Niagara Falls (Canada!)

After the sad incident the day before we were finally going to go to Niagara falls. Of our current trip across america, this is the first encounter (and sadly the last because of a death in the family postponing the trip) of Canada. We would have been able to stay for more than a couple of weeks there, but we were very satisfied with being able to see it even for the short 5 hours we had. You may be slightly confused unless you are one of the couple of close friends and family that currently read my blog, so let me start at the beginning:

After we left Pennsylvania, our previous stop, we were on our way to our First Cousin Once Removed (I googled it) and his sons, our Second Cousins. The only stop between seeing them in upstate New York and Erie was Niagara Falls. We camped up in the morning and left by 9:00. One other thing I forgot to mention: School had begun. If you are going on a 7 month trip around the country you still need to attend school. So what did we do? Well, I signed up online for some Algebra and Writing classes and whatnot.

After we took off it wasn’t long until we got to Canada. We found a spot on the American side and we could hear the sound of rushing water all the way from there! We got out of the car and walked down the street towards it. On the way we met a man that needed some help with his vending stand. He was about 20 or so. He told us that we should stay away from the park because there were protesters getting rowdy over there over the civil war statues. We understood and took the long way. It was an exciting walk to Canada and we were ready to see our first wonder of the world. We first had to go through a station held by guards so we could get on the bridge. We gave him our passports and answered a couple of questions before entering. We could finally see the falls! They were huge. We could not even begin to imagine how in the world they could have been created! We walked over the bridge and looked over the edge while the extreme wind blew at us. We were almost half way through the bridge, meaning half way to Canada. We soon stepped over the line, marked between the American and Canadian flags standing proudly above, and held our breath as we did. We saw venders everywhere. I got an Ice Cream bar to eat as I bought a souvenir shirt from Canada. I got my good friend from Utah a gift (I don’t think he reads my blog) and spent the day there. There wasn’t much of a suburbs and everyone spoke English, but its still Canada… right?

The City by Lake Erie

Only a couple of hours had passed when we arrived late in the afternoon at our next destination (Erie, Pennsylvania). The beautiful, shimmering green leaves glowed in the light and welcomed us into its beautiful town by the lake. As we drove to the nice sized city, which was not small yet not too large, we were amazed by the beautiful sites that it presented to us. Our plan was to spend a couple of days there and visit some of our friends which we had recently met. Although there is not much historical value in the part of Pennsylvania where we were spending the next week or so we decided to just use it as a break to take inventory and get the rest of the trip settled. We pulled into the KOA campground that we had booked, which was full, and found our spot. I visited the gift shop as I always do in the campgrounds we visit, and spent time with some other people in the park. I met some other people that I got to talk to with my brother and that is how we spent the rest of the night. Eventually one of the campground managers made us go back to our camps because it was sleeping hour for the park so we did. The next day looked similar, and so did the next. After 5 days we moved to our friends house, a nice intelligent woman named Jan, to stay at her place. We parked in front of her house in her driveway, which was near the bushes, and met her neighbors. They were nice so we talked for a long time there. Jan’s house, as we soon found out, was beautiful. Her front yard was enclosed by a 7 foot tall (Maybe more) row of bushes that enclosed a grassy area, her patio that held 4 decorated shells (with seashells attached) along with a tree that was many yards high, possibly 20, and a trail that led to her backyard. In her back yard she had many bushes as well that left enough room for a very good sized soccer field (a short one though) or perhaps a baseball field. Her living room overlooked it and the front yard, and included chairs and 3 of its 4 sides were made of 90% window glass. Her nice two story house had a great luxury theme to it and was the perfect size for her. Bernard Waber, the owner and create of Arthur the Anteater, used to full-time live in her house before she bought it. His first book was written in her room. I know almost nothing about Arthur or his friends, but that’s still kind of cool and I guess you could consider him a celebrity. After a couple of days our friends from Pittsburgh visited us and we talked for a long time. This was the 3rd time we had seen them, but I have not blogged about the last time. Their cousins were there and we very much enjoyed their company as well. I got to know Sarah the best of them, and she had a good sense of humor. Max and Alex were just as nice as last time. When they got to our house, however, we were so excited to see them even a bit more this time. We had the most fun we had ever had. Music played and we all drank C0KES and DIET CR3AM SODAS (Both brands are copyrighted) while we talked. We had a great baseball game (which my team won 28 to 5) and a game of soccer (or football for some of my non-american friends) before going inside. We did manage to slip in a game of AMERICAN football, too. We put up some mattresses for them and hung out all the way past 11 or 12 o’clock. We saw them the next morning but they needed to leave. The day after we would need to leave, too. Sadly an incident occurred… My little brother, Aidan, was at the neighbors house. I was getting tired and wanted to go to bed and so did everyone else. I went to go get him and he didn’t want to come back. That’s when it happened. He was chopping wood for their fire and creating “Kindling bombs” with Ellie, the youngest one. I gave him a couple more minutes. He put them in the fire and it got bigger. One of the pieces fell out of the pi and… He tried to put it back in. All of the sudden I heard a yelp and I ran over to see him. The top joints of all of his fingers were black light the night sky that glared at us from above. It all of the sudden went away and we got him some burn control items from a first aid kit. All of the sudden it came. Our father, a retired Fireman Captain, claimed that it was a 3rd degree burn… the worst one possible. The rest of the night went badly and I was sad to need to watch my brother go through this. I went to bed before him and that was all for the night. I think I’ll draw the curtain and end the post there.

