14 Aug 2023

A couple weeks ago, Matt mentioned that he would be making a trip out to New York to pick up a couple lots of Skylanders and the dates just so happened to line up with some time I had off work, so I thought it would be fun to visit Niagara Falls again, but from the Canadian side this time!

However, the idea of driving out there and sitting in a car for ~14 hours didn’t sound very appealing, so I decided to fly out and just meet Matt in Niagara.  I also decided to fly out the same day he left, which would give me an extra day to explore the Falls from the US side on my own.

After dropping Matt off at his rental car (which was supposed to be a van, but they were out, so he got “upgraded” to this Large SUV instead):

I drove up to the Cities, hoping the rain wouldn’t delay my flight or follow me to New York:

The trip out to Buffalo was quite bumpy, so bumpy in fact, that there was no snack service and at the end of our flight, instead of passing through to collect any trash, they told us to just hold onto it.  But, we got ahead of the storms and it wasn’t raining when we landed.

Unfortunately, 4 planes landed at once and there weren’t enough jetways for all of us, so we had to sit and wait for our turn to deplane.  Normally, I wouldn’t mind the wait, but I was hoping to catch the city bus out to my campsite and if I missed this one, it would be an hour before the next one arrived.  I wasn’t going to wait an hour for the next bus, so plan B was to just grab an Uber, but the city bus was only $2/ride whereas the Uber estimate was close to $50…

Fortunately, Buffalo is a tiny airport, our gate was close to exit and bus stop was just outside; unfortunately, the bus was already at stop.  So I sprinted and, when the bus started closing its doors, waved my arms like a madman.  It worked- the bus opened back up and I was able to board!  YAY!!

I wasn’t quite sure how the bus system worked- I had printed off a map and a schedule for each of my routes and brought cash just in case the digital pass on my phone didn’t work.  Overkill? Probably, but on a new-to-me form of transportation in an unfamiliar city with night fast approaching, I didn’t want to strand myself.  Fortunately, the passes on my phone worked just fine and were really easy to use:

  

(yes, these screenshots are from the end of the trip- I forgot to grab them earlier!)
You can buy passes in the app ($2/ride) which you then tap to activate when you see your bus- just show the driver the activated pass and you’re good to go!  There’s a timer so if the line in front of you is long/slow you can still board, and I suppose if you’re switching buses and can get get to the next one before the time’s up, you could probably get away with using the same pass?

My first bus was awesome- there was a scrolling marquee and announcements with next stop, which made it super-easy to follow along and know when to get off.  I had a 20 minute wait before my next bus arrived, so I wandered around the park and found this statue of Nikola Tesla:

Buffalo was the first electrified city to run on AC thanks to his work.

I also found this adorable little buffalo statue!

My 2nd bus was nothing like the first- no helpful scrolling marquee, no announcements for each stop.  I had to go off my memory of the map and ended up getting off a stop too early and had to walk up to the KOA, my home for the night:

Hotels in Niagara are either expensive or sketchy, and while I found a hostel that looked promising, they had a late check-in fee that was almost half again the cost of a night’s stay, so I found a campground on nearby Grand Island, bought a tent, and camped out for the night!

(don’t mind the lack of tension- I mostly wanted to get a picture before it got too dark)
My tent is pretty awesome- it’s a 2 person tent (so plenty of space for me and my stuff) but it only weighs like 3 pounds and the poles fold down to about 12″ so it fits well in my carry-on!  The only downside is that the TSA does not allow tent stakes in a carry-on so I had to improvise.  Yes, those are pens and yes, they actually worked quite well, as long as you didn’t try to reposition them…

Mistakes were made… but alcohol hand wipes clean ink off quite nicely and I don’t think I got any on my new tent.

I was a little nervous going into tonight- it was supposed to rain and I haven’t tested my tent out in the rain yet.  But it was dry when I set up and the rain didn’t start until almost 11pm, after I was set up and tucked in for the night, and I stayed nice and dry!

Goodnight, little tent!

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