Upstate New York!

A natural spring, on the side of the road,  that the locals come to fill their water bottle up at!

Kaylee looks a little nervous!

Class six rapids leading to the falls!

This pole is actually Frozen solid with a thick sheet of ice on it.

The ashes of my Uncle Phillip.

Kaylee & Bryson chased these poor pigeons all over the place.

As much as we hated to say goodbye to Vermont, it was time to head south to upstate New York.  We found a free ferry that could take us across Lake Champlain and drop us in New York. The only thing was we didn't know if they would take the camper and to get to this ferry you had to commit to a certain route on the map.  So with no cell service, we took a shot and to our surprise the ferry was pulling up at the shore with a tractor trailer on board.  Karen and I breathed a sigh of relief and got in line.  We crossed quickly and headed to our campground a little place called "Country Haven".  Well after pulling in we found ........ well more like a 1970's trailer park with a lot of full time residents, old campers covered in pinestraw and more stuff outside the trailers than inside!  We decided what the heck, we are here and its afforably priced, so lets just stay.  Let's just say we would have missed some really nice people if we decided to turn around and head to another place.  Tony, the campground owner, was the nicest camp host we've met so far on this trip!  Tony guided us to our campsite all the while pulling peoples cars out of the road or moving low hanging branches for us and then helping us back the camper into its spot!  Our neighbor "Bullet", yes you heard me right, is a good ole cajun boy from Louisiana and commenced helping me hook up the water and even took one of his tv's out of his camper and brought it over to help fix our cable issue!  I have never felt so at home in a place, as fast as I did in this one!  The day we were leaving we were running late, so I went to ask Tony if I could stay a few minutes over the checkout time and said "stay the rest of the day, we don't have anyone coming."  We ended up staying 3 hours over swimming in the pool and playing mini golf, which was all free of charge!  Thanks moms and dads for teaching us to never judge a book by its cover! 

Ok back to our stay!  After setting up, we headed to a beach on Lake George called the "Million Dollar" beach.  Well, lets say the name was a little misleading as it looked more like the $100 beach with the preverbial 10lbs of crap in a 5lb bucket!  The people laying almost on top of each other, people smoking on the beach and throwing their cigarette butts in the sand.  The water was full of lake mud.  They obviously have never been to Destin/Panama City or Palm Beach thats where the nice beaches are.  Come to find out its called the Million Dollar beach, because thats how much it cost to build it not necessarily the experience! 

The next morning, we got up and went to Lake Placid and took a tour of the Olympic Center which is based around our US hockey team that won the gold medal, back in 1980!  You may have seen the movie "Miracle on Ice."  It was very informative and the gentleman giving the tour was actually on the Olympic committee during those Olympics!  Karen had a great time with the tour with all the facts and intersting tidbits, as was I, but not to the extent she was so I took care of the kids for the last half of the tour. After the tour, we walked down the main street and looked through the shops and eventually ending up driving to the ski jump area!  "Amazing" is all that comes to mind when you see how tall the tops of the ramps are! 

The next morning Karen was chomping at the bit to take the kids to the North Pole/Santa's Workshop, so we loaded back up and headed north to the park.  Karen informed that we are not leaving early from this place as it has a special place in her heart from when she was a kid going to it.  So I agreed that we can stay until it closes.  We paid our $84 to get the family in and as we walk through a few places Karen looked at me and I could see in her face this place was a lot smaller than she remembered!  We had fun with it though, the kids got to feed the reindeer and give the piglets milk out of a glass Coke bottle with a nipple on it.  Bryson rode all the rides, but Kaylee was too big for most of them.  The signs on the rides say rider must not exceed 75lbs and from the look of the rides, that sounds like a very good idea.  We don't think the place has changed much, if at all, from 62 years ago when it opened.

The last day we had to head to Schenectady in the morning for Norman to ride his scooter on a local news channel at 10:00am and then take care of a matter for my parents in BrattleboroBrattleboro, which was about 80 mile east.  We found the cemetery and sprinkled out the ashes after which I called my parents and told them it was a done deal.  From there we went to downtown Brattleboro and walked around the shops picking up some modeling clay for Kaylee at a local art store and just passing some time before we had to be in Albany for Norman to ride again at 8:00pm! Norman and Karen did a great job as usual and we headed for the trailer!  A little side bar to our trip, I noticed the trailer tires are wearing funny and the inside edges were getting bald, so we need to find a trailer shop!  Next morning we all slept until 9:30am hence the need for us to prolong our stay, which I mentioned earlier.  All in all we had a great time and would highly recommend Country Haven to anyone looking for a place to stay with some really nice people! 

We are off to see Niagara Falls! After leaving the Adirondack area we drove to Rochester and slept in good old Walmart! (Wally world as my mom calls it) The next morning we landed in a motel parking lot that they call a campground!  The spots we clean level and paved, so we set up and went to buy some groceries and Karen spent 3 hours at the laundromat, catching up on laundry, because we were all on our last pair of underwear.  The next morning we headed to the falls and bought the group pass which gives access to Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist, the Imax movie, the observation tower, and the trolley to get to each stop.  We started at the top of the falls and just stared at this magnificent waterfall!  From there, we headed to the Maid of the Mist boat tour.  It was hot, so we were looking for some fresh Niagara water to cool us down!  The boat took us right up into Horseshoe Falls area and basically hovers around by the waterfalls spray which was very neat!  You could feel the boat being tossed around in the turbulent waters churning out from the falls.  Kaylee asked me if any of the boats had ever sunk while on the tour and I calmed her nerves and told her no! Next stop, lunch, because Karen was starving and I could see that look in her eyes when she gets hungry!  After taking out a small loan to pay for lunch we went to the Imax movie and cooled off in the theatre.  We called it a day and decided to see the rest tomorrow.

The next morning we made our way back to the falls to see the aquarium and hit the Cave of the Winds! The kids had a great time at the aquarium, they saw the sea lion show and watched the feeding of the harbor seals. From the aquarium, we headed to the Cave of the Winds via the trolley.  Cave of the Winds is an opportunity to get down to the base of the falls and feel the spray coming off the rocks!  We loaded into an elevator equipped with our trash bag-like ponchos and they even gave us a pair of special sandals to wear, so we wouldn't fall ...Bryson.  We descended 180 or so feet to the base of the falls.  There was a boardwalk with a series of platforms to climb your way closer to the falls!  Word of caution! If you have expensive cameras and lenses, this is a good time to wrap them in a plastic bag or you could destroy them!  I know this 1st hand as I now have a $500 zoom lens paper weight!  The amount of water and the deafening noise is absolutely amazing.  The kids were a little nervous because of the noise, but once mom and dad made our way closer the kids followed suit. The water spray was so strong at times it literally pushed you forward while standing with your back to the falls. After a thorough drenching we made our way to the truck and headed to downtown Buffalo to eat some chicken wings at Anchor Bar.  This bar is the originator of one of my favorite foods - buffalo wings!  The wings were great and the family was tired, so we made our way home and crawled into bed around 11:00pm. 

Needless to say we all slept in the next day and spent most of the day just hanging around the campground/parking lot watching movies in the camper. That evening Karen wanted to get some pictures and video of Norman at the falls, so it was back to the falls for one more visit!  Norman was a hit with his scooter!  We had more people posing with him for pictures than you can count.  At one time, we had a crowd surrounding him snapping pictures and watching him ride his scooter.  The next morning we packed up to move to Elkhart to have the abnormal tire wear on the trailer checked!