The Town

As I have mentioned in one of my last blog posts, I am a little bit behind. I believe that was actually the name of it. Since I have recently revealed that I will be creating a book, possibly called A Young American’s Travels, I must say that I need this blog to have all of the details, as I will be using it for not only you guys but for my book, as well. The reason I have stated this may be unclear, so I’ll rephrase that: I’m going to be blogging every day now. Without further ado, how about I begin.

We soon saw a different scenery that the past couple of hours being trapped inside our large (but with a small-feeling interior) vehicle; A small town. After leaving Pittsburgh we faced regular hills and grass on the car-less highway while the tall buildings disappeared behind us. We drove in and looked around as we found our campground, and then soon after our spot inside of it. The park was beautiful! Although the entrance/exit didn’t lead to much, it was still great. The little town, the closest one to our destination (Erie Pennsylvania) included a couple of buildings including a furniture store and a photography HQ. Would not visit them until we went walking the next day. That night we used some of the parks activities after we walked around the large lake and the fountain like the small shuffleboard. I’m happy to say I won. The next day of course, we took a long walk and then came back to drive our car to a nearby diner where our parents started to argue if the eggs were processed or not. My brother joked that they were made of cardboard. The meal was good, but I’m sad that I can’t give credit to them. There is a small chance that anybody from that town would be reading the post right now but still. We eventually left the campground after taking showers and got back onto the road to Erie.

I’m a little behind…

As some of you may have noticed I have not been blogging every day. Good news: I’m going to. I’m starting today. I am two weeks behind so if anybody sees a post without words (just a title) than I have moved on. I am hoping to create a book about my adventures, called A Young Americans Travels, or something of the sort. Today I have not been blogging in a professional context, using basic words instead of searching and spending more time to put more elevated text into my blog post today. I have just decided to warn my followers: I may be a little bit late on stuff that is happening. Please, please, please, bear with me. Another thing to talk about- I am scared that our trip will be canceled because of Irma. I am afraid that others will need to give their lives because of it, so canceling our trip would be nothing. If you are in an area like Florida that is going to be hit with the worst tornado in known history, stay safe. My family and I are praying for you. I am afraid that we were a year too late… we may not be able to see Orlando or all of those other places, not meaning to be grave but… they might not be there anymore. I am very discouraged and very nervous about the situation. UsaThroughOurEyes.com, an amazing blog that is traveling similarly to our adventure, I am hoping you guys are OK in North Carolina. Stay safe everyone, and I’ll see you in the next post.

