Niagara Falls, July 4 – 7, 2008

There seemed some irony in the fact that we were heading for some other country for the July 4rth Independence Day celebration, but going to Niagara didn’t seem that bad. After all, we were going to the Canadian side of the fall to marvel at the beauty of the US side. Well, technically speaking that is not true. While the US does own two of the three falls American (Rainbow) and Luna (Bridal Veil), most of the Horseshoe belong to Canada. But that doesn’t matter, from our view; we were looking at the United States. Plus we heard the fireworks on the 4rth of July were very good!

It took us a good 7 hours to get to Niagara,then another 30 minutes to reach our hotel. Overall a lot shorter trip than going to Florida. The shortest route (per Tom-Tom GPS) was through Peace Bridge, off Route 190 and into the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) located a few miles upstream from the more famous Rainbow Bridge. Our hotel was about 20 minutes from the falls, a choice made easier because we would be saving over $100 a night compared to similar but closer hotels. Since we planned to only stay for the weekend and head on to New Jersey on Monday, we elected to visit the falls right after dinner. In order to save some money we had instant noodles, hard boiled eggs and rice for dinner.

We left at least an hour before the published start of the fireworks. We’ve heard that the firework display for the 4rth of July is a much anticipated event. Arriving as we did, the place was jam packed with people walking all over and out of the sidewalks, and vehicles. Parking was an issue. The fastest way to get a parking space would be find a parking garage. We found a parking garage in the Casino, next to the Sheraton Falls View hotel, or $20.00. For now, this would have to do. Grudgingly we accepted that amount and hoped that we would locate cheaper parking during the rest of our stay. 20 minutes after making our way through the crowd the firework show began. To our disappointment, it only lasted 10 minutes. Sure doesn’t sound like something we would spend $20 on? Later on we would find out that there was a regular twice-a-week firework display over the falls, every Friday and Sunday. Our schedule for tomorrow calls for us to ride the Lady of the Mist, and take a tour Behind the Falls.

Lady of the Mist. We had a very nice breakfast the next day. We found a $15.00 parking for the whole day. You need to walk to appreciate the view, and what a view. It is spectacular! It took us almost an hour to make it to the boat ticket counter but before that we spent a couple of hours just sitting under a tree and soaking up the sites, sounds and mist. A completely unplanned but welcomed activity. The price of a ticket was reasonable and the waiting lines, not as long or as slow moving as we expected. On average a boat leaves for the falls every 15 minutes. The operator took group pictures of people riding the boat, and provided plastic rain coats. There is no need to buy the pictures (which can be expensive) and you get to keep the coats as a souvenir. One item I suggest people bring, a water-proof disposable camera, or a clear plastic bag you can put over your digital camera. You will get close enough to the falls to get really soaked. The boat stayed next to the falls for about 5 minutes before heading back to the dock. As usual, doing things that are not planned takes its toll on the best laid plans. Because we had dinner reservations at 6:00 pm (Courtesy of the Smith family) at the Skylon Tower we had to forgo the trip behind the falls and reschedule it for tomorrow.

The Skylon Tower. The Skylon Tower has been a Niagara landmark for many, many years. You could just go up to the observation deck and get a breath-taking view of the scene, but if you have a willing patron (Courtesy of the Smith family) go and have dinner at the formal dinning area. The whole restaurant rotates at a constant speed of about once every hour so you don’t have to worry about getting dizzy. The food is great, the service excellent (by my standards) but, unless you really prepared for this, you should have a willing patron (Thanks to the Smith family) as the prices can set you back more than a bit.

