My Road Trips - Niagra Falls, Canada
Niagra Falls/Canada
Sadly, this is the last of the great road trips with Roxanne. Shortly after this experience, reality led us along separate paths. But like the poet Jim Morrison said, "I want to get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames." If that were the case, then this road trip was a complete success, because this was one of the best ever.
This epic started with only Roxanne and I, as we left school in Iowa, drove to I-80, and began heading east. We left in the afternoon, and arrived at a bus terminal in Chicago where we rendezvoused with the beautiful and intelligent Irene, who is Roxanne's best friend from high school. After quickly stashing her luggage in the back of the Shadow, we headed back down to I-80 and started east again.
We made our last stop in the Shadow at a town in Indiana where another of Roxanne's high school friends, Chris, attended college. We parked in the parking lot at the college and found Chris in his dorm room. The four of us briefly walked around the beautiful school campus before loading up Chris's stuff, and transferring the luggage from my car into Chris's car. His car was more comfortable and spacious than mine, so we had decided to take it into Canada.
We took off from the small Indiana town, driving through Michigan and crossing into Canada north of Detroit. Canada was fun; drivers in America's sister nation seemed to have little regard for the speed limit, so we drove quickly east, towards Toronto. At some point everyone fell asleep except Chris. He somehow managed to stay awake the entire night, and as I came back to life when the sun was rising, he was perfectly awake and still driving. We arrived at Niagra Falls in the morning, and began our day of exploration.
We parked in a parking lot off of a small service road, and walked a mile or two along this road lined with beautiful green trees and parks until arriving at The Falls. We got Canadian money out of an ATM (automatic currency conversion, what a bargain!) and bought drinks and souvenirs. The falls were absolutely geogeous; we walked within feet of the beautiful crystal blue water cascading hundreds of feet downward. We watched and laughed at the fools with blue raincoats getting drenched on the boat at the bottom of the falls. We took pictures, got some burgers, and had a wonderful time. Another of Roxanne's high school friends, Arie, was planning on driving from Maine to Niagra Falls in Canada and meeting us at the park. We searched for him for hours, walking and searching everywhere we could.
Eventually we found Arie, and after everyone was (re-)acquainted, we got into our respective cars, found each other again, and then headed across the bridge into New York. Our plan was to go camping at a campground in New York. I studied the map to find out how to get to the campground, and we headed off through the mist and clouds in our quest for more adventure.
We found the campground without much trouble, paid the fees, and set up our stuff. I had brought a tent from the Recreation Service department at school, and Arie had also taken a tent. We set them up with no instructions and virtually no prior experience, and walked to the little camp store for firewood. The campground was in a nice area; it was on a big peninsula into a lake. We checked out the lake, I think maybe Chris even jumped in, and we walked around appreciating the beautiful fall colors.
We needed supplies, so we all piled into Chris's car and drove around the area until we found a small town with a grocery store. We got some various food items at the grocery store, and soon found a liquor store, where we scored a bottle of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum. The five of us drove back to the campsite and contemplated starting a fire to cook some food. We were hungry, so it sounded like a good idea, but there were some rather threatening clouds in the sky, which looked set to pounce and kill our fire if we tried to cook. As always, we through caution to the wind and loaded up several logs doused with lighter fluid. The thing turned into a nice healthy fire in short time, and as we prepared our food the sun sank on the western horizon.
The food we prepared was dubbed Camper's Stew. We each took a piece of tin foil, filled it with ground beef, potatoes, carrots, some other stuff, and doused it with spices. Then we wrapped it all up with the tin foil, and placed our pouches on a grate above the fire. As if on cue, the rain began to fall soon after the food began cooking. Though we were all sitting around the campfire, Arie, Irene, Roxanne, and I all migrated into my tent to avoid the rain. Chris was valiant enough to stay outside and tend to our meals.
At this point, we were all feeling down. I mean, we had been having fun, but we were tired and now it was raining. Chris noticed that everyone was bummed, and he did something amazing. He put on a happy face, and cheered everyone up. After all, he was the one out in the rain, so he should have been feeling the worst, but he joked around and made us laugh, which lifted everyone's spirits. Chris's conscious decision to be happy despite the circumstances, and infectious silliness truly saved the day. One at a time, the tin pouches of food finished cooking, and we took turns hungrily gobbling down the delicious meal.
