Syracuse to Sandusky - Road Trip Day 3

Days are a strange way to keep track of a road trip. Or maybe yesterday was just a weird day. It started at noon, and ended at 8:00 AM the next day. We woke up in Syracuse. Big thanks to Dan and Jen for letting us stay with them. From there we headed up to Niagra Falls. I had been there about six years ago, but I had forgotten how huge they were. The falls are quite impressive. You can hear the amazing force they have. No wonder they were harnessed for generating electrical power.

We were about to leave town when our back seat Kenny Rogers saw a casino. He wanted to check out their poker room and before long he was in for a $2-5 game. This left my other companion and I with nothing left to do.

So we went to Canada! This was a real blast. We met a guy while going through the border who was telling us about all the great places to go. He recommended a place called Copa Cabana and even showed us the way. Now from the name, you might guess that this is a Brazillian restaraunt. (I didn't, but you may be faster on the draw.) I have come to learn that Brazillians love grilled meat. So this is a meat place for people who like meat. No menus, so it was somewhat like a buffet. There was a salad bar as well, also like a buffet. But mostly guys would come around with skewers and ask you if you wanted a hunk of meat. "Bacon wrapped filet minon?" Yes, please. "Prime rib?" Yes, please. They also came faster than you could actually finish anything. You find yourself looking down at a plate of 6 different half eaten cuts of meat. I had to say "no" to tasty meat more than I have in the past year. They also had some amazing grilled pineapple. The juices on the outside carmelize, and they added just a hint of cinamon. Perfect!

After that, we headed down to the overlook of the falls on the Candian side. They had spotlights set up to shine on the falls. The colors of the spotlights would slowly change. It was very pretty but doesn't come out well on camera.

We also met a very cool police trainee up there named Adam. We stood around chatting with him for a bit. He told us the best places to go in Niagra Falls. We explained how it didn't rain all the time in Seattle. On his recomendation we headed off for a place called Boston Pizza.

I should mention the town of Niagra Falls, on the Canadian side, is like a mini Las Vegas. They had only a couple of casinos, but their downtown does have tons of bars, clubs, haunted houses, wax museums and other weird attractions. It was pretty lively. If it hadn't been a Wednesday night, I think the place would have really been cooking.

The Boston Pizza place was a bit like a grown up Chuck-E-Cheeze. They had little token games that spit out tickets. You could redeam your tickets for silly prizes. All of this in what is essentially a bar (19 and over in Ontario). They also had bowling and we played a game. I scored a 33. Yee-haw. I can't believe that I still like bowling even though I am so amazingly terrible at it. After that we played some pool, which is a game I have some skill at. I even won 2 out of the 3 games. By that point it was 1:30, so we decided to get back to the U.S.

That turned out to be a little harder than we expected. Apparently two unemployed people can't spend 5 hours in Canada without looking suspicious. They asked us to pull the car into their garadge. We had to wait for about half an hour for them to search it. When they let us get back to the car, everything was still there and in pretty good order. The one interesting thing was all the windows were rolled down. I guess that was to check that we weren't hiding anything in the doors.

After the little delay at the border, we headed back to pick up our gambling friend. He was up about $400 when we got there. We watched for a little while, but it was getting late. So by 3:00 AM we were all back in the car.

I crashed in the back seat and tried to get as much sleap as I could. My companions woke me up at after 5:00 AM. I had slept through the rest of New York state and the small portion of eastern Pennsyvania. The sun wasn't up, and the fog was thick. Not the best conditions for driving. But I opened a can of Super-Happy-Magic-Wake-Up-Go-Go-Juice, and that helped a lot. The sun came up before too long and chased the fog away. The other two were fast asleep by this point. So I had a pleasant drive through Ohio.

There was a bit of an issue in Cleaveland when the mostly sleeping navigator told me to take a local highway instead of the interstate. I shouldn't have listened to him. He later asked for a motel "without vampires", so not in a great state of mind for giving directions. The highway soon ended and I was dumped onto surface streets. This was actually a pleasant drive. For being in the rust belt north Cleveland was very nice. After that the rest of Ohio was a nice steady drive.

We rolled into Sandusky just after 8:00 AM, and went looking for a good motel. This is where the no vampries stipulation was added. We did find a place and decided to sack out for a while before heading to the park.

-Dravis