Visiting Pittsburgh Stadium

 

After arriving in Pittsburgh the day before we were expecting our first baseball game on the trip! We also expected to see the city too, of course. The first thing that I did to help make that happen was to get up out of my bed and walk over to the brown dresser I had in my room near the back of the camper. A little bit of light trickled in from outside of the window I opened and I came out with my plain grey T-shirt and Jeans on with my Aviator shades tucked halfway into my pocket. I met up with the rest of the family once they came out of their rooms and into our living room. It wasn’t long before we all walked out the door and got buckled up in our seats in the back of our Excursion. I talked to my little brother as we drove out of the campsite and onto the highway way we would drive to the city of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh had a surprising amount of trees there. A conversation arose and somehow led to going clothes shopping a Walmart. How does that happen? Anyway, after the long drive to Walmart we finally got out of the car and walked in. I’m not going to waste time about talking about Walmart because absolutely everybody knows about Walmart already so I’ll just keep it simple: The pirates are Baseball and the Pittsburgh Steelers are Football. I’m not huge on baseball, but I sure do love football (American football, by the way) so I spent my money on a Steelers shirt. A couple of minutes later we were back on track, and I had switched my gray shirt to the Steelers shirt instead. When we finally snuck up behind the city we were needing to battle a large mountain in order to get up. We parked the car and got out instead. We decided to walk to the top so we would not need to be charged for parking inside of the city. After passing a couple of houses that were nice and well painted (and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars too) we were finally at the top. On our right lay a path near some of the other homes and a large statue of an Indian with a settler learning how to farm. On the left was another way back down the steep hill. We walked to the right and tried to get a passage down with THE INCLINE. THE INCLINE was a box with about 20 or so seats that rode down the hill using a large cog setup that pulled the cars on rails up and down the steep slope on the mountain. The ride was exciting and we were thrilled that we would use another one to come back up. The seats inside of the car were traditional red and yellow and were from about 100 years ago, still working today I guess! It took a lot of walking after we got past the maze of red ropes of a line and out of the building to get to the stadium. We passed a couple of shops and bridges, both of which were abundant throughout the large town that was build almost on TOP of the river there. That is actually incorrect, because there were actually THREE rivers that all connected together. When we were at the top we were able to get a good view of the green mixing with the brown. We walked across the bridge and near the lake where the boat races would take place and then past the water to the stadium. On the way we saw a historic land mark from a war and where the fort used to be, and than we got back to the stadium. We bought our tickets and went in. The stadium was huge! On the first of 4 stories we were escorted to the elevator where a man was inside, waiting for us so we could get to the top. Once we were on the 3rd stories we climbed up the rows to J where we took our seats, 09-14. We waited for the game to start as more and more people came into the stadium. We waited. And waited. And waited some more. Nothing was happening, and the storm clouds that had snuck up on us (We had no idea they were there) were threatening to destroy our chances at seeing the game. While we were waiting, I decided to call my good friend from home, Asher, and talk to him. We talked for a while on FaceTime and halfway through our chat men came out with tractors and a large white tube and set them down. They rolled the tube out into a huge stadium-wide panel of all white. They next got the tractors and drove them across the corners and then in between by each hundred or so yards, but not before the drizzle turned into a large downpour, soaking everybody. People from other rows moved up even though they had emergency rain suits anyway. I talked to Asher for a long time, almost another hour, until other men came onto the field when the clouds looked better. If they had not moved the tractors and the white sheet, an event that caused the entire crowd to cheer, all of our tickets would have been no good. I felt bad for all for those people who left, and I do have to say that I was sad because of the lack of people, even if it DID turn out alright. The game was in all postponed for 3 hours, but I don’t mean the people that left. I mean all of those people that didn’t WANT to come because of the unfortunately predicted weather! Nevertheless, the game was still greatly played. I believe by the score that we left off that the Pirates beat their other team, the Padres, because we eventually had to leave because our parents were tired. ‘Funny how that happens. We eventually went to bed and were very happy for the experience!

