Tag: road trips

The centerpiece of our recent road trip was Niagara Falls. When we were trying to figure out where to go, we determined that none of us had ever been to Niagara Falls before, and that would make a good destination. We drove to Albany, New York, to visit friends, and then began a drive west across the state, mostly on blue highways. We stopped in Coopertown, New York and visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame. We spent a night in Auburn, a town which is more or less closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. We detoured to Seneca Falls to visit the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum. And from there, we drove to Niagara Falls, the only place on our trip where we stayed two nights.

Prior to my visit, nearly everything I knew about Niagara Falls came from Superman II. There is that scene where a kid is standing on the wrong side of the railing, loses his grip, and falls into the falls. (This was the early 1980s, and I guess parents didn’t really care if their kids were doing ridiculously dangerous things.) Fortunately, Clark Kent was in the vicinity and rescued the falling boy, in his Superman guise.

Our hotel was just on the edge of the Niagara Falls state park. From our room on the top floor, we could see the top of the American falls. We couldn’t see the falls themselves, just where the water goes over the edge into the gorge. Still, it was nice to be within a short walk of the falls. We arrived early in the afternoon, and while we waited for our room to be ready, we walked to the falls.

My first look at the American falls was a little underwhelming. Superman II made them seem so much bigger. They are big, but as I learned the next day, they look much bigger from below than from above.

As we wandered around, I tried to find the spot where the kid in the movie fell from the railing. Nothing seemed to match what I remembered from the movie. Maybe things had moved? I learned that the falls can erode as much as 6 feet per year, pulling back further and further. At some point in the future, the falls won’t be in the vicinity of the city and people will wonder why either the falls or the city is called Niagara.

That first afternoon was spent wandering. After taking in the American falls, we walked over to the Horseshoe falls, which seemed more impressive to me, but which generated much more mist. That was okay though. It was hot and the mist was refreshing.

After we got our fill, we wandered back past the hotel in order to have dinner at The Rainforest Cafe. We’d eaten at a Rainforest Cafe once before at Disney World, and the Little Man was keen to eat there again. Our hotel room faced west, and in the evening the Falls are illuminated from below. You can see them (the top anyway) toward the center of the photo below.

The next day was our big day to take tours. We’d arrived on a Tuesday and heard that Wednesdays and Thursdays are less crowded. That definitely seemed to be the case. I think the Cave of the Winds tours opened at 9 am and there was no line, not even a line for tickets. After watching a short film about the falls, we were led to an elevator that took us down 190 feet to the base of the gorge. From there, we walked through a long tunnel and outdoors to a boardwalk. We were given ponchos to provide some protection from the mist. With those on, we headed along the boardwalk, which took us incredibly close to the base of the American falls.

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There were warnings that we’d get wet, and we did, but the ponchos helped. I was a little disappointed with the tour, however. I thought we were going into a cave: it is called the Cave of the Winds, after all. But the cave collapsed a long, long time ago, as I learned, and so we simply pass by where it once was. It is actually a very short tour over all and before long, we were back at the elevators waiting for a ride back up.

I was wearing my “Writer” hat and on the elevator ride up, the park employee who ran the elevator said, “Hey, I like your hat. Are you a writer?”

I told him I was and he told me that he wanted to be a writer. I never know what to say in these situations. I said something, but I can’t remember what it was. After we climbed the 190 feet up, we maneuvered our way back over to where the Maid of the Mist tickets were sold. This is the famous boat ride that takes you into the heart of the Horseshoe falls. Once again, there was no line. This time, an elevator took us down 200 feet. Once again, we were given ponchos, this time blue instead of yellow. We were toward the front of the line for boarding the next boat, and managed to find a good space on the port side toward the bow, which gave us a good view of the falls on the way out. These boats, incidentally, are completely electrical.

