Craig's blog

We got up leisurely and had a continental breakfast at the Hampton Inn.  The Cruise America guys had told Patty we could possibly pick up the motorhome as early as 10:00, although it wasn’t due to be ready until 1:00 PM.  We were eager to get off early so we could have plenty of time at Niagara Falls before our 4:00 jet boat ride reservation.  When I talked to the guy at 11:00, the parties returning the motorhomes hadn’t even arrived yet.  Long story short, we delayed and stalled in East Aurora (walking the town, seeing the outside of Millard Fillmore’s house, and having lunch at a surprisingly excellent restaurant – Tantalus) until 4:30 when it was finally ready.  I walked the 0.7 miles to get it to find a tiny garage with guys smoking and a junky motorhome.  Lucky Patty wasn’t with me.  I picked it up and then drove back up and got the girls.  There are a number of things wrong with the unit, but now that the girls have cleaned it, and we’ve stocked it with things to make it more like a home, it’s much better.  The engine runs well, which is great.  It has 84,000 miles on it. 

We eventually drove to Niagara Falls and got there around 7:15 PM.  We walked to Goat Island, checked out the falls and then ate dinner at Top of the Falls restaurant, which is in a pretty nice location, but had pretty crummy food.  We waited until it got dark to see the falls with lights on them.  The American side of the falls was more impressive in the light than Horseshoe Falls.  We stayed at an RV park (Branches of Niagara) that had some fun stuff for the kids (interesting pool, pond, zip line), but we didn’t have any time there for them to make use of it.