Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Day 3 ~ Detroit to Niagara






We didn’t get out of Detroit until after 10 am. That makes me crazy when it’s a driving travel day. Welcome to Canada! I had the not so brilliant idea of driving along a scenic route along the lake. It took forever to go a short distance. Ontario is very farm oriented. There were gigantic green houses everywhere. I’ve never seen anything like it. The landscape and towns reminded me of the San Joaquin Valley in CA. We saw fields and fields of onions and tobacco, vineyards, orchards, wheat, and the shortest corn I’ve ever seen! It was such a contrast. In Iowa there was corn that was probably 8 feet high and starting to tassel while here there is 2 foot corn that is fully tasseled!


I bought some Ontario cherries at a fruit stand. They are sweet and juicy and deep reddish purple. The blueberries are fantastic, too.


We had lunch in the town of Erieau. It’s on Lake Erie (which is very cold, too). The lake had waves and white caps when we waded at the beach. Molly and Oj’s is where we dined. It was dark with a supper club atmosphere. We had a basket of chewy and crusty flax bread with sweet cream butter while we waited for our lunches. Our dinners came with soup so we both upgraded to the clam chowder. It was fantastic! I had a lemon pepper battered perch and Kurt had blackened rainbow trout. We were too full for dessert.


It was already mid-afternoon so we decided to forgo the scenic route and get our tushies to Niagara Falls. Evidently, Mapquest hates Canada (according to our B&B hostess); the directions I got put us in Niagara-on-the-lake which is lovely, but 20km from our destination.


We’re staying at the Eastwood Tourist lodge. We have a large room with a fireplace, a king size bed and a garden patio. We’re about 1 mile down (well uphill) from the Falls overlooking the Niagara Gorge. We can hear the Falls from here and see the Rainbow Bridge.


Once we got settled we drove down to see the Falls. UNBELIEVABLE!!! It’s truly incredible. We could see that without even getting out of the car. We drove up to the Cliffton area of town and had dinner at a great (cheap) little family restaurant. Then we rode the Skywheel. I hate shit like that so me getting on it was pretty amazing. I was squeezing the blood out of Kurt’s had though. It was awesome getting a bird’s eye view of the Falls. After our ride we drove down to the Falls and found some parking. We watched the light of the Falls while we waited for the fireworks. The city puts on a fireworks show every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday during the summer. The show was short, but spectacular. Tomorrow we will do all the Falls tours.

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