Behind the Falls. Sunday and we are again on the hunt for parking space. But first let us have breakfast. We spied a reasonable-sounding German Restaurant advertising breakfast for $1.99 the night before. The atmosphere was ok, but, $1.99 breakfast is not enough even for the kids. I should complain about false advertisement but a closer look at the ads (To the left) and you will see there was no lie. Chalk it up to experience. Today’s schedule includes both the tour Behind the Falls, but hopefully, a little Casino. A bunch of us were dropped off near the Horseshoe Falls for the tour. We would meet up later after. We walked along the river bank towards the tour entrance. It was wet and misty behind the falls, and actually a little disappointing. We were really not near enough to the falls. Of course we understand that for safety reason, you cannot be allowed to go close enough to actually touch the falls. There is enough force involved that actually touching the falls can result in injuries such as a broken arm. After the tour we went to Sheraton Hotel to wait for today’s firework display. With kids with us it didn’t take long for boredom to set in. So while the adults watched a movie, us young ones went down to visit the hotel game room, the Maze, the local Starbuck and, even an attempt to cross the rainbow bridge on foot. (You need $0.50 cents and your passport to do so).

Ocean City Maryland

Finally, after years of hesitation, we’ve made the trip! We visited Ocean City, Maryland.

My kids have always wanted to go visit the beach. We postponed for a number of reason. The kids were too young and might not appreciate (or remember) the trip. We’ve always heard that the place was always full during summer, and, we are generally not beach-loving people. I would prefer to soak in a pool than sit under the blazing sun on a sandy beach. No riptides, sharks or jelly fishes to worry about. But everybody ought to at least try and see if our worries are unfounded, and this was the day.

We arrived Tuesday evening and stayed at the Hyatt located a short walking distance from the beach. Driving down “SOMETHING” street we notice a large amount of kids. Turns out that this week they were observing ‘Graduates Week’. I thought they were college kids but we would find out later they were mostly high school graduates. Looking at all the bars offering drinks to all the graduates I was left wondering whether my observation was correct. After all, we only got to talk to three who would confirm that.

So here we are, and we start to setup our plans for the next three days. Definitely, we were going back home on the 14th. In an effort to save money (due to the high gas price and the cost of hotel) we bought enough food (read instant noodles, TV lunch/dinners) to last three days.

• June 11. Get up around 7:00 am and have breakfast at the hotel. Yes, actual breakfast of eggs, toast, pancakes. Rest about 30 minutes then walk to the beach and play in the sand. Hyatt was only a walk away from the beach, which is nice. We planned to start to start midday so there were not too many people. We could get our pick of prime beach location. There were actually less people around than we had anticipated. From about 9:00 am to 10:30 am it was mostly us. The crowd started to grow around 11:30 am and the sand was getting hot. Time for us to leave. In the afternoon while my wife was out with some friends, I was at the hotel pool with the kids.
  


• June 12. Get up midday and head for the beach. No breakfast this time. Basically a repeat of yesterday except in the afternoon we headed for the mini-golf course for a short game, then some ice cream for the kids. The game confirmed my suspicions. I do find golf to be boring. I do not know how Tiger Woods does it.
  


• June 13. Third day at the beach. Same morning schedule and routine. Played mini-golf again around noon, then took long walks along the main road, and caught up on some shopping. Well the kids did anyway. We then decided to visit this resort, the …. Resort. It holds some possibilities,… for next year. Yesterday, some friends arrived from Germantown. Their daughter had not been to the beach yet, so, you guessed it. It was back to the beach for them. Not me, I was exhausted at this point.
  


• June 14. No visit to the beach this time. The boardwalk is a place we are often told to visit. So we got up early. We knew to expect a crowd because of all the conventions and graduation activities going on. The best thing to do would be to park as close as you can, and walk. And the crowd did not disappoint. The beach, the boardwalk, the restaurants were all packed. In my younger days I would have loved it here, more so the night life, which we did not see. Ah yes, in my younger days. On the other hand I do not know how anybody could sleep here at night. I suppose that really isn’t the point anyway. In a sign of what people here normally end up doing, we had the fortune of seeing this guy stagger of his chair in a restaurant, walk a few feet and collapse…drunk.
  

Alas most good things have to come to an end. It was getting late and we still, had a long drive ahead of us. Driving over the bay bridge at night is not one of those things I look forward to. Now did I mention that earlier during the day our A/C gave up on us? We had it checked before going to the board walk and was told that the likely cause was too much coolant was added. This is our second vehicle to encounter this problem and this was the last time I was taking any to Sears for an A/C check. We’re going on a long trip with no A/C on a hot, humid day. Woo- Hoo!

