Saturday 7/27

We headed out around 9:30 after making coffee and eating some yogurt and headed to Buffalo. I had to return some shorts I bought at the Limited in Chicago when I was there for work but we don’t have a limited near Eau Claire so I’d been scoping out where one was and Buffalo worked out to be it. We went to the Walden Galleria Mall, which was nice and had pretty much every store I like. It was oddly not busy though and it was kind of an overcast, almost rainy day so I was surprised. I ended up exchanging the shorts and we ate at PF Chang’s. I thought that I liked my food there last time but this was not good. I got sesame chicken. I would have rather eaten LeeAnn Chin than this. Andy’s swordfish was mediocre at best. Our server was super nice at least. I made the wrong choice going here. We should have gone to Gordon Biersch instead.

Niagara Falls

Then we went to Niagara Falls, fully prepared for it to be a horrible experience with a glut of people everywhere like Acadia. Oddly enough, traffic was not bad. Andy has been here tons of times back when he was a kid and his family lived in Michigan. They’d take out of town guests there. It started pouring right after we got there so we got all ready and decided to brave the rain and go check it out. It was really cool – something to see if you’re in the area. So much water. Andy said the Canadian side is even better but we forgot to bring our passports. There were not many people, probably because of the weather. We were reluctant to go here on a Saturday, assuming there would be tons of people and we wondered if maybe everyone else thought that too. There was still way too long of a line to go to Cave of the Winds, where you get all soaked going down by the water but I wasn’t really that into it anyway. I wore the wrong shoes and my shorts were getting wet at that point, after maybe a half hour, so we walked back to the van and got out of there. I was just impressed the experience only cost $8 for parking.

Southern Tier Brewery

Our next stop was the Southern Tier brewery near Jamestown, NY. Funny thing – we drove right past Jamestown on the way there but we didn’t know Southern Tier was there! We love Southern Tier Crème Brulee and Mokah and Pumking is definitely interesting. I learned it is called Southern Tier because that is the name of the region of New York that it is in – the whole 86 route with Jamestown and Corning, all the way to Binghampton is the Southern Tier of NY. So we took a sort of rural road there and when we arrived there were cars everywhere. It’s a nice brewery. They had a summerfest thing going on with a band outdoors. They have a little bandshell and a yard in the back that is partially covered with a bunch of tables. They had so many beers – they don’t distribute many of their “normal” beers to WI so I hadn’t heard of them. Sonnet is was my favorite. We tried Live, 422, Phin and Matt’s, Sonnet, and IPA. They were super busy with the summerfest deal going on and unfortunately weren’t serving pulled pork sandwiches, which I expected to be our dinner. So we drank a few small beers, bought some merch, and headed out after probably an hour and a half which was when the band quit. There were quite a few drunkies as we were leaving! Reminded me of leaving a beerfest.

So there is not a lot going on in the towns near the brewery and we were starving so we ate at a Ruby Tuesdays at a mall that looked like it was about to go under – unkempt parking lots with aging concrete, weeds growing, and stores like JCPenney. It was not good. I would have rather paid $20 less and just gotten fast food because this was just glorified fast food. I thought I had eaten at Ruby Tuesdays and found it to be ok but I can’t remember when that was.

Whining About the Campground

It was kinda like this but not as nice and organized.

Then we decided to camp nearby since it was 8:00. Well I would have rather stayed at a hotel but I just didn’t care enough to spend another $150 on a decent place. I checked because I thought there may be something cheap since it was a small town but no. So we found Camp Chetauqua on the map, called and found out they had sites and were open till 10, so we headed there and got a site. We had a hell of a time finding our site because it was dark and the road to the tent area was not really a road. I quickly regretted our choice of campground because it was pretty much an RV place with permanent/summer residents and they were apparently celebrating Christmas in July. I am happy to celebrate Christmas just once a year. There were gross Santas and Christmas lights on the RVs. I couldn’t believe how many RVs there were and how many people were just hanging out, singing Christmas songs. There were also an unusually large number of kid screams occurring. As we walked around trying to find out site on foot since driving wasn’t working, we got stuck waiting for what was apparently the half Christmas parade, with a tractor pulling a thing people were sitting on (like a hayride but I didn’t see any hay) and a bunch of golf carts. People were hooting and hollering all over the place and there was what seemed to be a little danceclub tent with music.

The bathrooms were super gross – half of the toilets were plugged and the place was beyond ever being clean again. I got stuck in a whole mindset of hoity toityness and just wondered why people thought it was a good idea to purposely spend time in basically a trailer park. There were so many places that were like modular homes with porches and stuff. I just don’t get it. If I were to live in an RV, I think I’d keep moving if this was the only option and I’d prefer to live in places where there were no other people and you could enjoy nature. This place made me think of a ghetto. There were just tons of RVs, so close together, and just stuff laying around on picnic tables that people hadn’t cleaned up but it was raining so everything was just kind of gross and muddy. I would so much rather live in my house. I feel like when we traveled in the southwest most of the other campers were just traveling like we were. I don’t recall being constantly grossed out and depressed by campgrounds. That was a long time ago though. I’d be interested to do it again and see the difference. Andy brought up the point that maybe these people lived in their RVs or they didn’t have a nice house like we do, which was a good thing for me to consider. So anyway, we set up the tent because, well, we were there and it was after 9:00. I was tired and wanted to sleep but all I could hear was bass from the dance tent. So we watched a few episodes of The Office on Andy’s phone until thankfully it quieted down at 11:00. I was worried because I thought quiet hours started at 10:00 but they actually started at 11:00. I was able to sleep then. 

I stole the Christmas RV pic from here: http://rv-roadtrips.thefuntimesguide.com/2007/12/rv_lights_christmas_decoration.php