Week 48 - Fun, Friends, Foreign and Falls - 07-15-2007

Hello from Niagara Falls,

We spent most of the week in Canada, then met our next door neighbors from California, Ben and Sid, at Niagara Falls, NY. We spent three days with them, exploring the falls and playing pinochle into the late nights. We had a great time catching up with them, and hope to meet up with them again in Kentucky or somewhere else along the way. Sorry we had so much fun that it delayed our newsletter.

1) Brockville Ontario: beautiful mural is hard to see since we shrunk it. 2) Ellen finds a place to jog among the poison ivy! 3) This lake freezes completely in winter. 4) This changing booth was in the middle of nowhere.

1) Toronto, Canada; 2) Flamboro Family Campground, Ontario; 3) Hungry birds outside our window; 4) Leonard and Dreda still working on a horse ranch after 47 years of harness racing. We met them at the Flamboro campground. They spend the summer in Canada and winter in Florida. They showed us a news video of Leonard's son Brent crashing in a harness race. Since Brent was owner, trainer and driver, he could not complete in the next week's race. So Leonard, a retired driver who still had his license, drove for Brent. Leonard crashed in an identical fashion; it looked like an instant replay. Both are good drivers and did not cause the crashes.

1) & 2)Hank, Ann, and their visiting granddaughter Elisa, live in St George, Canada. They prepared a gourmet dinner for us and we spent the night in their driveway. We originally met them in a Carrabelle, Florida, RV park. We had a wonderful time with them. We had a hard time finding good wine in Canada until we got to Hank's house. He has been making his own wine for 10 years.

1,2,3,4) Rainbow bridge where we spent 90 minutes trying to cross from Canada to the U.S. We think it was extra crowded because it was the morning the Today Show featured it as one of the Ten Most Beautiful places in the USA. We drove over and walked over since then and it wasn't quite as crowded. View of Niagara Falls as we crossed.

The American Falls.

Niagara Falls consists of the American and Bridal Falls on the USA side and the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. On the average 700,000 gallons per second go over all three. Our 12,500 gallon swim pool took 30 hours to fill. In the same time, Niagara could fill over 6 million swim pools.

Can you see us on the boat? We are the ones wearing blue. Fireworks at the Falls.

The American Falls on the left and the Bridal Veil falls on the right. You used to be able to walk under the Bridal Veil falls but the rock ledge protecting you collapsed in 1904.

The Canadian Horseshoe falls as seen from the Maid of the Mist boat ride.

Unlike some on the boat, we barely got wet!

Evening at the Falls

(The above is a photo taken by Pete off the movie screen of the IMAX theater).

The American Falls at dusk. (Photo by Sid )

So far we have been doing the "outside" pieces of our USA picture puzzle. Next week we will be going into the interior states.

Love, Pete and Ellen

Photos from Jul 2007