Niagara Falls to Reeces Corners, Ontario Canada

I awoke to Patti Sue telling me that we had towels out on the line.  This alone is not information usually worth awakening me for, so I searched for additional clues as to why she had such urgency in her voice.  Very quickly the sound of the raindrops on the RV roof filled in the gap.

Towels safely pulled off the line, we dressed and headed to church.  It turns out this nearby church has Mt. Carmel Chapel (even though we had Mass in the Our Lady of Peace parish church next door).  Patti Sue's Uncle John was a Carmelite priest and she recalls several stories of him being here.  There is a stained glass window in the chapel with the inscription on the bottom 'Donated by the parish of St. Cecilia, Englewood, New Jersey'.  We don't know the significance for sure, but Patti Sue's Dad is from Englewood.  As per usual, Joe got blamed for the stains on the glass.

We packed up, rolled out (sorry, we didn't get a picture of the RV park this time), dropped off the rental car, headed out, headed back, picked up the rental car, and gassed up both vehicles.  Notice the Full Serve.  The price was $0.653 (Canadian dollars per liter).  In Skaneateles, I had prepared a conversion spreadsheet on my Palm.  This converts to $2.47 Canadian per gallon, and, at $C1.5389 per $U1.00, this was $1.606 per gallon.  Not the horror stories we'd been hearing.  Ann McCormick had taken a picture a week earlier of $0.65 so we had advance notice that it wouldn't be bad.

A few miles (er,  "a few"*1.609344 kilometres) away is the Wellend Canal.  This is how all the boats that leave Duluth can get out of the Great Lakes without running Niagara Falls.  As we were heading to the viewing center we got stopped at this lift bridge.  Everybody got out of their cars and the first car in line had a guy who was the head of the canal carpenter shop.  We got a LOT of information from him.

Then a few hours of driving and we were at Reeces Corners (still in Ontario).  We picked it as it was close and convenient.  Turns out the turkey farm nearby spread manure over a field south of us (sorry if you're reading this over lunch), and with the southerly wind, it was unpleasant outside.  But the kids swam and we rented a pedal boat on their pond.  After this picture, Joe and Jeff took control while I was passenger.  There is a fountain on the pond and they played 'Maid of the Mist' and also gave me a "Behind the Falls" tour -- or should I say "In the Falls" tour.  Good thing we were in swimsuits or I would have revoked their boating licenses on the spot.

This little town earns its name - it really is just a corner of two crossroads.  A bit remote for just our bikes, so we ate dinner, played some Skipbo (cards), and went to bed.  Patti Sue pointed out to the kids that we really can do things like this (play cards together) at home and the kids responded in unison that they would have much better things to do at home.