vacation

More Niagara Falls.

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The Culinary Institute of Niagara Falls has a self guided tour and within its building it has a fine dinning restaurant, a New York style deli, pastry shop, and wine tasting. We decided to eat lunch at the deli it was very good and affordable.Niagara Falls-1-3Niagara Falls-1-4

Hot Capicola melt with chips and pickle. Tasted better than picture looks.

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Aquarium of Niagara Falls.

This was not much of an aquarium and our first clue was it smelled like a fish market as soon as you open the door. The variety is poor, I’ve been fish stores that were more interesting.

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Niagara Falls.

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Growing up I remember hearing about these Daredevils going over the falls in a barrel so when we were at the Visitors Center and the opportunity presented itself to go over the falls in a barrel we couldn’t resist.

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We also visited the Schoellkopf Power Station 3 Complex located at the Discovery Center. The Power Station was built between 1904 and 1924. In June of 1956 3/4’s of the station was destroyed by rockslides. One employee Richard Draper died in this event.

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You enter the station at the top and take an elevator to the bottom of the gorge.

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Four tunnels where the water from the generators exited the station.

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The view from the bottom of the gorge, to the left you can see part of the Horseshoe Falls.

Niagara Hartland RV Resort.

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This is the campground we’ve been staying at for the last week and we have 1 more week here. We have enjoyed our stay here and would recommend this campground to anyone who is in Western New York to see Niagara Falls. Its a nice 40 minute drive through New York’s farm land to Niagara Falls, Lewiston, and about 15 minutes to Lockport where the Erie Canal is. The campground has a little 8 acre lake for catch and release fishing and canoeing, guinea hens running around the campground, many different birds, and at night Fire Flies. Below are some photos of the campgrounds.

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What we Learn, Trip planning

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Trip planning in the East for us is much different than trip planning in the West. In the West we found it pretty easy to travel from one state to another using the internet to find campgrounds to stay at by what we wanted to see. We didn’t run in to expensive toll roads that were hard to drive around. In the North East there are a lot of toll roads that can get pretty expensive and their not easy to drive around. On this leg of the trip planning for us has been more difficult. We’ve had several full timer’s cross our path that were more than willing to share their trip planning tools with us. It sounds like Allstays app is a tool that most full timers have but is missing from our toolbox, also most seem to have an RV GPS that will plan routes around low bridges and toll roads if you want. The full timers are quick to mention that the RV GPS will put you on a road you don’t want to be on from time to time but they are better than a standard car GPS. We will be adding Allstays to the tools we use to plan our trips, not sure about an RV GPS. The GPS we currently have will route around toll roads but not low bridges.

What we learned;

  1.  There is no one prefect tool that can plan our trips, but there are 2 or 3 that can help us plan better. Google Maps, Google Earth, Allstays.
  2. Sometimes the most direct route is not always the best route.
  3. The RV community is a wonderful thing and we are glad to be a part of it.
  4. No matter where we are, we should enjoy the moment we’re in and the adventure we’re on.

 

Happy 4th of July

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We just wanted our family and friends to know we are thinking of you and missing you. Also thank you to our new followers and people who like our blog.

We left Columbia Falls Montana on July 1st and drove to Wolf Point Montana that day. Then we drove to Jamestown North Dakota and decided to lay over here for two nights to do some of the chores that go along with life on the road. Right now we plan on being in Niagara Falls New York on Saturday the 8th.. We’re trying to figure out if we want to stay a month or just a couple of weeks, it seems like there is a lot to do around Niagara Falls. Below are some photos of Jamestown Campground where we are now. Very nice place and run by a very accommodating couple. If your on I 94 East of Bismark ND its a great place for a stay.

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The sunset last night

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The Vegi pouch for the BBQ. We marinated a pork roast in Asian marinate to go with it. This is the first BBQ of the summer for us.

 

 

The Going to the Sun Road was Awesome.

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We did The Going to the Sun Road yesterday, wow what beauty. Once we got to the Visitor Center at Logan Pass we decided to do the hike to Hidden Lake it was 3 miles round trip. The trail was still covered with snow, the trail gains 460 feet over a mile and a half. The reward was worth it, we saw a Mountain Goat and the back country was beautiful.

Going up The Going To the Sun Road.

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Lunch Creek.

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Summer trip – Leg 2

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We’ve been talking about what the next must see is for us as we travel East. The winner is Niagara Falls in New York. From where we are in Montana it will be a 2146 mile adventure to Niagara Falls. We haven’t really planned each stop along the way as we normally do, we want to explore as we go to find those hidden gems along the route. We think it will take us about 7-10 days to get to Niagara Falls.

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If anyone out there knows some hidden gems along our route please leave a comment, as you can see from our travel map in a previous post we haven’t been East yet.

Glacier National Park.

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The wait is over, The Going To The Sun Road is open for travel. We will explore the 21 miles of the road we have not seen yet on Thursday or Friday depending on weather.

While we’ve been waiting.

We’ve been fishing in Glacier twice and kayaking once. We went to Apgar Village for all of it. Photos below were taken at Apgar Village just inside of the West entrance of Glacier.

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If your asking yourself where are the pictures of the fish? The score is fish 2 and Rich and Darla 0. The nice thing about Glacier N.P. is you don’t need a permit or Montana fishing license to fish inside the park. You do however have to use lead free tackle and some fish are catch and release so it pays to pick up a copy of the fishing regulations from the Visitors Center.

Rafting Trip

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We had never been on a rafting trip, so being that we’re waiting for the Going To The Sun Road to open we decide to take one. We signed up for a nine mile rafting trip followed by dinner by the river. Wild River Adventures in West Glacier Montana put on a great trip and they were very accommodating. They really go the extra mile to make sure everyone has a great experience. The dinner choices were Steak, Salmon, or Chicken with baked potato, salad, roll, and desert. We had so much fun I think we’ll do another rafting trip in the future but on a river with bigger whitewater rapids. The photos below were purchased from the Photographer provided by Wild River Adventures. We had hope to post a video of the adventure but we had some technical issues with the new waterproof action video/camera we purchased for the trip.

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It was so much fun to hear Darla behind me hootin and hollerin as we went through the whitewater.

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Too much fun, instant smile.

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The water temperature was thirty-nine degrees. Refreshing as it was eighty-seven degrees on the river.