Niagara Falls Thanksgiving

Niagara Falls 2006

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. April and I made it safely to Pennsylvania after a rather exciting drive home. My queen size mattress on her small pickup truck blocked the entire back window. Add to that the missing side mirror and eight hours of highway driving on "the busiest travel day of the year" and it was pretty challenging.

Friday, we took advantage of the busiest shopping day of the year to visit Niagara Falls. Conveniently neither the Falls nor the highway were crowded. We took a bunch of pictures. I uploaded them to facebook, so you can view them here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016725&l=66d60&id=15507004.

Saturday was equally exciting, with a lot less time in the car. Mom, Steffi, and I took April to Presque Isle to see (and touch) Lake Erie. We also visited the Brig Naigara and Erie Maritime Museum. It was weird to be back there after so many years away. Dashter (a guy I sailed with) is living on board right now and we were lucky enough to see him. He is leaving for a month vacation starting tomorrow, so I wouldn't have been able to see him in December. Our last adventure was to the Tom Ridge Environmental Center. It is a new museum type place in Erie, and an incredibly "green" building. Most interesting were the bathrooms sinks. They had these tubes that hung down and closed off the spout. Not only did you have to turn on the water, but you had to push this little tube up or to the side in order for any water to come out. Now, this novelty of a building had signs explaining the low flow toilets (which work like any other toilet), signs explaining the lighting (which patrons need not worry about), and a sign explaining how they collect and use rainwater, but was there any sign explaining this crazy excuse for a faucet? Of course not, I stood there trying to get water out for a few minutes before finally figuring it out. I then stood and watched while April went through the same torture, just to make myself feel better! Unfortunately, she figured it out faster than I had, but at least she was confused for a minute too!

Please keep me and the Gulf Coast Mission Trip in your thoughts throughout the next two weeks. We leave on Saturday for a long day in the van. I am really excited to have this experience and looking forward to helping people get back into their houses.