It looks like the rain is about to start.

California Revisited

I’ve been to Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco for short visits over the past 5 years. Disneyland and Universal Studios in L.A. feels like a cramped version of the ones in Florida. And to us it looked like all that Sacramento had to offer was a visit to the Governors mansion. No, we did not get to meet Gov. Arnold, he was in a meeting that day (Or so they said). We had placed a reservation with Avis for a minivan earlier but as in an episode of Seinfeld, they are good a taking a reservation, not holding the reservation. It took us nearly an hour to get a replacement SUV. It was equipped with one of those earlier forms of GPS that looked more like a phone. I do believe that they actually used Nextel back then. Still, it was a big improvement over the use of Mapquest and gave me my first taste of the GPS. With this model you called an operator, gave her the address you were going to and she sent in instruction to the GPS. It provided purely turn-by-turn voice instruction, and could guide you only to about 200 miles from your current location. We had to call twice to complete the whole trip. But after that I was hooked. When we got back home on the east coast my first project was research and get me my own.

Between Sacramento and L.A. lay the City by the Bay, San Francisco. We, as a family, liked visiting San Francisco the best. It isn’t only because we liked the cool, comfortable day-time weather, or the nice morning walks down in Rockaway beach, the expensive trips to the Fisherman’s Wharf, the field trips to the Golden Gate Bridge or the picnic at the Presidium. We actually had more friends to go to in San Francisco and therefore spent more time here than we did in Sacramento or L.A. The only drawback was that every thing seemed so expensive. After entertaining the thought for but a few hours we decided that while we like San Francisco, we would continue to live on the east coast.

Other than the weather there was another reason to visit San Francisco. Every first weekend of August, the city of Pacifica plays host to a reunion of those who lived or grew up in Baclaran, Philippines. We attended one 4 years ago. The reunion starts early, around 8:00 am and is supposed to end 11:00 pm with a big raffle draw. It started with introductions, then lots of contest and prizes, and a seemingly endless supply of food to eat. The attendees are organized based on what street they grew up or lived so there was a very good chance you would meet someone you already knew. My wife grew up in Mactan Street in Baclaran and she has not seen most of her friends from the area in over twenty years. The first time we attended the reunion back in 2004 it seemed like everybody she ever knew was there. Need less to say, if you spend 15 hours in a community center you will eventually bore yourself out of existence. We (along with most everybody else) decided not to stay till 11:00 pm.

This year the reunion falls on August 2, 2008. My wife will try to attend. This will depend on the availability of reasonably priced airline tickets. I (along with my kids) on the other hand have decided to skip this year’s festivity. With today's gas prices it is better for us to get to know the various vacation areas closer to home.

Ontario Revisited

Visiting another country always seemed to involve flying and going through customs at the airport. So I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I first crossed into our northern neighbor, Canada, with my family of course, to visit my wife’s cousin in Ontario back in August of 2007. Would my GPS work? How about my mobile phone? Would there be a long line at the border? What kind of questions would they ask? Would they even let us back into the United States?

Some of those questions can be easily answered with a little preparation before your trip, while others you will just have to find out. I would suggest that at the very least, do the following.

• Call your mobile phone provider. They can answer questions about using your phone in another country, even one as close to us as Canada. Up there we would be using the system of Rogers Communications and pay by the minute.

• Know how to access a phone card if you don’t want paying for those minute charges, or in emergencies. While most convenience stores seem to carry these prepaid cards nowadays you can now also purchase phone cards wearing only your jammies through the internet. Delivery is through your email and almost instantaneous and the rates are competitive.

• Check with travel agencies or their websites for travel requirements. These days you need a passport to get into and back from Canada, not so back in 2007.

• Bring a map with you, or print out directions as a backup to your GPS. Thankfully I did not have to use either of these.

