommate and I went. But starting the trip off like that was a real crack in the otherwise foolproof plan. Okay, not foolproof. We were going to play the trip by ear anyway, but hello! We had food for three, sleeping bags for three, and plans for three. Now there were two.
You know that out-of-body feeling where you can't believe something's happening and you just keep replaying it in your head? And then you laugh incredulously? Welcome to the entire 5.5 hours drive to Kane, PA on Friday night. Two people in a car, randomly laughing in incredulous tones. Weird. We got to Kane about midnight or a little later. We were treated to tea and cookies by our benevolent hostess, and we passed out on her living room floor. (Poisoned cookies. Sike!) Saturday we decided to stick around the little town a bit longer so we could see the sights, say hi to our hostess' family and just hang out with our friend. Great times. I have to say, I really do love small towns. I also love sunny blue-sky days in northern PA when the breeze is blowing just right and the temperature is a cool 78-ish degrees Fahrenheit. Doesn't get better than that. Except when you throw pumpkin chocolate chip cookies in the mix. THEN it gets better. Also, I even loved walking and bear clapping around the pond + wild flowers area in the woods behind my friends house. That's right, clap sporadically so you don't sneak up on a hungry bear! Yipes! Ah, serenity.
Okay, so after we left Kane we drove straight up through Buffalo, NY, to our campsite on Lake Ontario. We got there around 5 or so in the evening and decided to set up the tent, gather kindling for our fire, and check out our surroundings before it got dark. Kristen, the roommate I was camping with, is a camper by hobby. An aficionado, if you will. She had all the equipment and all the experience to make this an easy trip for a novice such as myself. By the way, I think everyone and their dog(s) were out camping this weekend by the falls. I mean, the place was packed. People riding bikes everywhere, playing the guitar and singing. (Yes, it's weird to see someone riding a bike whilst playing the guitar and singing, but things happen differently in New York.) Dogs running around willy nilly. I mean, I saw an RV with a satellite dish set up next to it. People had electric lights strung around their campers and even lawn ornaments planted on their camping plot. Um, WHAT?? I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Cue the incredulous laughter bit. Cue it again. Seriously, keep cuing it until the cue button is broken cause that's how long it lasted.
The tent's ready, we have kindling, we've checked out the view of Lake Ontario (gorgeous), picked up some cool looking rocks for sport, skipped some rocks on the lake (mostly failed at that one) and decided we'd have hot dogs for dinner. On a whim, we decided it would be great to see the falls at night. We'd heard from a couple sources that the Canadian side of the falls provided the best view and that the falls simply must be seen at night. So we thought we'd go over for an hour or so (please, stop laughing - we'd never done this before), come back and make dinner and generally vegg out before night-night. Ahem...
At 6:40pm we got in the line to cross the bridge into Canada. It was light outside on account of the sun. Now look at the picture below. Use context clues to guess what I'm going to tell you next.
Here's a clue for ya - that wand in my hand belongs to a 3 yr-old and she uses it to make traffic go away. "Go away, Traffic!" she says, giving a quick swish and flick with the wand. Those are her sunglasses, too. I don't think they have any power over excess amounts of cars on the road, but it just completed my look, K? You see how it's dark outside, right? Yeah, that was 2 hours later and we STILL hadn't crossed the border yet. By the time we got to the border guard we were a bit delirious and trying to be positive about wasting so much time at a standstill. Okay, we didn't completely waste time. We made some friends on the road, talked to some other drivers, listened to some good tunes, and laughed more...incredulously. Oh, and I felt way embarrassed that I was wearing a good ol' state proud shirt to see the falls. I mean, really?? Can you get any more dorky tourist than that? So the border guard was scary and asked us (may I say incredulously again?) why we were coming over at 9 at night to see the falls and then go back to New York. We sheepishly told her that we didn't realize it would take so long to get through customs and onto the Canadian side. She said, "You should have taken Rainbow Bridge. It would have gotten you there a lot faster." Um, okay. Thanks, scary lady. We put that in our metaphorical pipes and smoked it. It was bitter.
Luckily, we wound our way through the dark streets of Niagara park (good thing cars show how many kilometers per hour you're going) and finally came within sight of the falls by about 9:30 Friday night. And WOW were there a lot of people. We found a place to park (goodbye, 20 USD) and walked through the mist to gaze at nature's wonder. Misty! I should have sung that song the whole time. Wish I'd thought of it then. As it was, I spent the entire weekend talking in a ridiculous Canadian accent and subsequently sending myself into fits of giggles. I really crack myself up, apparently. But anyhoo - my first glimpse of the falls wasn't as amazing as I'd anticipated. As I alluded to earlier, it's like tourism on crack. Casinos everywhere, neon lights, attractions that cost thrice as much as they should. It's a zoo. The pictures below aren't great, but that's what I saw of the falls that night. Shrouded in mist, there they were all lit up by giant spotlights.
No, the falls don't come in rainbow colors. Pay some attention to the man behind the curtain...
We didn't stick around long. We decided to return to camp, cook our dinner and get some sleep so we could come back on Sunday. Kristen was a dear and got the fire started while I watched. Hey! I helped gather kindling! I did my part. ish. We ate hot dogs and s'mores and went to sleep. The next morning we stumbled out of the tent about 9 and cooked ourselves some oatmeal. K-dawg had a sweet stove (think Bunsen burner) that boiled our water so we could add oatmeal to some and Swiss Miss to the other. A few bananas cut up in the oatmeal and voila! Delicious.
