6/6/04 by scott

Some of you loyal webdisasterers may be wondering if I'm still alive since I haven't posted anything for quite some time. And while I thank you for your concern, let me assure you that in the empty time since my last post, I've been better than alive, I've been on vacation! See, since Kim's birthay is May 24 and mine is May 26 and neither of us has ever really gone anywhere cool on vacation, this year we decided to go to Niagara Falls and then out to the east coast for some whale watching. It was a very cool trip and we took a lot of cool pictures and had a great time. When we got home, I had a very bad sinus infection, which explains why I've been back for a week without posting the vacation photos.

I've been debating how to do this, since we took a zillion pictures and I could probably do a whole website about this vacation, but I'm pretty lazy. So I'll just post a few choice pics and give you the story as I go. So without further ado, here they are:

	Our trip begins! After heading to Kim's parents' house to drop off our birds (Thanks, Phil and Suzy!), we headed off on Interstate 80, which we would be on for over 12 hours by the time the trip was over. We left on Sunday, May 23 in the afternoon. Our plan was to make it to the Canada/US border on Sunday night, then over to Niagara on Monday to spend all day at the falls before we checked into our hotel room Monday night.
	In Indiana, we discovered the tiltway. I bet that if you tried to drive two double decker buses on either side of this dividing wall, the people on the top deck could hold hands. We made it to Port Huron, Michigan on Sunday night. Port Huron is kind of a crappy town on the border. If anyone from the Port Huron city council is reading this, here's a note for you:YOU NEED TO PAINT YOUR STREETS! Since there were no white lines on the edge or dashes in the middle of the roads in this town, I drove the wrong way down a one way street for quite some time before stopping at a stop sign and wondering why there was no stop light for me and two lanes of traffic were looking at me straight on. But we did make up for it by staying at a Holiday Inn Express, which made me feel much smarter.
	We made it into Canada the next morning after a brief stop at the border where a nice young lady asked us the same questions over and over and waved us through. In Canada, you can't have mace, knives, guns, or a radar detector, so we had to dump some stuff before they let us in. Canada is also strange because they use kilometers, so I had no idea how long it would take us to get there in metric time. I just figured we would get there by 100p.m. When we got to Niagara, we drove around in circles for quite some time trying to look for our hotel, since MapQuest had the street names wrong. Once we found it, though, we were pretty pleased. We had a 16th floor jacuzzi room with a fireplace overlooking the falls. We also had a pretty cool guy named Rich pack up our bags and bring them up to our room, where he proceeded to tell us about the various tourist attractions, eh? Then we went down to the falls for some sightseeing, where I snapped this photo.
	Another photo of the falls from the edge. For those of you who don't know, these are the Horseshoe falls. The river splits and there are two sets of falls, these and the American falls. If you ever go to Niagara, definitely go to the Canadian side. The view is spectacular, and you can't see much from the American side. I would also highly recommend staying at the Fallsview Mariott. It kicks ass.
	Here's me on the rail next to the falls. Notice I'm wearing my game misconduct T-shirt to represent the Joses in Canada. I probably insulted some Canadians with this shirt, since they take their hockey very seriously. In fact, in that day's paper, they had a special 8-page section detailing Calgary's team, and I also saw several Canadian sports shows where they talked about how America was ruining the game. Go Flames! Also, notice my cool Eddie Munster widow's peak. It was windy that day, I'm sorry.
	This is a close up of the little island at the top of the falls. I thought it looked cool with all of the birds flying around, but it doesn't look so good at this size.
	Here's a cool picture. There were a lot of rainbows at the base of the falls, and here we see one going over the Maid of the Mist, which is a boat that takes you into the base of the horseshoe falls. Scenic!
	Here's another rainbow picture.
	The Horseshoe Falls from further down the road.
	Another picture of the falls.
	TheMaid of the Mist in front of the American Falls.
	The Maid of the Mist going into the base of the falls.
	The Maid of the Mist at the bottom of the gorge.
	You get the idea.
	Here's the Skylon Tower, where you can go up and get a good view and eat dinner in the rotating restaurant. We didn't go up there since we could do all of that except the rotating part from our Hotel room. Plus, we had a jacuzzi!
	Here's a picture of the walkway on the edge of the river with the bridge to the USA in the background.
	The American Falls.
	A wide angle shot of the horseshoe falls.
	A wide angle shot of the American falls.
	Two Maid of the Mist boats pass each other.
