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We started out without Charlie. He had football practice. He even cut his hair! But he didn't come on our vacation. What a stooge and he found out too. We left for Washington on Sunday and arrived after a leisurely trip up Route 95 through the Springfield Interchange and into Washington, DC. I hear there is yet another move afoot to lift the hand gun ban in DC. Now the bad guys might be able to shop on level ground with their chosen prey. We were greeted by our great good friend, John, at his home in north-west Washington. I choose not to take his picture to protect the world from a probable evil. It is a good thing. He even fed us human food instead of what the bears eat at the zoo. And speaking of zoos we went to the National Zoo the very next day! You can see the sights we saw by clicking on DAY 1. 
The zoo encompassed all the usual sights, foreigners, strangers, even stranger strangers, kids, infinks and the usual panoply of human existence that makes up a tourist crowd. And the National Zoo always seems to be under construction, a new cafeteria for their expensive ptomaine fare, a new police station for the zoo terrorists. Sometimes things are even completed when you get there like Amazonia! It was cool; literally, on a hot day go there. The fish swam lazily about. Even the piranhas were docile. Maybe they just ate. Zoo time always comes to an end and we get to feed ourselves. Monday night we ate at the Thai Tanic, great, as always. In the downtime we discussed life and John's health and projects. John could be considered a project himself. He's a confirmed something or other - bachelor maybe. Who knows, he may have found his match in introspection and diagnosis. We'll have to wait and see. Tuesday we took off for points unknown, only a map to guide us and Nancy's navigational skills. We swiftly found the Guitar Center and surrounding parking lots. You can view the excitement of cruising dumpsters here in DAY 2. Of course walking requires calories, calories are best served in grease, we found a greasy spoon masquerading as an upscale diner and bakery. We also discovered a most expressive lady when we weren't examining the insides of each others' noses. It's important to know what lurks up there. My foot showed well on the tile floor also. 
Nancy and I decided to take a direct route but stay off the "majorist" of highways. We plotted a course beside the Susquehanna River and discovered it must be very cold in central Pennsylvania. They have so many adult video stores. It seems to be a significant attraction and trucks always park in the back. We decided on Corning, New York for our sleep-over with no specific plans for sight-seeing. But we were happily confronted with the Corning Glass Museum just down the road from our hotel. We booked the hotel online before we left John's house and we were not disappointed. After six hours of Weird Al Yankovic we pulled into the Corning something-or-other Hotel weary and tired only to be greeted by some smiling desk clerk who passed off a key to our room on the second or third floor, I can't remember… We ate simple Italian food in the restored part of town and then we slept. DAY 3 (which was really day four) began in the hotel pool for a leisurely swim. We eschewed the continental breakfast in favor of the diner-bakery next door. We all ate truck driver breakfasts and marveled at the sturdy stock that patronized the establishment. They all looked like fifty to a hundred something New Yorkers of mixed ethnicity, none suffering from caloric depravation. In short, they were just like us… 
Following a brief visit to the offices of the New York West Soccer Association offices in the same block as the hotel and diner we moved up the road to the Corning Museum which you can view in the DAY 3 photos. We aren't very good tourists. We don't really think much about where we're going. We don't research the subjects we're going to see. We tend to assimilate the best and the worst vicariously and we stare at the other strange people. I couldn't resist snapping the pictures of the Hasidim and I missed a beautiful shot of an "Amlet" and I was seriously on the look-out for excessive nose hair and big feet but was unsuccessful in that endeavor too. After a rousing demonstration of glass blowing and a surreptitious snap of the dad Hasidim, I prepped the camera, turned away and snapped him just as he looked right at me, we moved on to the giant glass shop and bought knickknacks and trinkets. I wonder if he knew I was taking his picture. I was so cool about the setup. I wonder but not a lot. Our odyssey continued. We left Corning and pulled out onto the road again. Today we wanted to make all good speed. Niagara Falls awaited us. Our triumphant arrival was coming. The bands were tuning up. And the Falls fell slowly in anticipation of the surge our arrival would cause or something like that. I mashed the pedal and blew down the thruway as fast as prudence and Nancy would allow. We stopped and got gas in a Thruway service area. John and I found wind-up toys and we all had a satisfying pee. Nancy pulled us back onto the highway and true to all long-standing relationships my car decided to break while she was driving. It would never let me down. It wasn't serious. It just made a lot of roaring and didn't have much power but it went and so did we, after all our vacation would not wait. We pulled into Niagara Falls, drove in ever tightening circles and found our hotel (bed-and-breakfast) right at the Falls as advertised, who knew? Well Nancy did, she always books the accommodations. She asks me, "Is this ok?" and I say, "Yes, book it." Thank goodness she has great taste. We parked on the street, checked in and were shown to our apartment. It was "cush" in the extreme! Look at the snaps. They don't do it justice. I could retire there except the people are New Yorkers, which is not to say they are bad, far from it, after all I am one too, they just weren't Virginians. 
