Our RV Adventures

Since nothing much happened today, I thought I’d repost our visit to Niagara Falls in September 2009, our 2nd year on the road.

Today we drove about 30 miles from our park to visit Niagara Falls.

The title of today’s blog says ‘For Trudy’. Trudy was Jan’s Mother who died in 2007. She always wanted to visit Niagara Falls, but never got the chance.

So Jan said “This visit is for Mom”.

After following the signs coming into the city of Niagara Falls we ended up on Goat Island, the home of the American side of Niagara Falls.

Goat Island and the Falls make up the Niagara Falls State Park. Established in 1885, it’s the oldest State Park in the United States.

Even before we got to the Island, Jan saw the mist rising from Horseshoe Falls, named because it’s shaped like a big horseshoe, of course.

But before we could see the Falls, Jan had to feed the a squirrel a Kashi bar.

The 2nd squirrel had this deal where he would lay flat on his belly and then slowly crawl toward you begging for food.

Walking over the small and looking down on the Falls was amazing. 

You can walk right to the edge of the falls and look right out at the water going over.

And then looking straight down thru the spray and the rainbow you can see the Maid of the Mist heading into the base of Horseshoe Falls. Looks like fun!

After spending time at the Horseshoe, we walked over to the other falls, the American Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls.

After stopping to look at the many flower beds, we got in line to tour the Cave of the Winds.

Cave of the Winds is now kind of a misnomer.  The actual cave, named because the sound the wind made blowing off the falls, disappeared when the ceiling collapsed in the 1920’s.

What you have now is an elevator that takes you 180 feet down to the base of the American and Bridal Veil Falls and lets you walk on a wooden walkway thru part of the falls themselves. They give you plastic ponchos and sandals to wear, but they don’t really keep you dry.

You will get wet!

Here’s Jan standing where part of the falls comes over the walkway. Jan said she looks like a banana. I think she looks cute.

This is the Hurricane Deck where you’re actually standing in the Falls. I went up there while stayed kind of dry on a lower level. It’s impossible to get pics up there. My camera’s not that waterproof.

Here’s what the walkway looks like from the Maid of the Mist.

One amazing thing about this is that workers disassemble the walkway every fall and rebuild it every spring, otherwise the winter ice would destroy it.

Here’s what the area looks like in February.

After drying out we rode the trolley over to the Maid of Mist dock. These boat tours have been running since 1846, almost 40 years before the place was even a state park.

The boats take you right into the whirlpool at the bottom of Horseshoe Falls, fighting the current all the way. It’s like being in the middle of a hurricane.

One thing I found interesting on the boat trip was the remains of Nikola Tesla’s Niagara Falls power plant, built in 1896.

This plant was the first to harness water flow to generate electricity, and demonstrated the superiority of Tesla’s AC electrical system over Edison’s DC system. Many people don’t realize we owe our entire electrical to Tesla. But back in the late 1800’s, there was a big legal war going on between Tesla and Edison over whose system was better.

By the early 1900’s Niagara Falls was lighting New York City.

Leaving the Maid we walked out on the observation tower

to a fantastic view of the entire Falls area.

A fitting end to our great day at Niagara Falls.

Walking back to the toad, we saw something I’d never seen before.

Black squirrels.

And they were very aggressive. When I turned and walked away, and then looked back, they were following me, stalking me.

Leaving the Falls area, we drove down to near Buffalo to eat dinner at one of our favorite BBQ restaurants, Famous Dave’s. We always have great leftovers.

Then it was home for the night.

Thought For The Day:

“An honest statesman need not fear an armed populace’’.- Thomas Jefferson

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It was supposed to be sunny and warmer today, but we never really got the sunny part which really cut back on the warmer. So it was almost 2pm before it felt comfortable enough to get outside and under the rig.

The first problem I ran into was getting the oil filter off. I think the repair place in Luling got a little over zealous in putting the filter back on after they replaced the oil cooler gasket.

You’re supposed to tighten the filter down by hand and use the band strap wench to turn it another 3/4 turn. But it was tighter than that. Cummins could make it a lot easier to get these filters on and off if the bottom was fluted like a lot of car filters.

Once I had the filter off, I removed the 4 bolts holding the oil filter adapter on the oil cooler. And like before I had to use the old oil filter to break the adapter loose. After emptying it of oil, I screwed it back on and then whale away on it with a rubber mallet until it broke loose.

Luckily it came loose clean from the oil cooler end, I assume because there was oil on that part so the Permatex Ultra Black Seal didn’t stick. But it certainly did on the adapter end. In fact the gasket was pretty much glued to the adapter.

The reddish part is the gasket and the black is the sealer.

I picked at it with my finger for a while but didn’t make a lot of headway. Since the adapter is aluminum I didn’t want to use a steel scraper, but I tried a couple of plastic scrapers I had, but one wasn’t stiff enough and the other one wasn’t sharp enough. I thought I used to have a set like this,

but apparently I looked in all the wrong places because I couldn’t find them. So I’ll pick up another set at Harbor Freight in the next couple of days. Luckily they’re cheap.

As of right now it’ll probably Thursday before I’ll have chance to get back on this.

Thought For The Day:

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist.  Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. –  G.K. Chesterton

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