	This was a cool garden/structure in Clifton Hill, the touristy part of Niagara. It had a restaurant built into it as well as just looking cool and having a lot of neat plants.
	Here's another view.
	Inside the garden.
	Again.
	More of that garden thing. These people had the right idea, as there are stone benches underneath these hedges that are trimmed up reall high. So on a hot summer day, you could come head and take a nap underneath the hedges. Awesome.
	Here's some little kid running around in the middle of the garden without supervision.
	Here's a cool flower.
	This is the view from our hotel room. I tell you what, it sure was cool to sit in the hot tub for a while, go sit in front of the window with this view, and then sink into the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. Five stars for the Fallsview Mariott!
	Another pic from the room.
	One more time!
	Here's Kim looking out the window like she's on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
	And, here's a couple more photos from the room just in case you don't realize how awesome the view was.
	On our second day in Niagara, we went on the observatory deck and in the tunnels behind the falls. You really don't get a sense of just how much water is pouring down here until you stand under it and get soaked.
	Here's me trying to steal a Canadian sign. This is right before we walked from the Falls to the White Water Walk, which is several kilometers. We didn't realize how far of a walk it was, and we felt like idiots for walking that far, especially since we had bus passes.
	There's a full-fledged Chinese Buddhist temple in Niagara. Who woulda thought?
	You get the idea...
	Some rapids a little farther down the river.
	See this road? Imagine walking all the way down this road about 10 times, and you'll have some idea of how far Kim and I walked that day. I have no idea what that translates to in kilometers.
	Here's a praying mantis we saw at the Butterfly Conservatory. The Butterfly Conservatory was pretty cool. It's just a big building that's got all these cool plants in there and butterflies from all over the world fly freely around. I know it sounds stupid, but it was neat.
	Here are some pictures of butterflies, which signifies that webdisaster has now officially lost it's 'cool'.
	Here's the last picture from Niagara. Before we left Canada, I decided that we should get gas while we were there since it was only 87 cents, and that's Canadian! I soon found out it wasn't such a bargain, though, because it was 87 cents a liter, which ended up costing me $20 US for a half a tank of gas. That wasn't too bad, though, considering everywhere we went in the states during this trip gas was over $2.05 a gallon.
	After we left Niagara, we drove another 9 1/2 hours out East to Cape Cod. We had reservations at a little bed & breakfast in Provincetown, which, we didn't know at the time we made reservations, is a primarily gay community. When we pulled into Provincetown at around 7pm on Wednesday, we were a little let down. It doesn't look like much, just a little tiny town near the beach with too-narrow streets and millions of little bed and breakfasts. We kind of felt a little ripped off paying what we did for this place when we had just payed less for a 16th floor jacuzzi room at Niagara. But after a good night's sleep, we got up and explored the town and found that it was very cool. There were a lot of really neat art shops and restaurants, and of course a very active port. We decided to take a whale watching tour to make the trip out here worth it for a straight couple.
	Here's the boat we went out on. It's called the Dolphin VIII, and it's got everything you need in a whale watching boat, including two restrooms, a bar, and a cafeteria.
	Here's a picture of the pilgrim monument and the Provincetown coast.
	Here are some cormorants sitting on some rocks.
	Here's a picture of the horizon with no land, which seems strange for me, coming from Illinois.
	I'm a stud!
	Here's another whale watching boat we saw coming back from a trip.
	Here's a lighthouse or something. I was just snapping pictures like crazy on this trip.
	Another lighthouse.
	More lighthouses anyone?
	A fishing ship.
	Ahoy! We have whales off the starboard bow!
	We saw a few whales on the trip, and I got some good pics, as you can see. These are finbacks, which aren't the biggest whales, but they sure looked pretty big right next to our boat.
	Good-bye, Shamu!

Overall, this was by far the best vacation I've ever taken. I could have done without the 20 hours of driving, the incessant bad weather, and the sinus infection I started to get while we were in Cape Cod, but other than that it was pretty cool. I would recommend Niagara Falls to anyone looking to get away from Illinois. It's only a day's drive away, and it's well worth it. Cape Cod was cool, but it's a little pricey for my taste. I would suggest a town other than Provincetown for the straight vacationer, though, since I felt a little awkward and poorly-dressed the whole time I was there. But the people are really nice and there were a lot of cool shops that we didn't get to peruse fully because of bad weather.

I can't really think of anything else to say about our vacation, other than we saw a 12 pound lobster, which is a HUGE friggin' lobster.