I forgot to mention; at some point during this ordeal, I, being the person I am, broke out the good old Captain and started pouring plastic cups of rum and coke for everyone. Finally, after the fire was history, the food was cooked and consumed, and Chris was back in the tent with the other four of us, we relaxed. We sat together in the three-man military-style tent, talking passionately and drinking rum and coke until the bottle was gone. Afterwards, in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, my tired and drunk team decided that it was time to sleep.
I believe that the original idea for sleeping organization was that Irene, Arie, and Chris were going to sleep in Arie's tent, and Roxanne and I were to sleep in my tent. After separating from Roxanne and I and spending a few minutes in Arie's tent, however, the other three team members came running back into my tent. Being the unqualified and inexperienced tent-raisers that we were, a grave mistake was made in the tent construction which resulted in serious flooding in Arie's tent. So we all crashed, together, in my 3-man borrowed tent. It was truly an inspiring night.
We awoke in the morning to find the rain still pouring down, and our sleeping bags and bodies soaked to the bone. Apparently the same design flaw had doomed my own tent as well as Arie's. We said, "What the hell," and emerged from my tent into the pouring rain. We hastily disassembled our tents and loaded our gear into the cars. Chris drove his car, with dry clothes, to the shower facility, as the rest of us skipped barefoot in the rain through the wet grass. After an eternity of taking turns at the shower, we all ended up refreshed, clean, and dry.
We then bid farewell to the rainy campsite and headed back up the road, into Canada. Departing the interstate at a city halfway to Toronto, we soon found a laundromat which had huge dryers in which to dry our sleeping bags and clothes. To our happy surprise, the laundromat owners also operated a small diner which was accessible from the laundromat through a narrow adjoining hallway. So while our items were drying, we got some cheap filling breakfast. After eating and collecting our clothes, we loaded everything back into the cars and headed on to Toronto.
Toronto was beautiful on that September weekend in 1997. The architecture of the majestic downtown buildings was inspiring, and the weather was perfect. It was crisp but not too cold, as if to free the soul while hinting at the impending desolation of winter and electrifying the atmosphere with a sense of change. We parked in a commercial city parking lot, and set off down the sidewalk.
We explored the city as thoroughly as we could within the constraint of a single day. We walked in the underground tunnels, rode the subway, and ate hedonistically delicious hot dogs and bratwursts purchased hot off of the grills of the street vendors. I bought Cuban cigars and music CDs. Our group got lost, separated, angry, and re-united. We paid the 20 bucks to go up into the Canadian National Tower. There was a section of the lower observation torus which had a glass floor. The ground was insanely far below us, over a thousand feet down. Looking down the tower through the glass, people looked smaller than ants, almost so small as to be invisible. Signs were posted which claimed that the glass was strong enough to support the weight of several elephants, but still I could not bring myself to walk out over the glass. It was just too crazy.
We took the special elevator to the top, which had the highest observation deck in the world. We walked all around the torus, gazing out the windows and taking pictures. The view was spectacular; Lake Ontario stretched to the east as far as the eye could see, and the skyscrapers of downtown Toronto were far below us on the other side. After leaving the CN tower, as the shadows were getting long, we took the trolley and walked back through the city to the parking lot where we had left the cars.
Once again, the original plan was to find a place to camp in Canada, but as we drove into the night and the temperature dropped considerably, we decided that it would be better to find a motel. We ended up in another city on Lake Ontario, called Hamilton. After briefly exploring the city looking for a place to stay, we found a room at a hotel in the center of a small downtown-like area. Parking was difficult, and we had to walk several blocks to the hotel after searching 20 minutes for a suitable place to park. After checking out the hotel, we stashed our stuff, put on our swimming suits, and went down to the pool. The hotel where we stayed in Hamilton had a good-sized indoor pool, with a small waterslide. I thought the waterslide was a noteworthy touch; in the USA insurance costs would prohibit any hotel from installing a waterslide. We had fun in the swimming pool and hot tub, and eventually headed back to the room to dry off.
After we were all happy and dry, we ended up sitting on the beds in the hotel room watching TV. Food was needed, so Chris and I ventured across the street to a nearby pizzeria. We scored a few large pizzas and went back to the hotel room to join the others. We ate pizza and talked late into the night before all five of us drifted off to sleep in the Canadian hotel room.
The next morning, we sadly left Hamilton behind, said our goodbyes to Arie, and parted ways. Chris, Irene, Roxanne, and I headed west, back home. We arrived at Chris's college later that day, and said our goodbyes to him. Back in the Shadow, Roxanne, Irene, and I took off into the west again, leaving Chris and Indiana behind. We soon dropped off Irene in Chicago, and Roxanne and I continued home through the night.
