Take that Toll Roads!!

Well it is day 13 of the Tour de Brown and we are going strong! (As is no shave till North Carolina... for me, not Tarin) :)

The day after leaving Indiana we had a really fun drive on some back roads through Indiana and Ohio.  We took the back roads because while going through Illinois on our way to Chicago there were several toll roads on interstate 90.  The first one was only like .60 cents but then they kept going up and a few bucks on toll roads for us is money we could be spending on good stuff like food!  :)  It turns out after a couple of days of traveling on these highways off the interstate, it is much more of an enjoyable drive!  We have seen so many beautiful homes, barns, yards and more.  I would definitely suggest that to anyone traveling if they have the time, because the interstate is so boring anyways!  Tarin was having a very hard time though.  There have been many many many antique stores along the way!

Anyways, we ended up staying at a campground right on the edge of Ohio and Pennsylvania on the night of the 17th.  It was an interesting campground with most of the population being residents of the rv/campground.  The day of driving from Indiana to here was a long one, but it was nice because this location left us only 2.5 hours from Niagara Falls!

So on either Sunday or Monday (it's getting really hard to keep track of days) we drove up to the city of Niagara Falls which was not very pretty, we were in the hood all the way up to the site of the falls.  But then we walked in to the park of Niagara Falls and wow, it is really amazing.  We took a tour on the Maid of the Mist which was a boat that took us down under the falls.  We got to see all of the falls and luckily they gave us a pancho, because you get soaked! The mist is more like a rain in some spots.  Along with Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore this was one of my favorite things so far on the trip.

We were done seeing Niagara around 2PM and we started driving towards a small town of Red Creek, NY.  It is up in Northern NY right on Lake Ontario.  And our campsite was literally about 100 ft from the water.  When we got there it was beautiful, the water was so calm and the sun was setting.  Earlier in the trip we had seen Lakes Michigan and Erie and they were both like the ocean basically with waves crashing and whitecaps out on the water.  So the calmness surprised us.  This turned out to be the calm before the mini-storm.

We knew there was a 30% chance of rain in the area and even though we were hoping it wouldn't rain, we threw together a rainproof cover over our tent so we didn't have an incident like we did in the Tetons.      It did rain.  And the contraption we made DID work! We were happy and found out that the calmness of Lake Ontario must have been a rare occasion, because it was very windy during the night and the next morning as were were packing up.

Onto another long drive across New York and down over to the Boston area (avoiding any tolls i might add).  New York is beautiful!  It must be the best time to drive because all of the leaves are changing colors and it is quite the sight!  Here we stayed at a nice state park about 15 min south of Boston.  This park was deep in the woods and covered about 3500 acres.  With only about 2 other campers in the park it was a little creepy at times, but we survived.  Yesterday we went into downtown Boston and went on the Freedom Trail.  It was very cool!  We got to see a bunch of places that played a big part in the forming of our Constitution and country!  Things such as Paul Revere's house, the balcony where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people, Bunker Hill, and much more.  Not to mention present day downtown Boston which is just mixed in among all the history.  It was a lot of walking, but a lot of fun.  We stayed at the same campground last night and besides the large amount of daddy long leg spiders that we found over our two night stay, it turned out to be a nice campground.

Right now we're at an Apple store, Tarin's phone has been acting up, so while she's getting that figured out, I'm blogging.  We're going to drive down through New York City today!

The Lord has been taking very good care of us and we know he will the rest of the way (only about 700 some miles more!!).

Keep praying for us though! Love you all!

T&T