Summer Trip 2009

Quote of the day:
"Patty... I love you, but it's past lunch time." -Joab

A good first day, although we barely fed the children (or ourselves). Left the house around 8:30am. It felt weirdly normal. We decided to take the scenic route out of Massahusetts, which was great and awful. It was a nice setting for the kids first journal entries. Arrianna wrote about the Boy's incessant talking and suggested leaving him on the side of the road with a sign, "Free Kid: Beware".

 We drove past some beautiful swamps, rivers, and little villages. Joab liked pointing out "dilapidated" houses and barns along the way and we were sure that taking the scenic route was a good idea, but then we ended up on some kind of winding little mountain road in the middle of a foggy rainstorm. Eventually we made it back to civilization (big, flat roads and chain restaurants). After lunch we stayed on highways and made it to Buffalo without incident. We also made it across the Canadian border without any trouble. Finding our hotel was slightly more problematic, but we got there eventually. For some ridiculous reason (lack of food?) we decided to look for dinner on the way to Niagara instead of eating near our hotel. Bad move. We ended up eating an hour or so later after finding parking near The Falls. The kids were great, though. Julie was the only one who really got cranky when hungry. Our first view of The Falls was a huge mist rising up over the horizon. The kids didn't complain as we drove in circles looking for parking. We ate (for the first time in 7 and a half hours) before walking down to get a closer look at the falls. It was late, but still sunny out.

The view of the falls was great. You could hear the pounding of the water over the whistles of the traffic guards and music of a live band. We walked along to see the horseshoe falls as the sun set and they lit up the falls. It was late and we were tired, but we stuck around until the fireworks at 10.

Joab danced like a wild man to James Brown while the girls talked to Patty in Spanish (mostly complaining about Julie). Then we found seats in the grass to enjoy the show. The fireworks were nice, except that they're all the kids seem to remember :) We got to bed at around midnight, and the kids were up by 7:30.