Little bit of Western New York. Also Toronto.
At this point we were getting pretty excited looking ahead. We were on schedule to hit the east coast fall colors, the van was working well and our movement was in sync. So much so that we didn’t really think much about what visiting the Niagra Falls would be like. We booked a cheap dog-friendly hotel in Buffalo so we could shower and stage our trip to the falls and into Toronto for a day.
It’s goes without saying that the largest waterfall in the world in terms of volume is pretty astounding in person. Scale doesn’t really translate well in pictures. Also, in person the Maid of the Mist tour is quite wet!
The next day we crossed over to visit Toronto. We didn’t take too many pics because we were distracted by exploring (and it was full of tourists like us ruining our pristine photos). We grabbed some olives and wine at their market and of course ate some poutine. Here’s the market:
Our most stressful traffic on the whole trip so far has been in Toronto. They had some event while we were there and it took us an hour just to get out of the city. The silver lining is that coming back we got to see the falls at night from the Canadian side. Which was absolutely brilliantly lit up. And impossible to capture with our camera setup as we were driving by.
Next was exploring some of the western NY state parks. Kicking it off was a mini hike to what is known as the Eternal Flame. This is a naturally occurring gas leak in the rocks under a small waterfall that stays lit perpetually. It is quite an odd site! Apparently during heavy rainfall the cave that the flame sits in is completely covered with water and glows from behind the stream.
Next stop was Letchworth State Park. This is known as the Grand Canyon of the east. It is a relatively small state park, but long and narrow so you can follow the canyon for 15 miles or so by car or on one of the many hiking trials there. An impressive bridge sits on the upstream end, but it was under construction while we were there.
These hikes all have an interesting feel to them coming out of Arizona. The trees fill our vision most of the time with peaks of good views. The anticipation and reveal makes them feel more rewarding in some ways because they are more difficult to find. This was especially true in World’s End State Park:
Lots of hiking and the pup is loving life. We were quite happy with this open spot to gather up some solar (although it ended up raining on us. The forest ranger said that most people don’t like the spot because they want trees so they feel like they’re roughing it in the woods.
