10/24/21

I have a confession to make: before this trip, I had never been east of Iowa. The western United States (and western Canada for that matter) were conquered by me long ago, but the east has always been elusive. And I am not going to lie, I went into this day completely prejudiced about the State of New York. After a very long, traffic-filled yesterday driving through Detroit and the Ohio turnpike (i.e. the Rust Belt), I was convinced that New York could only be 10x worse: a State filled with way too many people and way too many covid restrictions to be enjoyed in any reasonable sense of the word. In fact, I already had this blog entry written out in my head. It was going to be a riff on New York, filled with sad pictures of me stuck in a mask even though I’m fully vaccinated, doing my best to fight throngs of people to get a short glimpse of Niagara Falls. Thank God I am not writing that blog entry. No, my bias towards this State proved to be completely unjustified, to where I too can happily say that I love New York.

My morning started a little before 5 a.m. in Erie, Pennsylvania. I am no stranger to big-name outdoor travel sites, having previously traveled to Lake Louise and Mount Rushmore, so I already knew the drill: get there early, and even then prepare for crowds and a whole lot of selfie-sticks. I even went so far as to have takeout pizza the night before, saving a few slices for my morning breakfast to make my morning that much more efficient. I gobbled down the slices, chugged a cup of coffee, got dressed, and was fully checked out of my room a little after 6 am. It was foggy and cold outside, so my short drive through Pennsylvania proved uneventful. Even then, I wasn’t really paying attention to the place because I was trying to get my mind ready for traffic even worse than what I had gone through the evening before.

And then something astonishing happened. The sun rose and broke through the fog, I crossed into New York, the interstate narrowed to just two lanes and suddenly, for the first time since leaving Northern Michigan, I was alone on the road. The interstate was entirely mine, and I felt that happy sense of solitude that I used to feel driving through empty states like Nevada and Wyoming, or even on the highway up to Mount Lassen. New York was not some place filled with an overwhelming number of people. No, upstate New York to this very day, remains rural! And it is beautiful.

But certainly something was wrong here? Certainly when I reached Buffalo (the city I had to go through to get to Niagara Falls), the traffic would pick up? No. Buffalo too, a city which by the look of it is similar size to Omaha, was also traffic-free, and it too was beautiful and clean and nice.

And then I made it to Niagara Falls. Now I had read the previous evening that there are small, city-owned public lots slightly outside of the park. According to what I read, the lots are free but usually fill very quickly. I spotted one pretty quick when I got to the town of Niagara Falls. Parking there was a breeze…the lot was empty.

From there, I walked the quarter-mile or so over to the park. And ladies-and-gentlemen, the park was nearly person free. I pretty much had the entire Niagara Falls park to myself this morning! It was amazing and looked like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And my trusty Carhartt jacket got me through it all:

A bit of history on the Falls: apparently we can thank an old 1850s painting of the Falls by Frederic Edwin Church for its existence today. You see, the Falls were virtually wiped off the map in the 1860s, their water and power being used to supply industrial revolution era factories. By the end of the 1860s, the Niagara Falls we recognize today looked like this:

Naturalists, disgusted by what they saw, gathered some of the brightest intellects and deepest pockets in the country to restore Niagara Falls to its former glory. But there was a problem: no one knew what the original falls looked like. They had to instead tear out the factories and use the old oil painting to do their best to restore the area to what they believed it looked like before the factories. They were largely successful in restoring the falls, but even now we cannot be certain that what we are seeing when we look at the Falls is actually what it looked like pre-revolution. Niagara Falls, as we see it today, for better-or-worse, is a manmade re-construction.

Of course the other interesting history involving the Falls involves Nikola Tesla, who, at the end of the 19th century, was able to convince the area to allow him to use the Falls to run massive motors using his AC technology (how he was able to convince people to let him do this after they had just finished restoring the place, I don’t know). The technology worked, proved to be a huge success, and shortly thereafter Buffalo, New York became a fully electric and lighted city. A small glimpse of the sort of changes that the world would see in the 20th Century. And it all started at Niagara Falls.

Anyways, as you can tell, I had a fantastic time exploring and enjoying the park! How did I get so lucky? I think it was a combination of several things, it was really stormy the night before, and only by luck was it sunny that morning; I made sure to get there at the crack of dawn; and I went in the fall, which I suppose is off-season (although I don’t know why because the colors were quite beautiful). By the time I was done exploring, I was several hours ahead of schedule. So, I decided to tighten my hiking shoes and head out to explore another impressive place here in New York. (To be continued…)

Cheers,

Rob