June 24

June 24

Our back bedroom is filling up with laundry – all of our laundry baskets are overflowing. So we decided we should try and find a laundry mat. So when we got to Batavia where the walmart was we plugged “laundrymat” into the gps. It took us to one – how amazing is that. Anyway we gathered up all the laundry, it took 3 of us to carry it in, and we were stopped by a nice old lady who said it was too late to start laundry. So we left, on the way back to Walmart we saw a sign for another laundrymat. We stopped, they were open till 11:00 (it was like 9:30) so we went ahead and went in. It was gross and expensive but we decided to do a load of two anyway. That was a mistake. The laundry didn’t get very clean, it took forever to dry and we ran into a lot of rif raf. We turned on a movie for the kids to watch in the Rv and Rick and I went in the laundrymat. Rick had to go out and sit with them when two suspicious looking cars pulled in the parking lot right next to the RV. Pretty sure they were using the Rv to block their drug deal from main street. Anyway we got the laundry done (not clean but done) and back “home” to our Walmart parking lot site by 11:30. The kids were pretty much all asleep so we just threw some bankets on them and went to bed.

It is amazing to me that Rick can sleep in till like 9:30 in a walmart parking lot. You start getting a lot of traffic noise and people coming and going by around 7:00-8:00. It is hoping by 8:30, but Rick and the kids slept on. So I went in to walmart and did a little grocery shopping. I got a box of donuts from the Duncan Donuts store and woke the kids up to eat them about 9:30 – when they were almost done with the donuts the went in and woke up Rick so he could have the last one. He may have still been asleep at noon if we hadn’t woke him.

We took off for Niagara Falls as soon as we were all ready. We had a bit of a hard time finding where we wanted to go but when we finally found a parking spot we were pretty excited to be there. You can see the mist coming up from the falls from pretty far away. In fact it looks like smoke from a fire when you are coming into town. I was so impressed by the sheer power of the water. There is just so much – so much water, so much power- so much noise. It is incredible. We walked along the falls trail and took a bunch of pictures and watched the seagulls for awhile. Then we went on the Cave of winds tour. It was pretty cool. Dallin has been looking forward to going to Niagara Falls so he could get a rain poncho. He heard they had them there. He was absolutely thrilled when he found out they gave them out to everyone who went on the tour. Even better they even gave out new shoes for us to wear. So we got all dressed up in yellow rain poncho’s, and cheap plastic sandals. And headed out to the falls. Looking at the falls from their level is a lot different then from above. It is pretty amazing. At the bottom there was the “hurricane deck” where you can stand under the falls and get soaked. The force of the water was termendous. I loved it and the kids were pretty impressed too. It is interesting to see how many different people come to tour the falls. We heard lots of different languages and saw a lot of different cultural dress. There were lots of Muslims, Indians, Japanese and even quite a big group of Mennonite people as well as the regular mix of Americans.

We decided to head to our campsite around 5:00. We typed it in the GPS and headed out. We were following the directions and found ourselves on the bridge to Canada. This can’t be right we thought but couldn’t figure out how to get off it either so into Canada we went. Luckily we had our passports and birth certificates because we had planned to go into Canada tomorrow. I was terrified we were going to be searched. Which normally wouldn’t be a problem –but Mark gave me a little box and ask me to take it to Jeff. He didn’t tell me what it was and I didn’t ask. But I have this sneaking suspicion it is a gun. So when the boarder agent ask if we had any weapons or firearms and Rick said no- I felt a little guilty. I figured why would they doubt Rick – they won’t look. Just then Ryan speaks up and says “Yeah we do – we have weapons”. I could have smacked him. Luckily the agent ignored him and he let us in.

We found a campground, not the one we intended to go to but the GPS did lead us to one. It was pretty expensive and tacky looking so didn’t stay. We drove around a bit and looked at Canada and headed back to the USA. The kids were excited to go back to the USA, they sang all kind of patriotic songs like “Coming to America”, “God Bless the USA” etc. They are so weird sometimes.

We drove around for maybe an hour before we were able to find the right campground. New York really needs to work on its GPS directions for State Parks. We overheard some other campers commenting on how hard it was to find the place too – so we knew it wasn’t just us. The campground, 4 mile creek, was right on Lake Ontario. It was actually only about 15 miles from the Falls but we drove around in circles looking for it. It’s a pretty nice park. Lake Ontario is huge. Once again the sheer size of it amazed me. We could look across the lake and see the skyline of Toronto. Other than that it looks like the ocean – water as far as you can see in all directions. There were even waves. The kids had a great time collecting old dirty bird feathers and little pieces of rocks and shells. They are getting quite the collection of “treasures”.