Stop 19: Richfield Springs, NY

We've had some freaky weather. Yesterday, it was in the 90's and just as humid as it could possibly be. Late in the afternoon, it started to pour. It continued to pour most of the night at which time the wind started. When we woke up, it was 42° and misting.

In spite of the cold, I wore my swimsuit, crocs and a tank top to get everything stowed and hooked up this morning. I nearly froze but it made it easy to change into dry clothes before our departure.

It stayed misty all the way to our destination and the temperatures barely got into the 50's today. Fortunately, the mist let up just long enough to let us stay dry while we set up.

Richfield Springs is a beautiful spot in Amish Country just North of Otsego Lake. Otsego Lake is lined with enormous estates and the beautiful town of Cooperstown is at it's Southern tip. Cooperstown is, of course, the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum so we had to pay it a visit.

Kristen (orange sweatshirt) in front of the Hall of Fame.

Babe Ruth's ghost.

A world series trophy (with an unfortunate Yankees connection).

Rollie Fingers jersey and (I wish that I'd realized it at the time) and Oakland A's world series trophy.

Oakland A's exhibit. I looked up the jersey numbers. #75 is obviously Barry Zito but #15 has changed almost yearly.

The plaque at the Oakland A's exhibit.

Just for Niko: The Boston Red Sox exhibit.
We could easily become Red Sox fans. They've got the whole hating the Yankees thing down to a science.

-JC-

Stop 18: Canandaigua, NY

It rained heavily last night but, fortunately, was sunny and clear by the time that we had to pack up and get on the road. Our trip today was relatively short - under 100 miles - and took us to the Finger Lakes region of New York, just South of Rochester.

Canandaigua Lake is one of the Finger Lakes and the town of Canandaigua is at the Northern tip of the lake.

As we set up today, the sky was getting increasingly threatening. Me managed to get set up and then get in a walk on the lake shore before sky opened up. It's eased up for now but still looks threatening.

Here are a couple of pictures that I snapped of the lake:

-JC-

Stop 17: Grand Island, NY (not NE)

Our trip here was one of those rare occasions when Mack and Madge agreed almost perfectly. Madge wanted to get off the freeway a ramp early but I'm sure that her way would have worked just as well. Our big problem was human error.

I usually program the GPS's the night before and Kristen compares any written instructions that we might have with the final GPS instructions to make sure that they are in agreement. This time, since the GPS's were in such fine agreement, she didn't do that until we were well underway. When she commented that the instructions didn't match at all, I had her cancel the program on Madge and enter the address as our destination. At some point in the process, she muttered something about "NE" and then finally reported that we were over 1000 miles from our destination.

It seems that there are 2 Grand Island KOAs. We wanted Grand Island, NY but there is another in Grand Island, NE (as in Nebraska). When you make reservations on the KOA site, you have to enter the name of the KOA. I obviously picked the wrong Grand Island (I should have realized that Niagara Falls would cost a bit more than $30/night.

We first called Nebraska. They were very gracious, said that this happens all the time and gave me a full refund. Next was New York and I was a bit worried. This was the first reservation that I made because I was afraid that parks near Niagara Falls would fill up early. We called and had no problem getting our choice of sites for the 2 nights. In my last post, I mentioned that the Northern kids are still in school and the season hasn't started yet. In fact, our trailer is parked very close to a huge roller coaster at an amusement park that won't open until just after we leave. Whew! That would have given railroads, airports and freeways a run for their money.

Leaving Geneva on the Lake, we drove for about 10 miles past large beautiful houses that are right on Lake Erie. It's really a beautiful spot.

This stop has been our chance to visit the American side of Niagara Falls. We visited the Canadian side a number of years ago when Kristen was spending a couple of weeks in Toronto doing a Clorox audit and I flew in to join her for the weekend. That was just a quick visit so we just walked around, had lunch and went back to Toronto.

This visit, we did the touristy stuff like the Maid of the Mist and the Cave of the Winds. I've had a lot of posts with no pictures. This post will make up for that in spades (sorry, editing isn't my thing).

Our first destination was the Maid of the mist. This tower houses the elevators down to water level. Once you finish your boat trip, you can go out onto the observation deck.

Looking across at the Canadian side. I think that that's an old power plant down by the water.

Looking across American and Bridalveil (not visible) Falls toward Horseshoe Falls.

Same shot with Kristen in the picture.

And another.

...

Looking downstream at the Rainbow Bridge (between the US and Canada).

Horseshoe Falls from water level near the boat.

Maid of the Mist used to also operate boats on the Canadian side. Now, those are all run by Hornblower.

Looking up at American Falls from the boat (while still docked).

Passing one of our sister boats.

Horseshoe Falls.

American Falls ( one of my last shots before the extended drenching started).

There's an amazing number of seagulls nesting below the falls.

Horseshoe Falls.

Horseshoe Falls.

A quick look back at Horseshoe Falls during a break in the deluge.

American Falls. Bridalveil Falls is the little piece on the right.

American and Bridalveil Falls.

The Cave of the Winds. The only cave at Cave of the Winds these days leads out from the elevator to this network of scaffolds under Bridalveil Falls. The original cave was deemed unsafe many years ago.

