01 - 06 Aug 2006

Sierra, Moreia, Mother, and myself had attended the family reunion this year in Michigan. We decided that we should to a little vacationing and touring on our way back from Michigan to Georgia. Our first stop was Niagara Falls, we had herd that the Canadian side was much nicer than the U.S. side so that was what we planed to see. We left Michigan early afternoon and traveled through Canada the rest of the afternoon and into the evening and arrived at the falls just as the sun was setting. Well we hadn't traveled all day to see nothing and we knew we needed to head out in the morning because our next stop was Boston. So we decided that we were going to see what we could and we knew that they lit up the falls after the sun went down. Most of the tours for the day were over including the ferry that takes you up to the bottom of the falls, the only thing we had time left to catch was a self guided tour that takes you into a tunnel behind the falls. The tunnel has window openings that allow you to see the curtain of water as its flowing over the falls. There is also a lower landing area just beside the falls that you can walk out onto that permits a view beside the falling water, and which is also assured to get you soaked should you decide to walk out on the platform. we played and looked around the shops until it was dark and then stayed for a little longer to see the what the falls looked like when they were lit up. Not too long after that we headed back to the States side drove the rest of the night and into the morning eventually we stopped and found a hotel to spend the rest of the night at. The next morning we took off for Boston Massachusetts determined to get there as soon as possible, we knew we would only be spending one whole day there so the earlier we could get there the more we could do. We in Boston not too much after noon but with little to no problem we got readily lost and it took us the better part of another two hours to find a hotel and get settled. Much to our good fortune it was raining when we got there and didn't look like it was going to let up. As we were wrestling our baggage up to the hotel room I stopped by a hotel gift shop and picked up 4 collapsible umbrellas. Under no condition were we going to let a little rain stop us from seeing the city. The rain didn't last all that long and we were out following the Freedom Trail guided by Sierra our Boston expert from a previous trip. We walked around quite a bit that afternoon and evening just sightseeing and planning what we would see the next day. The first objective the next day was Bunker Hill, we hailed a taxi told him where we wanted to go, and sure enough he took us to Bunker Hill. As we arrived things didn't look quite right, there was a strange amount of construction equipment around but in our hurry to see things we had already hoped out of the taxi and he had taken off. As we walked up to the entrance there was this strange "no entrance due to construction" sign type of thing on the closed and locked gate. Well that's not good we all complained to ourselves, how are we supposed to get up to the monument when all the gates are closed and locked? ordinarily it just being us I'm sure we would have found a way but there were to many suspicious looking construction workers around that seemed as though they might not like us tromping around the grounds while they were trying to work. well that and it was in the middle of a city and it was a national monument so we figured it would be quite likely that someone would see us breaking in. so we had to console ourselves with walking around the outside of the monument just so we could at least say we had seen it and been there. Our next stop was the USS Constitution also known as Old Ironsides. The ship is still operated by the Navy and they have sailors that give tours to the public. Our tour took us on the top deck and the fist deck underneath, the sailor said that below that the decks just got lower and smaller and there wasn't much else to see the further you went down. Naturally I disbelieved that, or well the part that there wasn't much to see anyway, the rest of it I believed, but I still wasn't going to be permitted to go below to find out. We went and visited a few other places and in the later afternoon we packed our bags loaded everything back into the truck and took off for Newport Rohde Island. We got to Rhode Island later in the evening and as we were traveling we saw a sign for campground and decided that it was where we wanted to stay for the night. We had packed everything we would need for camping, we broke out the tent and sleeping bags set everything up, and went to look for a town to get something to eat. The next morning we repacked the tent and sleeping bags and headed for Newport our final destination there was The Breakers one of the Vanderbilt's summer homes. We toured the house which was quite elegant and then spent a good deal of time tromping around the grounds just to see what kind of mischief we could get ourselves into. After seeing the house we found our way down to the breakers after which the house is named and climbed around on the rocks by the ocean and even did a bit of wading, none of us had our bathing suits which was just as well as we were all going to have to pile back into the truck. Moreia was on a mission to get a shot glass from every state we were in, so after playing around at the breakers we headed back into the town proper to do a bit of shopping. After a much more walking around than you would think would be required to find a shot glass we were all a little tired and ready to be on our way to New York. We drove for the rest of the day, spent the night in a New Jersey hotel. The next morning as we were wakening up things took and unexpected turn and our mother ended up having to go to the local hospital. We all spent that day at the hospital waiting what the doctors would tell us. What we knew for sure was that we were going to be there at least a few days. the next day mom still couldn't go anywhere and she was fretting because we weren't getting to do anything because of her (silly mother) so we decided that we could take the train from New Jersey to New York and see the Statue of Liberty. That had been our main objective for New York so Sierra, Moreia and myself left that afternoon. We arrived later than we thought we would and by the time we got down to the water front and the ferry that could take us to the Statue they had closed up shop for the day. Bummed out because we knew we were unlikely to get another chance we hung out along the sea wall and took pictures until the sun set. We then headed back to the train station and made our way back to the hospital to see our mother and then back to our hotel room. There isn't much to tell after that, the hospital stay pretty much ended our tour of the east coast states. Sierra had to get a flight and get back to work; Moreia and myself hung around for about a week until mom felt good enough to be taken back home and the doctors released her. It took us anther three and a half days to make it back home but we weren't pushing it very hard and by the third day mom suggested taking a scenic rout through South Carolina. We all thought it sounded like a good idea and so we did, we all enjoyed it and spent a night at another campground. the scenic rout cost us a half a day though and due to fog and rain in the mountains we had to cut the scenic rout short catch a main highway and head back home with all due hast. It didn't all go as planed, but that was ok we hadn't really planed it out to begin with. But it turned out well and we all enjoyed ourselves, well except for mom when she was in the hospital, but the rest of it was good.