Ryan's Journal

Slightly delayed post this morning after we arrived in Cleveland last night at 10pm and I immediately went to bed. Yesterday Audrey agreed to get up early for our return to Niagara Falls, and we shockingly had the place mostly to ourselves at 8am. I’m sure I must have been to the American side of the Falls before, but it’s another place I don’t remember, so it was all new views for me.

The day’s main event was a ride on the Maid of the Mist, the boat that takes you right up to the Falls. I took the ride from Canada once, but either I was too young to be totally blown away, or else they get closer now with the new electric boats, so we were right in the middle of Horseshoe Falls with the air vibrating from so much crashing water. It was a combination of an amusement park ride and nature tour, and I wanted to hide out on deck and go again when the twenty minute adventure came to its end.

When we finally left Niagara we made our way across New York and Pennsylvania back to the old Holliday family stomping grounds in North Springfield, where my uncle gave us a tour of the candy store and my aunt surprised us with an appetizer spread that would have impressed visiting royalty. As we were leaving in the dark I warned Audrey that there would be animals on the road, and literally five seconds later two deer ran by.

We’re finishing the trip with two nights in Cleveland so Audrey can see where I grew up, but I think she’s more excited to see both of the buildings.

Audrey says we got 16,000 steps today, which is apparently a lot. I’m writing this while nodding off, so however many steps we got, it was definitely a full day.

Yesterday Audrey’s mom sent a text suggesting that we investigate Letchworth State Park and its famous waterfalls, and since we didn’t really have other plans that seemed like a fine way to start the day. The park’s three waterfalls really are quite impressive, and we spent a bunch of time roaming the canyon rim.

From there it was a meandering trip through rural New York and up to Niagara Falls. While Letchworth was pretty, Niagara is ridiculous. A bunch of sights on this trip were smaller than what I remember from childhood, but Niagara Falls is even bigger. Standing right at the edge as 75,000 gallons per second drop 167 feet is a none-too-shabby way to end the day, and we’re staying less than a mile away from the Falls tonight with plans to continue the visit tomorrow morning.

After the debacle at the border we’re winging it for a few days, but if today is any indication they should end up being good days. The route today took us from Syracuse to Rochester via the Finger Lakes. We mostly meandered, making stops in Auburn to walk around the Fort Hill Cemetery where both Harriet Tubman and William Seward (the guy who bought Alaska from Russia) are buried. From there we wandered up to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, where we ended up photographing herons and egrets for a few hours. We ate lunch in Seneca Falls, birthplace of the women’s rights movement, hung out on the tip of Seneca Lake, then rambled around in Huckleberry Swamp to finish the day.

One oddity throughout this trip has been some of the town names. In Vermont we passed by Peru and Mexico, and in New York we’ve seen Poland, Belgium, Jordan, Russia, and Mexico (again). Given this impressive list, it’s ironic that our one planned border crossing fell through.

We’re not going to Canada on this trip. We finally got some clarification on why Audrey got a negative result while mine was still “pending” after two days – at 2pm today, about 16 hours before the 72 hour cutoff for getting across the border, I saw an update on my test result page indicating that a specimen had been mislabeled. Several phone calls later we discovered that apparently my test tube had both my name on it AND Audrey’s name, so the lab wouldn’t release results. More phone calls ensued, assurances were made, but at 5pm we still didn’t have a result, and the customer support lady at the lab didn’t inspire confidence that one would be available anytime soon on a weekend. Rather than continuing to be frustrated at the border we decided to continue the trip in America, and while we’ll have to forfeit four pre-paid hotel nights in Canada, there are plenty of neat destinations in Upstate New York to help salvage an unfortunate mix-up. Still… we had some great plans for those four days.

When we weren’t on the phone with CVS, Minute Clinic, or Quest Labs, we enjoyed a boat tour through the Thousand Islands. My parents say I’ve been here before, but I have no memory of it. It turns out that there are actually 1,864 islands where Lake Ontario empties into the St. Lawrence River, and an assortment of 19th century millionaires bought many of them and built amazing summer homes. Occupations that might not make you rich today were sufficient a century ago to support building castles on islands, so we saw the mansions owned by the inventors of the Lifesaver candy and the Red Rider B-B gun, as well as the palatial castle built by the man most famous for the slogan “the customer is always right”; I suppose coming up with a good slogan back in the day was kind of like purchasing a great web site domain circa 2000.

Our room in the tower of the Hochelaga Inn will sit vacant tonight; Audrey’s COVID test results arrived just after lunchtime today, but we’re still waiting on mine and can’t cross into Canada until they get here. There are definitely worse fates than being forced to spend a day in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York, but it would have been mighty cool to have two nights in the tower of a 150 year old mansion, so hopefully my results arrive tomorrow and we can salvage at least one night.

Aside from waiting for COVID results, today’s main event was driving through the Adirondack State Park and enjoying the fall color. We stopped for one short hike in the Nature Conservancy’s Lake Julia Preserve, where I was super excited to go for a walk in this little-used area. Audrey, on the other hand, was convinced that either murderers or bears would ensure we didn’t return alive. In her defense, she is fearless around spiders and other things that make me uneasy, but I wasn’t going to miss out on a nice hike due to imagined murderers, so she shuddered her way through the forest until the path opened up at a beautiful pond surrounded by trees in various stages of changing color and she forgot about psychopaths and started photographing everything in sight.

With luck the poor souls at Quest Labs will pull my test out of whatever mountain they are buried under first thing tomorrow and the trip will continue, otherwise we may be writing tomorrow night from another location in New York as we seek out alternative routes west.