We got much wetter on the boat than on the hike. The boat goes past the American falls, but not particularly close. Instead, it moves deep into the cup of the Horseshoe falls until you feel as if you are surrounded by cinematic, disaster movie-sized tidal waves that are somehow held back from crashing down on you. At times, the mist is so thick you can’t see anything. I didn’t even try to pull out my phone to take a photo. Later, however, I did manage to get a nice photo, and it was right near the place I remembered from Superman II (I finally found it near the Honeymoon falls). Rainbows are a dime a dozen in misty water like this, but I still think it was kind of lucky to managed to capture this photo.

By the time we’d finished our two tours, it wasn’t quite noon. We found a restaurant near our hotel to have lunch and then we spent a while wandering the town, popping in and out of tourist shops. Niagara Falls was bustling near the hotel, but a few blocks north and west, the town seemed dead. I walked an entire block with boarded up shops, except for a corner bar. As you move away from the falls, things seem increasingly run down. To the northwest, a hotel casino towers over everything else in the city, but it seems surrounded by desolation. I was envious of the Canadian side, which looked more appealing, but which we couldn’t visit due to COVID restrictions.

We ate dinner that evening at the Anchor Bar, which was connected to our hotel. It is a chain out of Buffalo, supposedly where buffalo-style chicken wings were invented. I had buffalo mac & cheese with chicken. What surprised me more than anything was the price of the liquor. I ordered a beer and a shot of tequila at the bar. It was happy hour. The beer was $6 and the shot, $5, and that was a for Don Julio Silver. In the D.C. area, that shot would cost $15 easily.

In the evening, Kelly took the kids to the falls one more time to see them illuminated. I was too tired so I stayed back at the hotel. It was probably for the best; she said the illuminations were nothing to write home about.

When I was a teenager, we would spend several weeks each summer visiting my grandparents in New York. For some of the time, they would take us on road trips. We visited Cooperstown, the Catskill Game Farm (which no longer exists, so far as I can tell), Howe’s Caverns. Sometimes we’d venture into New Hampshire or other New England states. This was in the 1980s, before the Internet, before smart phones (or any cell phones, for that matter), and before I was driving. To entertain myself, I looked out the window.

I loved it when we passed through farm country. I grew up in mostly urban areas: New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles. My 4-year stint in Rhode Island was more suburban, but it was certainly not rural. So driving into upstate New York always fascinated me. A few hours outside New York City and here was all of this farm land. In my fourteen year old’s memory, all of the colors were bright. I would watch fields of corn pass by, and couldn’t imagine people eating that much corn. There were cows and horses in the fields. There were great bit red barns–how I loved those barns!

This is why, when we took our recent road trip, I stuck to the blue highways. I wanted to see these things all over again. I thought it might be nice for our kids to see them, too, but it wasn’t the same for them. They took their eyes off their device for a few seconds if I pointed out some grazing cows, or a particularly beautiful barn, but that was about it. I didn’t try to convince them otherwise. Scenery like that either resonates with you or it doesn’t. Alas, since I was driving, I didn’t snap any photos of the scenery along the way that I can post here. But I’ve got those pictures in my head and when I close my eyes, I can still see them.

The day after we visited Cooperstown, we headed across the state of New York for Niagara Falls. But on the way, we detoured to a small town in the Fingers Lakes region, called Seneca Falls. We picked the town because it is believed to be the model that inspired the fictional town of Bedford Falls in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Indeed, the fact that there was an “It’s a Wonderful Life” museum in the town seemed like a fun place to stop.

The town is set along Cayuga Lake and the Seneca River runs through the town. We drove directly from our hotel, about 20 miles away in Auburn, to Cafe 19 for breakfast. I indulged in a Monte Cristo sandwich which was delicious, filled as it was with strawberry jam. We sat outdoors and the weather was perfect. It turned out that the parking lot for the restaurant, which was across the river on the edge of town, served as one of the town lots, and so we walked from the restaurant into town to find the It’s A Wonderful Life museum. When we got there, around 10 am, we learned they didn’t open until 11. That was fine because it meant we had an hour to wander the town.

We visited the Visitor Center, which also served as museum of waterways and industry. From there, we walked along the river to the “It’s a Wonderful Life Bridge” that spans the river.

