New York trip - Day One

Our flights are always eventful! We had planned to fly into Rochester via Detroit. It was a red-eye leaving at 12:30 am. At 5 pm, I checked the flight and it had completely filled up! I spent some time finding us an alternate route. Instead, we left about midnight to fly to JFK (New York City). That flight was delayed. The flight from JFK to Rochester was fairly full so we decided Kevin would fly to Rochester while the rest of us flew into Buffalo. Kevin would pick up our reserved mini-van (by that time, none were available to switch to Buffalo) and drive to Buffalo to pick us up. It turned out that Kevin was able to take Alec with him but all of our flights were delayed so we arrived in Buffalo a couple hours later than expected. But we made it!

This sign was one of the first things that greeted us in Buffalo, NY. We were absolutely starving and saw a McDonald's right across from the airport so we beelined it to there. We got our food and sat down and then noticed this sign above our table. We laughed about the new meaning of "fast food" and then felt like rebels when we stayed longer than 20 minutes. heehee!

As soon as we ate, we headed for Niagara Falls. The wind whipped our hair in our faces for pictures but it sure felt good and cooling!

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The Toronto skyline. We had brought our passports because we had heard the Falls were so much prettier from the Canadian side but we got up close to them on the Maid of the Mist and we decided we didn't want to hassle with immigration when we still had a long drive ahead of us.

The American Falls.

Rainbow Bridge.

American Falls

American Falls

Horseshoe Falls from the deck of the Maid of the Mist - we definitely needed the rain ponchos!

McKayla and Shanley modeling their rain ponchos in front of Horseshoe Falls (the ones on the Canadian side)

Horseshoe Falls

Alec and Kevin picked McKayla up and threatened to dump her into the Falls - she looks really scared, doesn't she?

McKayla, Shanley, Chandler, and I climbed up right next to the Falls. Even with the rain ponchos, we were completely drenched! When we finally finished gaping at the awe-inspiring Falls, we started the 3 1/2 hour drive to the home of Kevin's Uncle Alan and Aunt Debbie. When we arrived they had tomato pie (and a more traditional pizza) waiting for us. We think you can only get tomato pie in New York. It is pizza crust and tomato sauce with a little bit of cheese and some spices and seasonings. It was really good! We didn't arrive until after 9:30 pm and we had only slept a couple hours on the flight (a red-eye) the night before so we were exhausted. However, we still stayed up and visited.