My Custom Shirt!

Hello everyone! Today I have brought you here with a different kind of post- I have my own T-shirt now! I’m very excited to be able to proudly wear this as I walk down the busy streets of big cities like New York City and Boston and Washington DC! What do you think about it?

PRO Football Hall of Fame

We almost went before Cedar Point, but sadly because of some major car troubles we were unable to go. We got worried because our car shut off just after we applied the breaks at a red light, and had to drive strait off course to the FORD mechanic as soon as we got it running again. The mechanic let us get a rental for free because insurance covered us and drove back to our camp site which we had. We needed to be checked out soon so we needed to go all the way back as fast as we could and get a truck for our rental. We walked inside and asked if there were any trucks that could pull our 31 foot camper with but there were no rentals left. When we had first got there, however, we had befriended a great man named John and gave him our blogs to follow. He was such a good person that he allowed us to use his truck, something that was not covered in our insurance and was very unexpected. Thank you John! We drove back on the highway to our campground and picked up our happy camper, which we call Beauty while our truck, which we call Beast, was still at the mechanic. We dropped of the camper and used the rental in order to get to the PRO Football Hall of Fame again. After only a couple of minutes driving passed the one or two story buildings through the moderate- sized town we got to the point where we once were the previous day. This time there were a couple of men at the entrance in orange vests that led everyone to the right past the middle school. We asked what was going on and one of the men told us it was the annual 2017 football pass. He gave us a couple of small details, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise just yet! We drove across the dirt road past the construction crews that were building and (barely) found a parking spot in the parking lot. After walking through the gates a woman gave me a shirt that read THIS IS MY GAME on the back and held a FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME patch on the right sleeve, along with the logo on the front. The event was that a football would be passed for each year, this year, obviously 2017 for me, and locked inside the football hall of fame forever. After a while It became my turn and passed it along as quickly as it came. It was still exciting and a fun experience to have. They also offered free food for everyone, and I got to meet some of the famous quarterback and other players such as LaDainian Tomlinson and Eric Dickerson while in line. In each of the boxes was a sandwich, chips, a cookie, and an apple. I also got some football cards that I now keep inside of my dresser in the camper and got to see the Football Hall of Fame for FREE! At this point we were FORTUNATE that we had car problems the day before! Sadly our car would be done in an hour and we had to be there to pick it up because WE had the rental car. We didn’t get to take our time as much and see everything so we saw what we could. I put my box of what I didn’t eat after we had ran from the diner there under a tree where nobody could see it (hopefully that included the ants) and walked inside. We took a left and read some of the boards on some of our favorite players and teams and moved on to the upstairs to see some more. We got to see an interview of one of the players airing live on the upstairs and after a little bit more of walking see the Lombardi trophy of the year. It was awesome to be able to witness history unexpectedly but sadly we needed to go. After we walked back to the car and drove to the mechanic we picked up our car and got ready for our next adventure.

Arriving at Pittsburg

 

