7th Anniversary...Niagara!

For our 7th Anniversary, we headed to Niagara Falls!  Since it's not that far of a drive, we figured it was good to do before we moved.  Neither of us had been, plus we'd be able to hit the last two great lakes we hadn't seen.  Going the northern route through Canada is faster (depending on border crossing time), but we decided to camp on the American side since there are more camp sites.  It took us about 8 hours, including a stop in Hamilton for some dinner, and we got there and managed to set up our tent just as darkness was upon us on Friday.

Saturday we got up and headed to the falls!  It was only about a 10 minute drive from our campsite, which was awesome.  So we had breakfast burritos to fuel us for our day of hiking, then headed out.  We found free parking (hooray!) and walked all around the American side, where you can get quite close to the falls, which was both good and bad.  It was really cool to be that close to them, but then you can't really see them fully.  The American side is full of nice parks, walkways, hiking trails, and more, especially since it's a state park.  We had a pita and hummus lunch at the park there and then walked across Rainbow Bridge to the Canadian side to get the better view.  It was quite a different side over there.  There was live music, market stalls, and kitschy tourist spots, so we got some pictures of the view and then headed back across.  Time was slipping away, and we still needed to get those lakes in, so we hopped in the car and drove about 30 minutes south to see Lake Erie.  We found a nice city park, complete with the dog park which Gromit got to enjoy for a while, and then looked for a place to touch the water.  It wasn't easy; there was a high retaining wall between us and the water, but after much searching, we found a ladder down and Jon managed to touch the water :)

We hopped back in the car and headed north, about 10 minutes north of our campsite, to see Lake Ontario.  This one was much more accessible, especially since it was at a state park and had a boat launch area, so we just went down to the dock and checked that off our list.  We could also see Fort Niagara from there, and an unexpected and cool view of the Toronto skyline from across the lake.  After all our walkings and drivings around, we headed back to camp for the night.

We got some wood from the campsite intending to roast some dogs, corn on the cob, and smores.  Jon and I are not terribly experienced at starting fires on our own, but it wasn't raining or windy, we had a lighter, a fire starter candle thing, and wood, what could go wrong? Lots apparently.  We lit the fire starter and it burned for quite a while, but not long enough for the wood to catch.  We tried again with just some kindling we found/had and that didn't work. I suggested we give it one more go with two fire starters.  It burned and burned and burned but the wood never caught.  I blame the wood and not our fire starting skills.  We roasted our hot dogs over the small flame we had for a while,  by that point it was getting dark and cold, and Gromit was scared of the fire we were trying to start, so we called it a night and played some games in the tent.  The next day we packed up and headed home! 

Our actually anniversary was on a Tuesday, so that night we went out to Thai food and fro-yo.  All in all it was a great anniversary trip and it's crazy that we're now in our 8th year of marriage!