Day 11 – July 8, 2003

Aftermath of the Storm

Ride from Sandusky, OH to Niagara Falls, New York

I got up this morning after a very long night thinking we should have left last night after the first rain. Still it was a very long night what with all the thunder and lightening most of the night. When I went out to uncover the bikes, I didn’t have to the covers had blown off. They were still attached thanks to the attaching cords, but were full of water and soaked. As we left town I noticed a lodge next door that was huge and had a built in (inside) water park. The place was immense and I don’t know how I missed it last night. Anyway as we rode east up the coast of Lake Erie, I decided I had not made a mistake by staying put. You can see by the pictures that there were trees blown down that had been standing for scores at least. Everywhere we looked it was like that. I’m not going to say it was a big storm considering where we were, but we certainly would surely have been blown to the east coast if we had stayed on the road. We stopped at a little diner called Kathie’s Kitchen and met Kathie and her daughter and had a great breakfast. We found out there that over 30,000 people were without electricity this morning. She was lucky, we sort of. It seems that although they did have electricity, they had also been burglarized last night. Considering their previous day, they could understandably been in a foul mood, but no, they still went out of their way to make strangers welcome. It seems to me that the more we stop in these small out of the way café’s and diners, the better the food and service is. I think the art of customer service is not lost at all, it has just moved out of the larger metro areas.

We got to see a lot of the Lake Erie coast as we rode north and east, but when we got to first Cleveland and then into Erie, the towns seemed to swallow up the pleasure as all cities so. We decided to take the freeway the rest of the way because we had been delayed so much by the slow traffic due to the cleanup going on. As soon as we got on the road, wouldn’t you know a toll road? This one only cost us $4.20 for both of us to go 70 miles, but still it was a toll. I hate toll roads. We pay too much in taxes for that. Besides the roads up here either are not maintained, or are so badly torn up by the winter that they just don’t bother to fix them. My back hurts more from the bumpy road that from the ride itself.

We finally made to Niagara Falls in New York, but too late to see the falls themselves. We are however, only a few yards away, so we should see them in the morning. The shops around the motel are great and we had a find dinner. For now it’s time to say good night and I’ll see you on the byways….