Back from Back East

We're back from Erie and still have most of the family still talking to us so - SUCCESS! It was beautiful there, I'd forgotten how green and blue and flowery everything is there right on the lake. My kids swam in Lake Erie, saw Perry's Monument and walked around the public dock. My kids rode the Comet at Waldameer, the same roller coaster I rode when I was a kid, my parents rode as kids and my grandparents rode as kids and that's pretty darn cool. New this year, the park added a new roller coaster to mimic one that existed when the park opened in 1896. It crosses over the road that goes out to the peninsula. As a kid I never went out to the peninsula without being reminded of the coaster that used to go over the road, neither did my parents, and neither did their parents. My great grandparents rode that roller coaster when they were kids.

After Erie we drove out to see Niagara Falls. The kids were impressed by the falls, loved the Maid of the Mist and had a great time visiting with their cousins while there. We saw an amazing rainbow when the setting sun hit the mist of the horseshoe falls just right, won $140 in the Casino when we traded some babysitting with my sister, and walked in the warm summer rain by the falls at night where Brian was able to make a giant shadow puppet on the face of the falls (or so he says.) And the best part for me were the notes Gwen wrote on the plane ride home. This one is a picture of the snow globe she chose as a souvenir.