Niagara Falls -
USA from coast to coast

Saturday, July 22'nd

We left the "Red Carpet Inn" at 9 in the morning, we would try to get to the Niagara-fall at midday, perhaps drive past the Great Lakes on the Canadian side. After driving fifty miles from the Motel Shehab turned the car around and headed back where we came from. He had forgotten

At 1PM we reached the the northern part of New York State and the great falls of Niagara, but where was the fall and was it okay to go into Canada in a rented car? First things first, we headed for the big cloud of vapour, that had to be the fall and there it was, the parkinglot at least.

To view Niagara from the American side, there are lots of parking spaces close to the falls. When parked take the Viewmobile or walk across "Goat island" to the falls. There it is also possible to take the "Caves of the Wind" tour, a body-soaking tour to the base of the Bridal Veil Falls (a yellow raincoat will be supplied). Or try the "Maid of the Mist" tour, a 30 minutes boat ride to the foot of both Falls. There it is possible to experience the power of the water that passes the fall and you'll definitely get wet (bring only waterproof equipment).

We didn't go on any of those trips, the long line of people waiting was enough to put us off. If we had been there earlier

At 3PM it was time to move on, we drove off the parkingot and suddently found ourselves at the Canadian border. We made a stop to discuss where to go. Weren't we moving to far North and wasn't there some clause in the rental document about going outside the US with the Car? The end of it was that we turned around and headed West on the interstate past Cleveland towards Chicago along the great lakes. Our next target, Colorado, was a few days away and we would go as far as we could before dark.

This is mostly industry-country with a forest here and there as far as I remember it. Plenty of traffic and those Greyhound drive the fastest. While we sticked to the speed-limit of the state, the Greyhounds did just sail by us on the left, a speeding-ticket was not within our budget-range. A thunderstorm was about to break loose and it was getting dark in the late afternoon. We only made petrol/food/rest-room stops on our way out of New York state, through Pennsylvania and into Ohio.

At 9PM it was night and we began our search for a place to stay, again all the Motels along the Interstate were full. The Highway-exit-sign said Toledo, just a few miles off the Interstate so we would try our luck there. But it seemed like the town had closed for the day. No people out in the street (the rain had started), only the traffic lights displayed a little life.

Sunday, July 23'rd

Up at 9AM and pack our stuff and checking that we've got everything with us (no camera-repêchage today). The weather had cleared up but it was still overcast, it was really a sinister place where we had touched down yesterday. We were the last visitors to leave, the area looked like an abandoned industry-area.

Back on the Highway we were back going in a good pace, we had a hard time keeping track of the states-boundries we had crossed so far, now it was out of Ohio, through Indiana and entering Illinois. We get off the highway to get some lunch, driving down the main street we spot a KFC, the renowned Fried Chicken place, this must be tried out. Unfamiliar with the content of the orders Shehab order 6 "Nugets" in confidence that they are like McD, but they are not. We have Chicken enough to feed a small village so we leave without finishing the Bucket of poultry. Their Coleslaw salads are fantastic and by using the glowe compartment/Air Conditioning system as a fridge it stay fresh for hours. KFC is great but a bit greasy for my taste.

Back on the road we were approaching Chicago but had no plans of going into the city. A highway-junction was coming up that would take us to Iowa. But this was our first experience with a highway-exit in the left-hand side of the road, so we missed it and the highway slowly turned toward the city and Sears Tower, the landmark that can be spotted many miles

Our map was not detailed enough so we navigated after the airport, we could see the plnes comming and going and we could locate the airport on our map. Then came the pay-booth, this was no freeway. It is an automatic system, you throw money into a funnel and when the amount is right the gate opens. We did not know how much it cost but we had plenty of coins, so we kept throwing pocket-chage after the machine until it lead us through.

Finally we saw signs of highway-numbers we recognized, the two hour detour had ended and we were back un track. The country-side was now going from hilly to flat prairie while we crossed the Mississippi near its source and drowe into Iowa. This is corn-land, big time. The dimensions of these fields are the size of small countries and the trafic is no longer that dense, out here the auto-pilot is a great invention, you only need to work the wheel.

Late afternoon was approaching and the weather looked like thunderstorm again. Was there a pattern to this, a 5 O'clock shower each day? This one looked like it meant business, suddently it was like nightfall and a hail-storm broke loose. The traffic had stagnated, understandable since you couldn't see anything through the windscreen even with the windshield wiper going at full speed and the headlights turned on. In 15 minutes it was over and the traffic continued. It was good the highway was elevated in this area, this was potential flooding-rain. I have never seen this strong rain before and since.

The next large city we came to was Des Moines, the state capital of Iowa, and I looked in our Guide book to see if they had any suggestions where to stay. It said that there is a YMCA right in center of town so we tried our luck but all was booked, apparently there was a convention in town so all vacant hotel/motel rooms were in use. We stopped up near the official looking building (local government) to get something to eat before we would

This town looked like Toledo in the sense that no people was out in the streets, perhaps they all attended the convention? We got some petrol near the Y and headed west on the highway, but just outside Des Moines was a large Ramada Inn motel, and they had a room for us. This was sheer luxury, a room on six'th floor, large and spotless and not more expensive than the other motels we had stayed at. We watched some TV and Shehab tried to find the gym to work the machines.

It had started to get rather windy outside and Shehab who had given up on finding the gym had walked out the Motel to buy something for us drink and some fruit, was almost sweept away. In this open landscape I can imagine that tornadoes have good circumstances, no obstacles in sight on the prairie. They were showing a vampire movie on TV with Jack Nicolson but none of us could keep awaken till the end and the TV turned itself off. It was high time to do some shut-eyes, our plan was to reach Denver the next day.