We dropped our kit and went for a walk. We didn't need the car because we were right at the Falls, the upper rapids to be precise and a short walk from the big barrel ride. I really have to wonder why anyone would want to attempt the Falls in a barrel. It's not like one would fall blissfully into the steaming whirlpool at the base. No, not at all, one would fall onto the broken rocks and be smashed to bits! But then up here it's all about simple pleasures like the Adult Video Palace. I could understand watching videos all winter long and coming to the conclusion that anything would be better even a barrel ride. As I said earlier, we aren't planners so we had no idea what was there or what might happen. We do this because we are optimists. Pretty much everything is a pleasant surprise if one has no expectations to speak of and we didn't except for John. He felt we needed more time with the Super-Gameboy thingy and he was right as far as he was concerned. He has a healthy attitude when it comes to falls. "The water falls, over and over again. It doesn't change so I've seen it." I don't need to see it from five hundred angles and if I did dad will take enough pictures so I can look again later, big deal!" Smart kid. We opted to eat in the hotel restaurant which was fantastic and filling and waist spreading and delicious and a lot of other things too. We were tag-teamed by three wait-staff that didn't do as well as one Shoney's waitress on a busy night but we were fed in a couple of hours. Before dinner I called a Chevy dealership to make arrangements for the car in the morning. After dinner we walked around some more. We walked over the bridges to Goat Island again. We didn't actually step onto Goat Island this time. We just looked at the river and the lights and Skylon Tower and the people in all their foreigness. Then we strolled alongside the river, through the park, to the falls. While we were strolling a fireworks shell exploded and we were subsequently treated to ten minutes of fireworks! Ten-ten o'clock fireworks are done and so are we so back to the hotel and slumber. DAY 4 arrived earlier than suspected (at least for me) because I needed to find my way to David Chevrolet. I did and the car did get repaired. Its fan motor clutch died and had been dying for quite awhile as my mileage has improved more than six percent! The folks at David Chevy were great. They trundled me back to the hotel and then picked me up forty-five minutes later with a functioning auto. I was back before Liz was awake. I wish I wasn't awake then but that's vacation life. No planning no disappointments - right? 
