From the falls to the mountain tops

Departed: Niagara Falls  11:45 a.m.
Arrived:  Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Nittany Mountain KOA Campground

248 miles

Hey friends,

We were able to laze around a bit this morning waiting for a little rainstorm to pass us before we went up to check out Niagara Falls. We decided to stay on the American side to see the falls so that we wouldn’t have to go to customs. I understand it takes longer to go through customs than it does to see the falls. So with that we drove through the city of Niagara Falls, which was not very impressive, paid 20 dollars to park the motorhome, that’s right I said TWENTY dollars. Anyway  walked to the falls, took a few pictures, and headed off.

 The water right before it falls over the cliff, racing pretty fast!

 The falls from the American side. You can see in the background all of the hotels etc. on the Canadian side. I was shocked the first time I went there. I had assumed it would be like a national park, etc..... but it is very touristy, developed, etc.... there's even a Hard Rock Cafe and a casino!

Bill chose not to take Maiden Mist Boat Tour as I had been there before. (Now that’s another story with a Tommy Harrison tour, when we got to our hotel after being at the falls, the hotel had literally that afternoon just burned to the ground, had to put us in a hotel that was being remodeled…… nightmare!) Anyway, it was so hot and muggy I was not complaining about not doing the tour.

So we took off south, not real sure where we were going, just knew it would be somewhere south. Finally decided just to type in a city in the Garmin in the general direction of Amish Country in Pennsylvania, knowing we wouldn’t be able to make it that far, but at least we’d be headed in the right direction. Good move by Mr. Garmin! He picked a great route that was 4 lane but not interstate through the Allegheny Mountains. Gorgeous!! Reminded me a lot of the Great Smoky Mountains. A lot of low clouds, making it look like there was smoke in “dem thar hills!”

  However, it did rain on us pretty steady for a couple of hours.  As we round a curve, I look out to the right and see giant flames appearing to come from the top of a mountain. Mind you it’s pouring rain…I’m thinking what the heck. As we got closer it looked like there were two smoke stacks with flames coming out the top. Bill guessed that it may have been something burning off natural gas. Sounds good to me, but a strange sight! I took a picture but doubt you can tell anything. If you click on the picture and make it larger you might can see the flames.

  I had picked out a campground that I thought would work that had wireless and added bonus… cable TV! I might get to catch up on my HGTV watching. The directions in the book said explicitly DO NOT USE GPS directions…. So now I’m kind of in a pickle, so using our handy dandy map skills and a little bit of Garmin, just to make sure we weren’t totally messing up, we did make it to a pretty nice campground, complete with chickens, goats, and pigs! Yes we are in the boonies!! Now I am sitting outside where it is a most comfortable 72 degrees working on my blog! Maybe we'll stay here a couple of days... doubt it... on to Lancaster, PA tomorrow to drive through Amish Country and then to Gettysburg where we'll probably spend the night.