I promised Audrey some time to lounge during this trip, and the next two days should make her happy. We’re booked at the Fern Lodge in Adirondack State Park, a place that is far too classy for us, but despite our disheveled appearance and lack of refinement they’ve still given us a great room with a lake view and a huge stone fireplace. The plan while here is to lounge, enjoy the home-cooked breakfasts, and maybe take a canoe out on the lake for a few hours.

The drive here was a scenic trip through the Green Mountains, with a stop along the way in Weston, Vermont, where we enjoyed the view of the Old Mill and then made friends with the proprietors of the town’s 150 year old general store. Surprisingly they were familiar with Shaker Heights, the suburb of Cleveland where I went to high school, and so in a town of a few hundred people in the woods of Vermont we talked at length about a much larger small town that lies 500 miles to the west.

Audrey and I have had a long-running feud over the pronunciation of “syrup”. Being from New England, where syrup was basically invented, it was my assertion that it was a single syllable word pronounced “surp”. Audrey scoffed at this notion, insisting that the only proper pronunciation involved two syllables. Today at Sugarbush Farm we incited a small argument among the ladies running the farm store over how the word is actually pronounced, but all of them agreed without hesitation that “surp” was wrong, and I was forced to do a walk of shame back to our car.

Prior to losing this grammatical battle we had another very full day. Things started off with a quick trip to the Saint Gaudens National Historic Park, home to one of America’s most famous sculptors but also well-known for the beautiful gardens and grounds. Of course, surrounded by incredible statues, flowers, and architecture, we were most impressed by the frogs in one of the fountains, but in our defense, California is kind of lacking in amphibians.

The next stop was one that Audrey was particularly excited about – the Philbrick-Cricenti Bog, located across the road from my family’s old cottage. I remembered the boardwalk trail through the bog as a really fun adventure from childhood, and four decades later it’s still a great walk. Weird bog plants are everywhere, pitcher plants sprout through the moss, the wooden planks suck and gush mud with every step, and you’re constantly reminded of being on a very thick mat of moss over an ancient pond. Audrey was in sheer heaven throughout, which only made the trip better.

The remainder of the day was a series of quick stops. First we had lunch at Peter Christians Tavern, a place I visited dozens of times with my family when we were at the cottage. Next we met a few of Audrey’s relatives for coffee near Dartmouth, and from there ended the day with a visit to the aforementioned maple syrup (two syllables) and dairy farm.

Tomorrow we’re leaving our castle in Vermont for two nights in the Adirondacks, followed (hopefully) by four nights in Canada. Current border restrictions require a negative COVID test within 72 hours of crossing the border, but I underestimated how difficult it would be to get tested in rural Vermont/New York, so after checking dozens of locations we finally found two available appointments two days from now, just over 24 hours from when we need to cross the border. Hopefully the lab turnaround times are fast, otherwise we might be spending a surprise night in upstate New York waiting for our results to arrive.

The day started at 6am today, because vacations are too awesome to waste on sleeping. At that time the White Mountains were shrouded in fog, with temperatures hovering near freezing, but it made for a cool scene outside, particularly once the sun crept over the horizon.

A few hours later, once Audrey was up and about, we made a return visit to the resort’s barn to again pet goats and sheep, before taking part in the daily axe-throwing competition; sadly, we both made a poor showing with the four pound double-headed axes and had to retreat in shame once the competition ended.

After checkout out we headed southwest through Franconia Notch State Park, home to the world’s best notch, as well as the Flume Gorge, a geologic phenomenon that has been drawing visitors for two centuries. The gorge is something that I think I remember from childhood – it’s a narrow chasm with a boardwalk cantilevered into the side of the cliff wall, creating a trail that sits just above raging water that forms waterfalls, pools, and cascades as it blasts through the narrow space. It was tough to get pictures that fully captured the experience, but it was well worth the visit.

We’re ending the day in a 150 year old “castle” in Vermont that was originally built by a former governor. The building is now an inn, and our room contains a four-poster bed, fireplace, antique furniture, and hand-carved wood trim. I managed to get a deal several months ago when travel still seemed like a risky proposition, so our room rate included a three-course gourmet dinner in the downstairs dining room; Audrey had lamb while I enjoyed lobster, shrimp and steak. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I really, really, REALLY love being on vacation.

Today was a day of perfect weather and many activities, despite the fact that we decided to postpone axe throwing until tomorrow.

Our first stop of the day was the Mt. Washington Auto Road, where we paid the exorbitant toll for the totally-worth-it drive to the 6,288 foot summit of Mt. Washington. First opened in 1861, the road has an average grade of 12%, with up to 22% grade in some places, and our rental car was none-too-happy with us for choosing this route. Despite some complaints from the automobile, it was incredibly scenic, and we got out for a number of short hikes along the way before braving the chilly temperatures at a summit that is infamous for extreme weather, including a 231 mph wind gust that was recorded in 1934.

After leaving the mountain we had a couple of additional stops – a delicious 2pm breakfast at the Sunrise Shack, and a quick hike to the waterfalls at Diana’s Baths – before we set off across the Kancamagus Highway. This scenic byway is mobbed in October with “leaf peepers” taking in the amazing fall colors; for our trip leaves were just beginning to turn, but it was still a beautiful route. We read later that the road took twenty-five years to build, with construction starting in the 1930s; a supervisor’s progress report during the project noted “Quality of work: Excellent. Morale of workers: High. Progress of construction: Negligible.”

It will be tough to top today’s adventures, but the plan for tomorrow is to start the day with barnyard animals and axe throwing before heading southwest into Vermont, with a stop at the very famous Franconia Notch along the way, so it should be another good one.