Niagara Falls day

We headed out from our campspot at 9:30 this morning. It was supposed to be an hour and a half drive to the falls, but we did have some challenges staying on our Google Maps route again today, but not too bad.

When we got to the Niagara Falls region, we were told about a tour of the major attractions... On an air conditioned bus. We were sold! Something about driving around in an unfamilar area, and doing a lot of walking in this heat really sounded unappealing, so we took the tour. Luckily Zachary can still pass for 5 years old, so his ticket was free :)

I thought the statue of Liberty was going to be bigger than this....

 

 

Our first stop was the Cave of the Winds, which actually doesn't even have a cave anymore, but it was really cool.  See the tiny yellow things in this picture?  Those are the people walking over to the falls - the spot where we would be soon!

We got some free shoes to wear, so we didn't have to get our shoes wet (any also for safety concerns I bet).  We loved those things.  They were so comfy we wore them the whole tour!

We donned our ponchos and got to walk right up to the Bridal Wave falls and touch it.

The closer we got to the falls, the wetter we got - but the kids loved it.

Next we went to the Daredevils Museum. It did have quite a bit of memoribila from past crazy people who went over the falls.  What the heck were these people thinking?

Next stop was the Whirlpool area on the gorge overlook.

Finally the biggie - the Maid of the Mist boat ride. We all had a great time on that.  It was a spectacular, upclose view of the falls.

 

The last stop was the Observation deck.

 

We went to Canada for a look around.   We had a great view of the falls and got to see some unbelievable rainbows in the mist.

We ate dinner at Planet Hollywood and finally headed back to camp around 7:30. We were all pretty tired from our exciting day. The kids described it as our best camping trip ever! Zachary exclaimed that he would never forget the Falls!!

Letchworth State Park : Exploring the falls

Today we ventured out into the trails of the park to see the falls and the gorge.  The park itself stretches out 26 miles from one end to the other so there was a lot of driving to get around.  Good thing, because it was *really* hot today.

 This made for a nice picture.  Almost good enough for a Christmas card photo.  hmmm....

 This one?  Not so Christmas card worthy, but certainly not too bad.  My new haircut is really a pain. Short hair makes my hair unruly and very hair to keep decent looking.  Oh, and I should probably burn that t-shirt when I get home.  Not so flattering.  But I digress....

I can't remember if this was the upper, middle or lower falls, but I think it was the middle falls.

 We had to walks LOTS of stairs to get there.  whew!!

 We did get to see a pretty rainbow by the falls though.

 These are the upper falls.

 For all of our hiking, we rewarded ourselves with a big (huge!) ice cream cone and some playtime at the park.  Remember how Zachary's ice cream fell off his cone within several minutes of getting it??  Luckily the ice cream lady was nice and gave him another scoop... in a bowl.

Letchworth State Park - Western NY camping trip

We went to Western New York camping, at Letchworth State Park.  Imagine my surprise when I had been telling everyone that we were going to the Adirondack mountains but really, we were hours away from there!  However, our campground was really nice, and our campsite was private and quiet. 

 Letchworth is known as the Grand Canyon of the East, and we soon found out why.  They have a beautiful gorge with several waterfalls. 

They also had this huge chair! :)  great for photos.

One of the woodland creatures that we encountered was this snail.  Sydney found it and originally thought it was just a shell.  She didn't realize that there was a snail inside of it, and he didn't emerge until we gave him some water and I think it rejuvinated him.  He was ready to hit the trails after he was refreshed.  He was so cute!

Dinner time!  yum, delicious camping chow!

At night our campsite was visited by the friendly natives - look at the picnic bench seat... yep, a racoon.  He was barely even afraid of us.

1st camping trip of 2011

We started the 2011 camping season with a trip to Maumee Bay State Park.  It was supposed to be a rainy weekend, but it turned out pretty nice.  It was a bit cooler, but that is perfect for camping.  We stayed at site 142, our usual spot.

Soon after setting up our camping site we had a visitor.  Apparently this deer was not too afraid of humans.  But when Sydney tried to pet him, he did run pretty fast :)

 We made a campfire on Friday night, and was going to watch a movie on our laptop, but it did start sprinkling just a little, so we went inside and had Jiffy Pop and watched the movie indoors instead.

 The next day we took a ride around the campground, over to the beach, hotel, and nature center.  Zack is so speedy fast now without those training wheels.

 Sydney really likes her new bike too.  She is still getting the hang of the hand brakes (she crashed into me to stop!) but for the most part she can get along really good on it.

 We were greeted by this family of turtles sunning themselves at the nature center.

I'm sure there is no correlation to the humungo Pixie Sticks and our children's somewhat questionable behavior.  ha! 

 To keep our sanity, we took the kids over to the beach in the afternoon and got them all day ride passes for the waterslide.  They had a blast!

 It was reported that they each went down the slide at least 45 times! 

 We were happy not to hear them arguing with each other!! :)  :)

 Later that night we headed over to the ice cream social put on by the campground helpers.  As always, it was delicious!

 Late at night, Sydney and Daddy went to see some fireworks being fired off at the beach area.  We also went to a car show that night in the same area.  It was a long, fun weekend!

 On Sunday we took advantage of the free games in the campground.  We started with a fast paced game of cornhole. 

 Then we tried out the ladder game.  It was a bit more challenging, but it was a good time.

Can't wait to go camping again!!