Transitioning from our adventures at the Beach Party and Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania included a LOT of farmland. Though towns are a lot more exciting to look through and see what they had to offer, it was entertaining to watch the unusual illusions of light the rolling hills gave out. We passed through a couple of small towns but nothing big enough to be exciting. Once we did finally arrive at our campground that we would spend the night it was around 3:00-4:00 so we were able to set up quickly in the light. When my mother was a kid she met a girl named Colleen and became instant best friends, and when her mom met Colleen’s mom they immediately became best friends, too. Colleen was now a mother of two kids, much like ours, and we were soon going to be able to visit them when they arrived at our site. We got out some drinks and food and prepared a huge fire so when they got here it would be more exciting. My brother and I each pulled out an axe and chopped up some lumber that we could use for the fire. After a couple of trips we had everything we needed to build a large respectable fire. They eventually pulled up and we introduced ourselves, as did they. It wasn’t long until WE were best friends as well. We all shared common interests, and I mostly talked to Max, the older one that was my age while my brother talked more to Alex, the one that was almost HIS age. We eventually came back from our short walk (that we didn’t know we had gone on) and walked inside to give a tour. They loved my room that was in the back of the camper and said that it was so awesome that we could travel the country like we were doing. WE had some drinks and chips and they pulled up their favorite youtube channels and we showed them ours, and were both hooked on each others. We later went outside so we could have s’mores and talk with the adults and exchanged memories of our past couple years. I always loved burning my marshmallows so that the crunchy outside would contain the liquid inside. Many people don’t think it would taste good at all but it’s actually better than the original version of s’mores! Max tried it and loved it. We snuck chocolate inside and ate some of it and talked some more. Time passed and not a second of it was wasted, laughing and excited the entire time. They eventually needed to go around 11:00 but we would see them tomorrow. We laughed as our group walked to the car and we were still talking even as they climbed into their seats! We told them we’d see them tomorrow and walked into the camper for another 30 minutes after the fire was out and settled down until we fell asleep soon after. What a great start to Pittsburg!

Beach Party in Ohio

I’m back again after a short break with another post from Ohio! I am completing yesterday’s post, Cedar Point, with the night time portion of my journey. Once we were about to leave we remembered that there was a beach party on the other side of the island! We passed all of the attractions to our left and right and made it to the lit up little building that seemed to be the only entry point in the metal fence that outlined the entire area. We showed our passes to the young adult that was running one of the few operators booth. We walked showed him our passes and he let us pass into he colorfully lit sand that pushed between our toes. We got off of the short concrete platform and walked onto the sand and looked around to see what we could do first! There were strange cubed seats that were only halfway transparent, only enough to let out constantly changing beams of light. The tables were similar. Some people wore necklaces and wristbands and headphones that all lit up in red or blue. There were booths with various things they were giving out and hotels that lined the sides. There was a DJ booth that stood on one side of it all while a huge group of adults (and children too) stood around to jump and move in the beat of the music. There were indescribable crystals (that ALSO changed color, might I add) that poked up every now again through the beautiful sand that held a collection of footprints. What a beautiful sight! It was hard to take it all in but we soon decided to soon walk over to the magnificent cubes that contained foot-long Jenga blocks that were stacked up and got to work. After a lot of laughter and taunts the tower was soon double what it once was.

We had soon gathered a small crowd (part of whom just wanted to play and a couple who were interested in what we were doing) and the large tower collapsed after a huge recovery from the previous player. There was also other games that lined the beach with multiple different groups playing at once. We later rented out some cool headphones that changed brightness with the beat and they gave us some free wristbands that said Cedar point. I walked over to the DJ booth to listen to the music he was playing while the people jumped and moved around in circles. I got some sand in my eye by getting a little bit too wild with the coffee grinder… I’m not going to say much about that. I had to take my contacts out and I got a water bottle to rinse them again so that I could get the pain out of them but it didn’t work as planned. I was all right after a bit but was unable to fully experience the fireworks as they were somewhat blurred, but they were still amazing. The music was playing while large light bulbs popped in the air- wow that was a terrible analogy. Forget I said anything! The fireworks were in different shapes and sizes and amazing to watch as every body had a great time together on the beach.

