Hows my little eastern traveller?

Laura and I adventured out to the East for a Post-Harvest/Belated Anniversary/Birthday/Babymoon Adventure. Every year we like to do a smaller adventure but since we will probably be taking some time off from major adventures due to our incoming child we bumped it up a bit.

Our first full day out was into Canada. Why Canada? Well Brian was living out in Buffalo, NY and we were like 'lets visit and see Niagara Falls' but his life plans changed and he moved back to MN, so we decided to stay the course because ultimately we were going to be in that direction anyway. Night number one was spent in this fantastic little town Niagara-on-the-Lake, that's really what it's called, hyphens and everything. There was a great little downtown strip full of shopping and restaurants and it's right on Lake Ontario and the Niagara river, it's beautiful. As an added bonus there are like 50 wineries within a half hour of town. One of our only regrets from the trip was not spending more time here. Also because we didn't check out the tourist mecca that is the town of Niagara falls at all. From what we briefly saw it was like the Wisconsin Dells had a little brother in Canada.

After wine and beer tasting and a great birthday dinner we headed over to Niagara Falls the next day. I was expecting to be relatively underwhelmed with the falls for some reason, but they definitely captured my heart. Since we went in thinking Niagara falls is a once in a lifetime visit we decided to play it up and do a couple of the attractions that make up a falls visit. We did the Journey behind the falls where you take an elevator down to the base of the falls and you can watch the water pour over the top of the falls and get sprayed by the mist of the falls. When we got onto the elevator the worker that rode with us specifically gave me a separate poncho, and had a stack for everyone else in her other hand. I thought, oh that was nice she got a tall one for me, it was a child size, I just barely fit. I don't know if she was playing a funny joke on me or just grabbed the wrong one. Regardless I looked pretty silly. After you're done watching the water fall you can take a tunnel that goes about a third of the way across the falls, but underneath and behind the falls. There were a couple of tunnels that looked out into the falls and you could see white water splashing around. But hearing the roar of the falls was pretty cool.

Niagra Falls from behind.

Normal person poncho

Kids poncho on a large person.

That's what the american falls look like from Canada.

This is the famous horseshoe falls viewed from Canada.

Up next we took the Hornblower cruise, which is a newer more Canadian version of the Maid of the Mist, to the base of the falls and got misted again by it again. The view from the water was pretty cool.

The maid of the mist in front of the American falls lookout platform.

That night we headed over to Watkins Glen New York to check out the Finger Lakes wine country. We paced ourselves fairly decently and drove all over the lakes to catch the last clinging fall colors and saw TONS of grapes. Even though we've been done with harvest for nearly a month they were right in the middle of it. So it was neat to cruise around and watch some other people work. Since Laura is sick with child we took it easy on the winery visit even though I wanted to stop at all of them. The next day we hiked the gorge in Watkins Glen State park. It was a great little hike that apparently has been a well known tourist walk for over a hundred years. We stopped at a couple more wineries afterward and then headed to Ithaca for some grub.

Laura is excited to drink these in the spring.

Watkins Glen

We really wanted to finish our trip with some camping but since the overnight temps were going to be in the low 30's we decided to find a cabin to stay in. A few weeks before we left I asked the people of r/Pennsylvania on reddit if they had recommendations around Allegheny National Forest. I got a tip about Clear Creek State Park's cabins. So we booked one, and they were great! Sometimes the strangers of the internet are the best. So on our way there Laura saw a sign for the Zippo museum, free admission, so we stopped because we needed to stretch our legs, and why not? The museum was pretty interesting and we liked looking at all of the customized lighters they had on display. Ironically (or not?) we forgot any matches or lighter for camping and our cabin was heated by a wood burning stove. We even said in the museum that sold all sort of lighters, "I just can't think of a reason to buy a lighter right now." Fortunately our cabin neighbors had some matches to spare and gave us some to use. On our next day we headed into Allegheny and hiked the Mission Creek 6ish mile loop. This part of Pennsylvania had lost all of their leaves so we didn't get any nice fall color vistas but the day was beautiful and the hike was great.

This bridge was over a 30 foot drop, we chickened out.

I'm not sure what this pose means.

Altogether our trip was fantastic, I brought back a bunch of wine that I'm very excited about and we added a few more growlers to the collection, it's time to make the shelf bigger! The road trip was fun too except it was incredibly uncomfortable for the two of us, due to whatever is going on in my back. Sitting in the car for extended time was awful and Laura isn't always comfy anymore. But we made it work and had a lot of fun. I'd recommend Niagara-on-the-lake to anyone as well as the falls if you're close to the neighborhood. And as the rumors go, the Canadian side of Niagara Falls is so much better than the American side, can't cross the border? Ride the Maid of the Mist for sure. Finger Lakes winereis made some great wine, their reds reminded me of the Michigan reds we had a while back in that, just because the grapes can grow there doesn't mean that they make the best wine. The whites on the other hand were phenomenal and lovely. I got conflicting reports of whether or not we were actually in upstate New York (turns out New York is huge) but regardless, it's a great place to visit in the fall.