On Way to Niagara

We didn't make too many stops on our way to Niagara Falls last week, but we did have a fun drive.  We headed north out of Cincinnati towards Lake Erie.  As we drove through the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio we got to drive by the lake for much of the day, though we only caught a few glimpses from the roads we were on.

One of my goals was to see all of the Great Lakes on our trip and we almost made it.  We saw the four smaller ones, but when it came to Superior we only saw the St. Mary's River between Superior and Huron as I forgot to drive out to the lake itself when we visited Sault Ste. Marie.

We also stopped at a rest area in Pennsylvania (that is where the beautiful shaded view above is from).  We passed through more states this day as we went through Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

After our experience facing many tolls going into Chicago we decided to avoid the tolls that were along the route.  This meant that we exited the interstate shortly before entering New York and drove along backroads for a while.  It was worth it for some of the neat sights that we saw like this old bank building.

We camped on Grand Island, which was between Buffalo and Niagara Falls.  It was a nice little island, the only slight issue being the $1 toll every time you drove over this bridge onto the island.

The campground was virtually empty as we were there after Labor Day when the season really ended.  It made for some quiet nights though.

The next morning we got up and drove to Niagara Falls State Park.  The first thing we noticed was that not only were there plenty of parking spaces, but we got to park right next to all of the park police cars--so I felt like our car was quite safe.

In the next post I'll show more of the sights we saw on Goat Island.

~Matt