Get to the Point

Cedar Point is by far the best amusement park that I’VE personally been too. From the moment that we left the camper at 9:30 or so we were excited- even before we got there. We needed to stop by a store in order to purchase some extremely cheap Cedar Point tickets. The when we got there I wondered if it were French or German. I asked my brother what he thought it was and he said it could be Spanish. I told him it wasn’t Spanish because I KNEW Spanish, and the conversation ended. Aidan was still somewhat confused. When we actually got INTO the store itself we saw the tickets placed in the middle of the entry way where a BLIND MAN might not be able to miss them. We went to check out the deals and saw that we could get unlimited drinks for only $4 extra per person (approximately  £3) That is a little less than a single drink from Cedar Point! After that we took off to go to the one and only Cedar Point. After about 40 minutes of driving we saw it. Cedar point was located very close to the beach and looked quite frankly like it had its very OWN island! When we got to the entrance we paid our short fee to get in and then entered. We had a large Bike Rack in the front and a big stabilizer in back so we asked one of the parking crew members if we could park in the truck section. He said no at first but after a second glance at the back he gave a thumbs up to OK us. We drove between a small car that shouldn’t be there and a large RV and got out. We grabbed our wallets and walked to the entrance. We soon realized that our emergency deference knife was in our backpack still and that we couldn’t bring it into the park so we put it underneath the trashcan before anything else. The truck parking was a lot closer than the regular parking so we walked to the entrance with ease. We skipped the ticket booths and gave the man out tickets to get inside and we took a selfie next to the large plaque of stone that sprung up from the ground with the words Cedar Point on it. The first thing we did was turn left to go to the drink shack and get some refreshing cold Cokes and Pepsi before we did any of the rides. After walking past some rigged carnival games on our right we looked around to find our first ride. We settled with the one called the GateKeeper (170 feet high) and got in line.

After a hot, long and tiring hour-long wait it was finally time to board. I was kind of nervous from the people’s faces getting off but I was willing to do it. One man got off at the last moment, leaving his wife stuck inside. I didn’t fully want to do it so I started getting nervous and wished that the large seatbelt-ish latches would let me out after they were set. All the sudden it started slowly creaking foreword, the chain clanging against the blue metal below us. The layout of the vehicle was of two riders on the left and two riders on the right of the middle. There were a couple of rows of this design. After taking an extended 180 degree turn to the right it plunged upward at a 30 degree angle and stayed that way, moving forward for another hour (12 seconds to be exact) until reaching the highest part of the jaw-dropping 170 foot roller-coaster. Once at the top it slowed slightly and then immediately sped up as it plunged almost strait down. What it actually did is curved backwards (kind of like Lagoon’s Cannibal, for a reference) which would have made it worse if It were meant to be a scary ride. It was odd because you would expect it to be terrible- not really. It was actually very relaxing. Even as it dropped and twisted and shook at its high speeds it wasn’t anything more than excitement! Once it slowed down and parked in the station I got out glad that I did it. Once we were off we went to another extreme ride that held close to 70 people as it launched into the air while spinning. This one wasn’t scary either! In the line could have been better than the actual ride not because it was BAD but because it was hilarious looking at some of the participants faces.

After a couple more rides we wandered by the gift shop area where we looked around for something to possibly buy. We saw some very interesting designs on the shirts and hats but got nothing. We stumbled on a glass shop that was created out of bottles cemented together and were amazed by what we saw. There was a demonstration out back that was fascinating. They told us the basics about the art and showed us some examples. Don’t know what glass art is? I’ve provided a link: Click HERE if you would like to see it. Once they were finished we moved on to go visit the best part of the park: the middle. After a short while of walking we saw some people with VR headsets on as they rode! We had to check it out. What we did first was the Neck Breake- I mean the CorkScrew… But it would break your neck. It spiraled and quickly recovered and slammed your head into the sides of the seat. Not quite fun- just annoying- this was the only ride I wouldn’t recommend. We next saw the VR ride and the reviews were good but sadly after that terrible Br- I mean CorkScrew I was too shaken up to do it. My little brother, Aidan, tried to be 13 but he got the wrong date- July of 2005 so he couldn’t use the VRs. I guess that’s kind of how the world works though. Anyway, night was setting and we were almost done for the night… but not yet! Our dad decided to get on the fastest/worst ride in the park. Luckily for him (and us) the ride shut down so he couldn’t ride it. He got off and we started to walk back but remembered… Cedar Point always holds a party on their private beach! If you are interested in reading my second post, click HERE to see the Night-time party portion.