American and Bridalveil Falls.

Just about to dock. There's that elevator/observation tower again.

Before riding the elevator back to the top, we took a couple of shots of American Falls from the dock area.

American, Bridalveil and Horseshoe Falls.

From out on Goat Island (between Bridalveil and Horseshoe Falls), looking back across Bridalveil and American Falls.

On the bridge from Goat Island to Luna Island (between Bridalveil and American Falls), looking at the point where Bridalveil drops.

From Luna Island, looking down Bridalveil Falls at the Cave of the Winds scaffolding. When we visited Cave of the Winds, the fast moving water was over our ankles in many places.

From Luna Island, looking across American Falls.

From Luna Island, looking down American Falls.

From Luna Island, looking across the top of American Falls.

From Cave of the Winds, too many stinking seagulls.

From Cave of the Winds, looking up at Bridalveil Falls with American Falls over on the left. Not too many pictures of Cave of the Winds beyond this point because it got very wet.

Looking back at Horseshoe Falls.

Cave of the Winds - getting wetter.

Really wet up there.

-JC-

Stop 16: Geneva on the Lake, OH

Today, we had a longer trip to make up for that short one yesterday.

It's getting interesting dealing with our 2 GPS devices. Both are RV GPS's which means that you can program them with all of the specifics about your RV and they know to avoid the places that might get you into trouble. They also have almost every RV Park in existence pre-programed into their points of interest directory.

We have 2 because our older one, Madge (a Magellan with a female voice - she replaced our non-RV Magellan Maggie) gives excellent advice but has a history of going insane at critical moments. Our newer GPS, Mack (a Rand McNally with a male voice) is supposedly top of the line but seems to consistently come up with longer routes (probably something to do with our routing preferences but we haven't figured out any preference that works). Mack also gets very excited when we're anywhere near a Camping World (guess where we bought Mack) and keeps us advised of approaching rest areas (frequently on the other side of the highway).

We've been using both. We follow Madge's shorter route and, as we ignore Mack's instructions, he tends to come into alignment with Madge. When she goes insane he's poised to take over. Combine all that with some good maps and the written directions from the different RV parks and we almost always arrive at our destination (there was Memphis).

But I digress. Geneva on the Water is a beautiful spot on the shore of Lake Erie midway between Cleveland, OH and Erie, PA (Madge pronounces it Eriepa?). The little town looks like it's all arcades, mini-golf courses and pizza places but nothing is open yet. That's a good sign that we're getting more Northerly. In the South, the kids were all out of school already. What with snow days and all, Summer has yet to start up here.

Our park is right across the street from the lake. There's a spot where we can walk out to view the lake but the actual lakefront is all private property. This park seems to be completely filled with full timers, most of whom don't seem to be in residence right now. Of the maybe 12 overnight spots,only one seems to be occupied - by us. The park does have a restaurant on site and that's where we'll be having dinner.

That's it for today. Here are our pictures of the lake.We thought that we could see Canada across the water but it might just be a fog bank.

Looking West.

Looking East.

-JC-

Stop 15: Alton, OH

We had a short, 77 mile trip today. Alton is on the edge of Columbus and we wanted to visit our former neighbors, Jerry and Kathy who moved to the Columbus area last Summer. I was last in Columbus when I passed through on my way East in the summer of 1970. The flat tire that I experienced while passing through town probably didn't help but I came away with a fairly unfavorable impression.

Visiting Jerry and Kathy has changed that impression. Jerry and Kathy live in a beautiful house in a wonderful neighborhood. We had a good visit and it was great to catch up. We also got to visit with our former loaner dog, Rylee Rose. It used to be that, when Jerry was out of town and Kathy had to be at work at the high school early, we would pick up Rylee Rose and take her with us on our morning walk.

Rylee Rose is as goofy as ever.

-JC-

Stop 14: Oregonia, OH

First of all, the pronunciation of this town name might feed right into Briar and her friends' discussion of the pronunciation of Oregon (the correct way, ORegun vs the Eastern alternative, oreGONE). Neither of those sound right with an -ia on the end so I'll call it oreGOnia.

As I suspected in my last post, our campground, just off the first ramp on the Indiana side of the Ohio River was as far as we'll get into Indiana on this trip. On our way to Oregonia, we were in Kentucky until we crossed the Ohio at Cincinnati.

I don't know what I expected but Cincinnati looked like a very pretty city as we passed through. For that matter, except for the highway reconstruction nightmare, Louisville looked pretty nice. Both cities have a lot of very modern architecture along their riverfronts.

Oregonia is about 40 miles North of Cincinnati. Not much here other than a lot of beautiful trees. The campground is about 1/2 mile back into the trees and, with the exception of the birds, we didn't hear a sound last night. Beautiful place - not your normal campground.

There's a stream just beyond the treeline.

I'm posting this a day late. Wifi wasn't working here yesterday and, when I was trying to at least get the text portion done using Notepad, I somehow got the numlock turned on on the computer and half of my letters were coming out as numbers. I couldn't figure it out yesterday but woke up this morning and thought "Duh! Numlock must be on". Seems like kind of a useless feature.

-JC-