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Our trip to Groton, Massachusetts

• Day 1 - Mason City, IA to Elkhart, IN
• Day 3&4 - Henrietta, NY to Groton, MA
• Day 5 - Groton, MA to Wyomissing, PA
• Day 6 - Wyomissing, PA to Youngstown, OH
• Day 7 - Youngstown, OH to Portage, IN
• Day 8 - Portage, IN to Red Wing, MN
• Day 9 - Red Wing, MN to Coon Rapids, MN

Day 2

The trip from Elkhart, IN to Henrietta, NY was by way of toll roads that end up costing us nearly $14 in total! For a couple Iowans this seemed outrageous since we are not used to paying tolls. We arrived at Niagara Falls about mid-afternoon and spent until 6:00 PM looking at the attractions in this place. Our first picture was our fist view of the falls and we both were NOT impressed at this point. But we continued scouting the place out and in the end were very impressed.

Now don’t get the idea that it takes a lot to impress us, it just didn’t seem like from this view that this was that big a deal. We have seen other waterfalls and thought they would easily compare to this, that is until we got out on the observation deck. This is the very tall tower in the background of the picture above, and this is where we had our picture taken by a park ranger.

The bridge behind us in the picture above connects the city of Niagara Falls, which is split by the river, half of it in Canada and half in the US. The bridge, a wonderful arch design is called the rainbow bridge and was of as much interest to me as the falls itself. I always marvel at such projects.

The picture below of the American Niagara Falls was taken from the observation deck and was taken just before we left. The first pictures were taken with full cloud cover, but when we came back up the observation tower the sun broke out just long enough to give us a more colorful picture.

The observation tower has several elevators to take visitors to the river level at the base of the falls. Once at the bottom there is a boat landing for a boat ride to the base of the falls, but since we were in a bit of a hurry to finish up we passed on the ride guaranteed to get a person wet in the mist coming off the falls. It also had paved paths to take viewers close to the base of the falls.

The final picture was taken some distance from the base of the falls. Since we did not have wet weather gear we decided to stop short of this rather rugged hike up and down stairs. We were told that it is possible to walk right up to the base of the falls for those that are not concerned about getting wet. Our motel is in Henrietta, NY, which is part of Rochester, NY. Tomorrow we will wind our way down to Groton, MA.