I woke up yesterday to the tat, tat, tat of large raindrops hitting my tent. The shower did not last long but made packing the tent, now pretty soggy, a wet job. We were on the road by about 8:30, and just as we did, it rained hard. We took shelter under the eaves of the registration area for the Haldiman Conservation Area where we had camped. After twenty minutes the rain subsided but the roads were plenty wet so we got good and damp from the spray while riding. You'd think that our day would have been sort of miserable, we got rained on hard once and sprinkled on throughout the day. But it was one of the most memorable days so far.
These past three days, riding along the shores of Lake Erie were astounding. We rode through many communities and lots of houses or summer cabins along the shore. It reminded us of the Pacific with small rolling waves hitting the shore but there was no salt water smell. The sweeping views were tinged with the white waves and a little farther back by the first color from Jack Frost on the surrounding trees. We rode through crunchy and then soggy leaves that had fallen to the road.
We rode along the lake for sixty miles and came around the corner at the Niagara River to see Buffalo, NY across the water. That took us by surprise as did the water rushing into the channel from Lake Erie. We watched a fairly good sized cruiser chug its way up river to the lake as we ate outside at a restaurant right along the river.
It took us nearly 20 more miles of riding along a bumpy and winding trail to get to the falls. On a bike you hear it before you see it. It's different riding up on something like the falls on a bike. First, we rode roughly 3292 miles to get here. That in itself is sort of crazy. But riding up on a bike is sort of like sneaking up on the white giant, as if one could. Nothing gets by the water plunging over the edge to the depths below. And with the falls comes New York, our 8th state.