The trip is supposed to take 10 hours, non-stop. We budgeted 2 hours for necessary stops and planned to arrive around 4 or 5 pm, still early enough to go around since we only planned to stay for the weekend. We traveled up through scenic New York State and arrived at a surprisingly short line at the border crossing. We were asked some standard questions like “Are you carrying anything like tobacco and wine? Anything to declare ” and “Are you citizens of the US and can you prove it?” As I had mentioned earlier, we did not have to bring our passports but this was as easy a proof of citizenship that we could bring. That done, we crossed into “foreign territory” in search of a rest area.

The first thing we noticed was the speed limit, 50 kph. How much in miles was that? There was a sign that posted a rough estimate of the speed in mph, and it was slow. I wondered how we were going to get to Ontario by 5pm. At the gas station they were selling by the liter, and as luck would have it, the Canadian dollar now was worth more than the green buck. I did not want to get a ticket so I followed the speed limit, and I was the only one. All the other vehicles zipped pass us, occupants looking at us with our Maryland tag in a sea of Ontario license tags. For the first time, I really felt like a tourist!

Florida Revisited

I’ve been to Florida three times in my lifetime, once in 1987, then in 2002 and finally, 2006. And all this time we have gone to only one place, Disney World in Orlando.

1987 is somewhat a fuzzy memory to me. We flew in from Mississippi and stayed with a friend in Tampa. I traveled with my Mom.

In 2002 we went to Florida with my Wife’s cousins. They came down from New York and met us in Virginia, and we all drove to Florida from there. Funny things happen when you have a caravan of four vehicles, no one has a GPS and you have passengers who need a lot of bathroom breaks. For one thing, you get to see and experience all the rest area along the way, and you tend to take long breaks. We left Virginia on a Thursday afternoon. We got to Orlando, Sunday at noon.

Before this trip I have never really traveled south. I've always gone up north I-95 from Maryland. I had to pay a toll fee but the rest areas were all inside the interstate highway, had gas stations and restaurants. Going south from Maryland, there were no tolls to pay but the rest areas only had vending machines that did not make decent coffee. If you wanted to eat you either brought your own (which we did), purchased from the vending machine or left I-95 in search of a restaurant. The worst rest areas were in Florida. These seemed to be barely used. Maybe it was because of those huge signs that read in part “Rest Area not Patrolled at Night”.

2006. Learned a couple of lessons from the last trip. First, bring a GPS. I had the Garmin Street Pilot i3. We had a few quick stops but otherwise drove the whole time. The trip took us about 17 hour.

We stayed at the Westgate Lakes Resort and Spa in 2002 and 2006. It is very nice place. If you rent a unit and there are more than 2 people in your group, make sure to ask for the main area of the unit. This is where the main kitchen, huge bath and plenty of space can be found. The smaller half is, now how shall we say it, a little too small. You will find plenty of activities if you are not that determined to take on the crowds at Disney World. The resort has swimming pools and bike trails you can use, you will also find a lake that you could go boating in. As for us, we came to visit Disney World.

Disney World was great, what can I say? The kids loved it; one week is definitely not enough to see the whole place. On this trip the kids started looking for more excitement, the kind of rides that teenagers crave. So we took a day off Disney and visited Universal Studios. I can already see that the next time we visit Florida, we, or rather the kids, will be going to Universal rather than Disney World.

That other lesson I learned? I need to avoid the hot, sticky months of July and August. It is hard to get anything done when you are trying to avoid a complete meltdown, literally. November or December is perfect.

Tools of the Trade: GPS

I used to be a big fan of Mapquest. When I first heard about it a few years ago it was god-sent for people like me, you know, no sense of direction. Make no mistake, I could read a map. Just couldn’t remember one street from the next nor did I have the patience to try to find the shortest route. Mapquest helped me avoid these things by providing the turn-by-turn instructions. It even let me choose between faster and shorter routes. All I had to do was to look at the instructions every now and then, remember the street name and whether to turn left or right. Knowing the distance between streets sometimes helped.