After breakfast we pulled out the map and drove off into the daylight. Destination: Rainbow Bridge. I was driving and we found it with only one turnaround, thank you very much! Just like the cranky border guard promised, we got across the bridge and into Canada in a lot less time. 20 minutes, you might say. And that's a generous estimate. Whilst on the bridge, we could look to our 8 o'clock and see the falls, and to our 10 and 11 o'clock we could see this...
FallsVegas. And that's when it's not all lit up and gaudy. Anyway, I must say that the falls did look much better after a good night's sleep and only 20 minutes in line for customs. They are impressive, can't lie. When I tuned out the man-made ridiculousness behind me I was able to enjoy the spectacle of water falling over a cliff. Seems simple but it isn't. It's breathtaking. However, I think I'm getting ahead of myself again. Because after we crossed Rainbow Bridge we didn't go see the falls immediately. Instead, on my boss's recommendation, we drove up the river to a little town called Niagara-On-The-Lake. By the way, that was one of the most beautiful Sunday drives I've ever had. We would our way North on Niagara Parkway, a lazy windy road hugged by wineries and bike trails and beautiful houses. The town itself is a quaint New-England-y kind of town. Lots of shops and horse drawn carriage rides, etc. My favorite part, however, was the waterfront section of the town. There's no better place to be than by the water, in my opinion, and Lake Ontario was beautiful. I could see the Toronto skyline in the distance, and the gently lapping waves provided the perfect soundtrack for a tasty lunch of...peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Yeah, I know. But I was not about to change money over for one day of travel and even though they'd have taken my USDs I was not about to do that and get my change in Canadian coins. Great way to save money on a trip, by the way; just don't exchange your currency and keep your credit card glued in your wallet. Anyway, this is a view of the lake from the lovely town of Niagara-On-The-Lake, Canada.
After lunch and a nice stroll through town, we hopped back in the car and tootled our way South towards the falls. We parked quite a ways away this time (about 2 miles, I think) so that we could park for free. It worked out great, because we walked along the river towards the falls and came across some spectacular views of the rapids and the waterfalls. The water is very green there, by the way. It looks like they put a ton of chlorine in there. That is, it looks almost fake. To sum up, it looks like a maniacal scientist decided to create a wave pool of death at his backyard Mad Scientists Amusement Park. Nonetheless, how can you not be blown away when you see something like this...?
Even after a night in a sleeping bag I was pretty happy to see those falls.
Did you know several people have survived the falls? You know, like oh I'm fishing with my dad and oh no the motor's not working and we got caught up in the current and oh no rapids and oh no get my life jacket on and ahhhhhhhhhhh!!! I saw an Imax movie about it. Gave the ticket lady a twanky in sweet USDs and got back American bills and, wait for it, Canadian coins. Ugh! Why, God, why??? Oh well, Kristen and I pooled our coins later to purchase a postcard at the gift shop. The remaining coins we threw into Lake Ontario when we got back to the camp site. We felt it was important to give back to the community.
Wow, quite the throwing arm I got there. You'd think I'd never touched a football before. Well I have. Fingers on laces, got it!
Anyhoo, that night we drove back to camp and got ready for a night o' fun. Now THIS is the part of camping I like - the part where you make a campfire and eat good food and play card games outside with your hoodie on and laugh and blah blah blah. That's the good stuff. Sitting next to the campfire with your toes as close as you'll let them go. Mmmm, toasty. We (and by we I mean Kristen) made the best fire ever that night so we could cook our hobo meals. Yes, hobo meals. Take some ground meat and season it with whatever. Throw in some minced onion and garlic and just work it all into a patty. Place patty on sheet of tin foil. Cut up some carrots and potatoes. Place those with patty on foil. Get some frozen corn and sprinkle it on top of all that other food stuff. Fold up tin foil. Place the whole thing in the coals of a fire and cook for 10 minutes. Open tin foil, insert fork. Nope, no plate, just you and the tin foil and the fork. And the food. Yummy, hobo-style.
So the trip was great. Monday we packed up and drove back home, wending our way through all the other travelers on highway 70 East towards DC. I had fun. I camped and I enjoyed it. Granted, I wasn't really roughing it. I had a bathroom and shower at my disposal. I didn't have to hike to my camp site; we drove right up to it. My camping buddy had all kinds of good gear that made my stay quite enjoyable. Heck, I don't even own a sleeping bag anymore. But there are a few things that really stand out to me from the weekend. You know, the things that will make me smile when I think about the trip from now on:
Driving through Canada and seeing signs that say "U.S.A." this way - that's just weird. Talking to morose border guards who have enough authority to make me nervous answering questions with no wrong answers (because I have nothing to hide, I tell you, NOTHING!!!). Not getting my passport stamped. (Argh!) Blue Moon and s'mores. Bananagrams (a.k.a. Speed Scrabble) by campfire light and lantern. Skipping rocks on Lake Ontario.
I'm still not a camping buff. Doubt I'll ever be one. But camping at Niagara Falls (Vegas) for a weekend? I recommend it to a friend.