Our vacation day started at the crack of eleven with a not very vigorous stroll over to Goat Island and successive views of the American Falls and then Horseshoe Falls. They are incredible. You can see many different views of the falls and the foreigners in the DAY 4 pics. Somehow or other all tourists seem to be foreigners. We did too. This spectacle really makes me feel like I am an alien credited with the first look behind curtain number one. I will go down in our history as the first person to successfully navigate the crowds to see the Falls. Well fantasy is great but the reality is I saw this really scary guy. He was only scary because I had never seen anything like it before - not like the Amlets before - I mean like never before. We were reviewing possibilities, stringing up John or throwing Lizzie over the edge when I democratically decided we should eat and Nancy felt the urge to evacuate. So we headed over to the Top of the Falls restaurant for a quick rest stop and then upstairs to the dinning room. While we were waiting for Nancy in the ubiquitous gift shop selling the unique Horseshoe Falls trinkets I saw the ugliest woman I have ever seen. I mean she was a handsome man that didn't translate into an attractive woman. I say woman because she was packing some serious chest flesh for lack of a better term. And she was beaten hard with the ugly stick. After pondering this while taking surreptitious peeks Nancy emerged from the rest portal and we headed upstairs. On our way up the stairs we encountered this woman coming back down. (She moved very fast mind you.) And I chanced to look right at her and her name badge which stated clearly that her name was Paul. I didn't know whether to be pleased by the fact that there wasn't a woman that ugly or by the transitional nature of his shape. Well I know I wasn't pleased by his shape so it must have been relief that Paul might consider plastic surgery for his broken nose and protruding lower jaw. His brow might benefit from some adjustment as well. But who am I to judge. Someone in the world loved it. He was smiling and she seemed in a light mood. Who knows? It was just scary assembling all those possibilities. And it turns out the restaurant was full of bus people. We weren't sure if "Bus people" meant political dissidents seeking asylum or whether a crew of seniors from Shady Acres had been way-laid and needed an elimination and refueling stop. All we knew was we would wait an hour for our Pepsi and that wouldn't work. After all we were on vacation. So we went to the federally subsidized ptomaine palace hotdog and tuna salad stand instead. 
Things were pretty tense in our group and food seemed to be the best answer. After all I always calm down when copious amounts of blood flows to my alimentary canal. Our culinary picks included thirty some dollars of hog snouts, goat lactations and Pepsi that we didn't have to wait for. Unfortunately John's "pizza" must have had too much pizzazz 'cause he wasn't much fun after lunch. We put him on vacation waivers and sent him back to the apartment where he happily engaged in some form of ritual combat with his Gameboy thingy. We, and here I mean the more intrepid of us, made our way to the Maid of the Mist boats. I think Diane Fossey must have inspired the packaging. After we donned our souvenir ponchos we all looked like blue gorillas and when the boat approached Horseshoe Falls we were certainly in the mist. Thank whoever Mike or Kyle weren't with us as the mist would have taken on a wholly unwholesome quality which no one would have been prepared for. The souvenir ponchos didn't come with toxic gas protection. (I must digress at this time due to complaints about quality exusions. The two induviduals mentioned earlier seem to be in competition in this regard. For the record I would like to state categorically that Mike is a stealth farter and Kyle has the dubious honor of bringing fart-tennis to the masses. You say, "Why does this make a difference?" I'll tell you. Although one wouldn't have to worry about stealth on the Maid of the Mist, in closed areas, say an elevator, Mike has the potential to wipe out an entire load and slip out unnoticed. He stealth farts or as he likes to put it, he seeps. Kyle, on the other hand, prefers to share, so much so that he has created a game, fart-tennis. So, to clarify, Mike produces quality whereas Kyle produces quantity. Each in their own way could be deadly and my comments were not to be construed as a comparison in any way, shape or form. They are both extremely dangerous.) The boat ride was great and traipsing all over the paths at the base of American Falls was fun too. In fact it was so much fun I was beat. I needed more thrifty beverages provided by the park service contractors and a rest. So we clambered over to the elevator, up onto the observation deck, observed a bit, then stumbled into another of the ubiquitous gift shops, bought our obligatory Maid of the Mist trinkets and moved on to soft drinks, our hotel and John. I napped. The lights went out and we worried about where our next meal would come from. One has to be prepared for food and feeding. These are very important issues. I like to eat and that's pretty much the only thing I plan on when I vacation. So, we went downstairs and asked around. Sure enough the hotel restaurant was serving everything that was fried or sautéed on their menu. They couldn't grill? 