Despite all the benefits of internet mapping services like Mapquest, Yahoo Maps or Google, I soon found that there was one thing they could not do for me. If I made a wrong turn somewhere as we are all apt to do, I could not find directions on how to get back on the right track. Now this is not too bad on city streets but on a freeway it can be an issue. I still needed to have a map!

Enter the GPS! The perfect solution for most situations you will encounter. I started out on the lighter side, opting for the Garmin Street Pilot i3. Despite what I have heard, I had some reservations about using a GPS. The GPS may not function as advertised and I did not want to be tied to an expensive unit I could not use or appreciate. Needless to say I was sold. The Street Pilot does a pretty good job of giving turn-by-turn instructions, arrival time among others. When I chose the Street pilot I knew the small screen size (1.3 x 1.7 in) might become an issue later but I figured, I needed to hear the instructions, not read it. As I gained more experienced with the GPS, I found situations where you did need to take a quick glance at the screen and read some of the information displayed, like street names. Now while doing so in the daytime was not much of an issue, the black and white screen was hard to read at night. I also learned that the turn-by-turn instructions can be confusing when you have two or more exits close to each other. Thankfully by this time newer, more advanced GPS had come down in price and was now more affordable to the masses, like myself.

The TomTom Go 720 had a 4.3 in colored screen that is easy to read. I could have gone for the Garmin nuvi 760 and stayed with more familiar territory. After all they had very similar features. Both had touch screen controls, same screen size, FM transmitters, blue tooth wireless connections, MP3 player, and photo viewer. Battery life for both GPS models where similar. Where they did differ is in the map providers. TomTom uses maps from TeleAtlas while Garmin gets its maps from NAVTEQ. What made me choose TomTom over the more popular Garmin? It is the TomTom MapShare, feature that lets users share map corrections with each other. I haven’t really used this yet. The last time I checked there were no map corrections in my area but I think that I may find this feature useful...eventually.

I do have a little regret going for the TomTom. Go 720 instead of the Garmin nuvi 760. I’m sure that both do a good job getting you to where you are going but the TomTom tends to stick to highways and freeways when going through city streets might actually be both faster AND shorter. Garmin does not, or at least the i3 did not. Oh, and another thing. When approaching your destination, the Go 720 tells me that I am arriving at my destination. The Garmin goes so far as to tell me that it is on the right side of the street, or on the left, a little extra information that I now miss.

Hmm, maybe this is a situation where I should be trying out the MapShare feature.

Memorial Day 2008

A short trip during Memorial Day weekend has always left me apprehensive. A lot of people just like going to the beach that weekend. Me? I don’t like too much crowd. So I avoid the beach. But where do you go on such a nice, cool and pleasant day like May 26, 2008? With gas prices the way it was we had to go somewhere close. Somewhere you could have a picnic, run around and soak up the sun from under a shaded tree. Somewhere like The Black Hill Regional Park in Maryland, a mere 7 miles away from our home.

The Black Hill Regional Park is a 1,843 acre park located in Montgomery County, Maryland, and encompasses the Little Seneca Lake (505 acre) and offers a variety of activities such as:

• Picnic tables and shelters


• Rowboat, kayaking or canoing


• Launching and mooring private boats


• Riding the pontoon boat around the lake


• Fishing


• Paved and natural trails


• Volleyball courts Children’s playground


• A half-acre sized dog park


• Educational programs


• A beautiful view of the lake

Some of these services such as renting a picnic shelter or riding the pontoon boat do require a fee. If you prefer not to spend money there are plenty of alternatives, no fees attached.

Now this is not the first time we’ve gone to this park. The MCPAA has had more than a few picnics there that we have actually attended but this is the first time we are going at the spur of the moment, with only two days to plan. And we had a plan to avoid the crowds, make sure we got a good spot and have some fun. We would go with some friends, each family bringing a different kind of meal for variety. Pot Luck you know. And we would go early to beat the crowd, something like 8 am. That way we could choose the best, most comfortable, under-the-shade spot. Now that was a plan! And everything went on exactly as planned, except for that 8 am thing. Our friends got there 9 am, we made it around 11:30 am, a minor setback that prevented us from having the choicest spot available. But it was shaded.