Niagara Falls

Today  we started out in Scranton, Pennsylvania and it was a pretty ordinary day as we made our way the 300 or so miles to Buffalo in New York state. We looked around Scranton a bit - a town made somewhat famous in Harry Chapin's classic 30,000 Pounds of Bananas -Gary did buy one banana whilst we were there.

The drive to Buffalo was pretty ordinary. We skirted the town of Binghamton which reminded Gaz of Leadbottom from McHale's Navy and then along the 17 which turned in to something else as we came close to Rochester and then along the 90 west to Buffalo - it rained all the way. Nice hotel in Buffalo, Lord Amherst. Dinner at Dennys and an early night.

Gary did do some surfing on the net in the middle of the night and was disappointed to see that Gene Pitney had died - we played a lot of his music as we traveled past Tulsa in Oklahoma.

This morning we got a really early start and drove the 25 miles across the border into Canada and to the Niagara Falls - we had been told that the Canadian side was more scenic - I think the view from the US side would have been just as good but it was nice to step into Canada for a few hours. As we were there so early - around 8:30am we had one advantage and one disadvantage - the good news was that there was hardly any one there - we basically had the place to ourselves - the bad news was that we were both the coldest we have ever been in our lives. It was a fairly clear day but there was a biting breeze and that along with all the water - bloody freezing.

We spent about 5 hours at the falls and it is just the most sensational place. Beautiful beyond words and photos and video do not do it justice. Sadly the Maid of the Mist ferry was not working - a seasonal thing. We`still had a great time and were sad to leave.

As we headed over the bridge back towards the USA border we were still taking photos and so, at the border, when the US Customs dude checked our passports he noticed the camera and so we had to park the car and some other Customs guy checked every photo on the camera to make sure we had nothing of the border area. That was a little scary but we were only delayed around 15 minutes.

Then it was on the road - we had a look around a place called Chile - seemed a fitting name given how cold the morning was. We only ended up there because the GPS was set to take us to a Walmart and we endedup in this quiet neighbourhood community with no Walmart within miles.

So we ended the night in Syracuse - seems a nice place. There is a roundabout near our hotel, first we've seen on this trip - bit scary.