We stopped for breakfast at Tom’s in Lockport. They have a normal breakfast menu in a funky little joint.
In Lockport, we took the 1-hour cruise in the Erie Canal and passed thru two of its locks. The canal is not the one we read about in history books. No mules are left and the original canal has been expanded and the old locks replaced with bigger ones. It no longer serves a commercial propose and is used almost exclusively for pleasure boating. We saw several boats that may have come up from Florida along the Inland Passage.
Still, remains of the original canal and locks are visible and we could only imagine what a great accomplishment building the original canal was using only man and animal power.
It started to rain during the last 20-minutes of the cruise. We are growing accustom to rain in the afternoon. Everyone moved to the shelter of the lower deck leaving Mary and I alone to wander around the upper deck as we pleased.
The Herschell Carrousel Museum is also located in Lockport. This is a nice museum housed in one of the original Herschell manufacturing buildings. We both think the New England Carrousel Museum has a wider range of carrousel horses and better displays but this museum does have an operating carrousel that we both rode twice.
We drove to Niagara Falls, NY and stopped at visitors’ information. After discussing all the options, we bought tickets for two tours. Tonight, we are going on the nighttime Canada side tour and tomorrow the American side. With so little time and so many things to see, these tours seemed like the best way for us to see everything we wanted.
We checked into the KOA-Niagara campground and barely had two hours before our first tour bus was schedule to pick us up at 5:45PM. The campground doesn't seem to be all that busy. I'd estimate more than one-half of the sites sit empty. It does offer free wifi but I don't know how much time I'll have to enjoy that benefit.
Our Grayline tour stopped at three locations: the Horseshoe Falls viewing platform where we could see that fall from above and below. It was interesting seeing the Maid of the Mist boat and thinking we would be on it tomorrow.
Second stop was the Niagara River Whirlpool. Our final stop was the Skylon tower where we saw the falls illuminated from the top of the tower. This isn't a good place to observe the illuminated falls. The distance is too great and the crowds made it difficult to get a good viewing point.
Of course, a stop at Souvenir City was slip into their itinerary.
It was well after 11pm when we finally got back to our Roadtrek. Tired but happy that we could see everythings we wanted. This was a good tour and our tour guide, Al, was entertaining. We wished we could have spent a little more time at some places and less time at others but all things considered, the tour worked out well for us.
We were glad we had our passport along. This made getting into Canada and back into the US very easy. We were told that crossing the border is easier on a tour bus than in a private vehicle. It will be interesting to see how that process works when we are driving thru Canada in the Roadtrek and not on a tour bus.
