Odometer: 149606
Distance So Far: 4888
Days On the Road: 19
Final Stop: Rochester, NY

Niagra needs no introduction, and mom and dad have now seen this behemoth three times. What’s special about this time is they got to see it from Canada!

At long last, mom has her Yahtzee — she’s gone feet-first into all five Great Lakes. Maybe this is the secret to the Fountain of Youth? TBD, we’ll see how her youthful glow is coming along at Thanksgiving.

From Mom

[Visited the] Whitmer house today. It is not on the foundation that they thought was the Peter Whitmer house foundation. They think that foundation belonged to the house of one of his kids. His house was a double house with a breezeway between them. It still helps us imagine how it might have been back then. I’m so curious where the actual Peter Whitmer house was, but they haven’t been able to find it.

And later…

Introducing…Lake Ontario! We have now put at least our feet in every one of the 5 Great Lakes this trip! We have loved them all and have hated to get out of the water! We continue to act like a couple kids but we’re having so much fun!

From Dad

September 19

We drove north between Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake today, part of it on the hill (mountain?) between the two.  Linda said the Nephites had made a really big mound here. 😊I said that a lot of them got killed in that final battle, so it needed to be big. 😊 [Editor’s note, I feel like the second smiley here is unnecessarily macabre. Dad’s gotten dark in his old age]

We stopped at the Whitmer Farm near Fayette.  As we pulled in, Linda said, “That looks like Scott Winterton!”  Sure enough, it was our neighbor from Herriman.  He is here on assignment with the Deseret News to cover the Hill Cumorah Visitor Center rededication, and was also doing some coverage at Whitmer Farm.  He was running a photography drone at the time, so couldn’t talk much.  But it was great to see him after quite a few years.  (We found out later that the Church has recently authorized expanding the facilities at the farm.)  The Sister missionary we talked to hadn’t given any tours there yet, so we were her first practice.  She did really well, and we had an enjoyable time with her.

From there we jumped on the I-90 New York thruway (toll road) and headed for Buffalo.  We crossed into Canada to see the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  We have been on the US side a couple of times.  We have also ridden the Maid of the Mist boat up to the Falls.  But this is our first time on the Canadian Side.  We crossed the bridge at Buffalo and went up the Canadian side of the river.  The Canadian side is spectacular.  Getting a view of the American falls from across the river was pretty amazing—a much different perspective from being alongside it.  Then we walked up to the Canadian falls.  There was so much mist, we could see a double rainbow in the mist.  But it wasn’t so misty that we couldn’t get a clear view of the falls.  Absolutely beautiful.  Well worth the effort to get there.  We also parked near the falls; the fee was $24.00/hour. !!!  We parked for the whole hour, plus a couple of minutes.  The bad news: expensive parking; the good news: it was Canadian dollars, so it ended up being “only” $17.50.  But it was easy for Linda to take her walker from there, so we got to spend the entire time along the falls.  We crossed back into the US on the bridge by the falls.  The line of cars to get into Canada stretched all the way across the bridge.  It made us glad we had crossed at Buffalo, where the wait was less than 10 minutes.

Then we drove north along the Niagara River to Lake Ontario and stopped at a small state park there next to the lake.  We put on our water shoes and went wading in the lake.  That’s Great Lake #5.  We got in all of them this trip.  Linda is a happy camper/wader/swimmer.  Then we drove on to Rochester and had a “birthday dinner” at Outback Steak House.

Another half hour or so of driving and we reached our hotel just before 11:00.