I had to think hard about that one. They could fry but they couldn't grill. At my house when the power goes out we can't crank up the Fry Daddy but the gas range works fine so we can grill up a steak or burgers. Here, in upstate New York, things were backward but the food was still good and some of us widened our culinary horizons ever so slightly. Some of us will eat anything then again some of us won't. So, we ate and then Nancy and I took a drive up the river while Liz and John hammered away at their Gameboy thingies. When Nancy and I returned we walked along the river then sat and watched the water. It was still flowing. After a while we decided the kids should see this too. So we returned and collected them for more strolling in the gloaming. By now the power was back on and the rapids were again fully illuminated. It was beautiful. We couldn't make it out for the fireworks this evening. Everyone was pooped and ready for slumber-land. These vacations really take it out of us. The new day dawned bright and clear like all the others on this trip. Bright and clear and promising to be a hundred degrees. Now I know why we were getting tired, not enough fluids! DAY 5 encompassed plans to cross the boarder and we did it shortly after breakfast and check sometime around eleven. We like eleven. It's a civilized hour of the morning. In fact I think we should lobby for early-bird openings at eleven. And school should not begin until then either. Closing time could still be at five. That would suit me… 
So, we're off to Canada, uppa-US, the land of the great white north, polar bears and sled dogs, Molsons and beer-hunters and hockey 'til you drop. Of course we wouldn't experience any of those things. In fact the closest we could get to the whole philosophy would be gambling on hockey in one of the casinos or tipping a native Canadian but we didn't try for that either. That would be stretching ourselves and might require planning. Instead we cruised down the River Road and stopped in at the Botanical Gardens and butterfly palace or whatever. Let me tell you, the butterfly conservatory is GREAT! They have all these butterflies, millions of them, in this conservatory building, just flying around you and landing on you and setting up cool poses so you can photograph them. I felt like I was Mr. National Geographic taking their picture for the next big rainforest article! What do you know, I didn't though, but I did take lots of pictures. Take a look at the DAY 5 snaps for the butterflies. 
I forgot to mention what it was like to cross the border. I had to produce ID's or birth certificates for everyone in the car. You'd never know we had an open border with Canada until you return. Then the US Border Patrol just asks where you were born and waves you through. Imagine they even let hippies like me back in when they had the chance to set me free. So, we enjoyed the butterflies and then a quick amble through the gardens and we're off again, this time to Skylon Tower, the big tall needle-ee thing in the middle of town. It is tall and skinny and in the middle of town with the best overhead view of the falls, well the only overhead view of the falls. So I took even more photos from up there, pics of the hosts, other guests, foreigners and locals, the water tower and a bunch of other stuff. They also had these great fact plates at each window and as the restaurant revolved around you got to examine each one, in detail as the restaurant turn-table was very slow. It took an hour to make one complete revolution. We went one and a half times round. That's not to say we wanted to, it took them forever to get our food out, probably because I'm a hippie. Good thing the food was good or I would have complained but as I said before I'm easy to please when food is in the offing. After lunch it was time to shake the proverbial dust off our shoes and hit the trail. We crossed back over the Rainbow Bridge (unimpeded by the border patrol) and made our way back south. We had big plans (well big in our sense of the word - we decided to drive through some national forest in Pennsylvania) and all we had to do was navigate our way to where we were going, which we did, only the forest was very foresty and a bust. We drove out after a half an hour of thirty mile an hour driving. Now I want to know why anyone would think of getting in the cool SUV and going thirty miles an hour unless the terrain demanded it. Paved roads demand absolutely nothing of an SUV. 
Absent the forest we cruised the byways of central Pennsylvania and stopped for the night in Altoona, a very lovely locale with comfortable accommodations and friendly people. Along the way we went through a wonderful place where I suspect they were making benzene or using benzene and all the children must have been abnormal. We're not sure. But we arrived in Altoona after dark, had a great repast at Jethro's, and went to bed. Tomorrow would be the last leg of the trip and we'd be stopping for fireworks at Phantom Fireworks. As usual I managed to pack the car so the kids had to ride with explosives between them. At least it's not like riding with Kyle who carries explosives inside him, no seepage please. And we made our way home through Berkeley Springs, by way of Warrenton, Fredericksburg and Tappahannock and arrived safe and sound to Charlie's happy exhortations to come in and make something to eat. Why go on vacation when there's plenty of food at home? |