From the bridge, we wander back to the town and toward the Women’s Right National Historical Park, which is a National Park unto itself. Much of the movement for women’s suffrage started here.

At 11 am, we headed to the It’s a Wonderful Life museum. It was a wonderful place. They have an incredible amount of memorabilia from the movie. It’s not a big museum (yet) but they are looking to expand. As a project manager, I am fascinated by the complexity involved in making movies, and they had several original call sheets from the films which illustrate just how complex a single day of filming can be.

Outside the museum is a sign that reads: “Welcome to Bedford Falls” and it seemed as if all of the visitors (and there were quite a few) wanted there pictures taken in front of it.

We spent a couple of hours in the town, before we headed back to the car for the 2 hour drive to Niagara Falls. It was a delightful town and I’m really glad we decided to stop for a visit. When my cousin said they’d be doing a road trip across New York the week after we did and asked for recommendations, Seneca Falls was at the top of my list.

The worst part of a vacation is returning home. The worst part about where we live is that there are no good routes home. Having recently spent seven days on a road trip, driving blue highways and visiting more rural areas, coming back to a major metropolitan area like ours is a drag.

There are two major airports in our area. Washington Dulles is the largest and is usually the easiest route home thanks to the airport access road. But once you get inside the Beltway that loops around the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area, all bets are off and you are likely to hit some kind of traffic. Reagan/National Airport is a little closer to us than Dulles, but it takes about takes about the same amount of time to navigate the surface streets, the endless string of stoplights, the stop-and-go traffic.

We were on a road trip, however, and had no need for airports. Still, there is no good route home. If we are returning from the north (New York, New England, etc.), we drive down I-95 and either take the Baltimore-Washington Parkway into the District and cut through web of highways and city traffic and across the bridge into Virginia; or, we stay on I-95 to the Beltway and then loop around to Route 66 and take that in toward our house. Neither of these options are appealing, and once we pass south of Baltimore, I grow slightly grumpy at the thought of dealing with the approach to our house and the traffic that will inevitably slow our arrival.

If we are returning from the south (typically coming back from Florida), we generally have a smooth drive up the entire length of I-95 until we hit Richmond, Virginia. In rare conditions (say, early in the morning, or late at night) when there is no traffic, it takes just under 2 hours to get from Richmond to our house. I can’t remember the last time we did it that quickly. As we approach Richmond, I glance at the GPS to see what it has to say about traffic. It is never good. It is not unheard of for it to take three hours to get from Richmond to our house. It is a rotten route home, but there is nothing much better. I can easily drive 7 hours without breaking a sweat. But those last few hours between Richmond and home can leave me completely worn out.

On the final leg of our recent road trip, we drove from Youngstown, Ohio, straight through to home. This is a mostly pleasant drive through mountains, but once we got onto I-270, some 40+ miles from home, the traffic thickened. Coming home from this direction (call it northwest) means coming down I-270 to merge into the Beltway. This is no better than coming down I-95, although we emerge a little further along the Beltway. But the traffic is no less since I-270 is just as bad.

I know from experience that no all destinations are like this. Arriving at my mother-in-law’s place in Florida is pleasant. There’s never traffic. Once we are off the highway, there is an easy drive along clear surface streets. It’s a nice approach. Driving to my parent’s place on the opposite coast of Florida is almost as pleasant. It is a little busier on that coast, but there is rarely traffic.

On our trip we visited friends in Albany, and getting to their house from the Thruway is easy, and traffic free. Outside of Albany, Niagara Falls was the largest city we visited on our road trip and even that was easy to get into.

The one exception is my sister’s house. She lives in Westchester County and it means crossing the George Washington Bridge (or occasionally, the Tappan-Zee Bridge¹) and then following a gnarled web of highways that gradually spiral in toward her house. That is not a particularly pleasant arrival.

I keep a list of questions to ask a realtor about a house should we ever find ourselves house hunting again. Among these are: how is the water pressure in the shower? How loud (or quiet) is it with the windows open at night? And to these I’ve added a new one: are there any good routes home?