Roam With Me to Notre Dame University, Lake Erie and Niagara Falls -- June 2019

Hello! It's been a long time since I've written here because I've been very sad. The school year of 2018-2019 was emotionally devastating to me as I lost three extremely important people in my life, and they were all aged 50 and below. My best friend since college, Amy Beran, passed away in September. My dear friend and colleague and the heart of our school, Nate Metschke, died during surgery on Christmas Eve day. Then, a wonderful young man who was my unofficial stepson, Trever Erickson, left this world on April 2nd. So, to say I've been very sad is really an understatement, and other things have occurred, too, that have simply added to my sorrow.

This trip, though, that I'm about to write a bit about, finally brought a little joy back into my life. I'll break the trip down into separate posts, starting with our first stops in South Bend, Indiana, and Niagara Falls, New York.

Overall, this was a trip to Boston, but I'll get to that part in a later post. I took my daughter for her birthday and for a visit to Harvard.

We drove. From Nebraska. That's a 23 hour drive. One way. With good traffic.

Sooooo, naturally, we divided the drive out there and made some stops on the way.

After roughly thirteen hours, we arrived in South Bend where we spent the night in a hotel and rose early to explore Notre Dame University a bit. It's an absolutely beautiful campus.

This is the basilica on campus. We entered, and a very nice priest gave us a mini-tour. He said it took twenty years to build, and the stained glass windows all came from France. He told us there are many weddings that take place in it, but you must be a Notre Dame graduate to be able to get married there. I'm not Catholic, but I do enjoy visiting Catholic churches, and I've been in very beautiful ones in Spain and Mexico as well as St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, and I can honestly say that the interior of this smallish cathedral rivals some of the best I've seen abroad. The priest and I also shared our sorrow at the devastating fire that happened recently in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I will let the photos I took speak for themselves.

Of course, we couldn't visit Notre Dame University without at least walking by its famed football stadium. We also ate an early lunch at the nearby restaurant, Legends of Notre Dame, but I have a bone to pick with university police. I specifically parked in the parking lot for the restaurant. We arrived early, so we could walk around campus a little, and when we arrived to the lot, the gate arms were up, so I parked in the restaurant lot. If they didn't want people parking there, I figured the arms would be down like they were on other lots we passed. After we finished our lunch and returned to the car, I found a parking violation on my windshield informing me that I'd parked there before the lot was open. Apparently, it opens at 10:30, and we were there about an hour before that. So, why were the arms up? I looked around the full parking lot and saw that EVERY SINGLE CAR had a parking violation ticket on it. Hmmm. Seems like a pretty big cruel scam the university is pulling on people. Don't leave the damn arms up if you don't want people parking in the lot before 10:30. So much for me trying to do the right thing and park only in the lot for people eating at the restaurant. I have a receipt to prove I ate there, too, along with photos from the interior of the restaurant.

Since our route to Boston took us within a mile of Michigan but actually into Michigan, we made sure to cross the state line quickly just to be able to say we'd been in Michigan, too, on our twelve state road trip.

In case you're wondering, the twelve states were:
Nebraska
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana
Michigan
Ohio
Pennsylvania
New York
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New Jersey
After lunch, we took off for Niagara Falls. Since I wanted to drive along or as close to Lake Erie as possible, we did get off the interstate for a while and took Route 5 through Pennsylvania. We were both astounded to find mile upon mile of vineyards on the very scenic drive. Often we couldn't see the lake, but when we could, it was breathtaking. I envy the people who live with it in their very backyards. The first two photos are at Presque Isle State Park by Erie, Pennsylvania, and the second two are Barcelona Harbor Pier, Pennsylvania.

As you can see in the last photo, the sun was getting low, and we still had a ways to go to get to Niagara Falls. The scenic drive is the way I prefer to go, but this one made us arrive after nightfall in Niagara Falls, and I don't do so well driving at night. Fortunately, my daughter is an excellent navigator, and she got me through Buffalo and over some bridges and finally to the city of Niagara Falls. I was disappointed to arrive only minutes after the nightly fireworks, but we still walked down to the falls and saw them all lit up before we went to bed.

We even managed to play a giant game of connect four, but there were too many pieces missing to actually complete the game, so we had to call it a tie (even though I was on the way to a certain win!).

The next morning, we were up early to go see the famous waterfalls better. We walked into Niagara Falls State Park, which is the oldest state park in America, and crossed the bridge to Goat Island. From there you can walk to great vantage points to see the American Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, and Horseshoe Falls. Since we had a long drive to Boston ahead of us, we opted not to go down to the Cave of the Winds where we would have been soaked through prior to our drive. Just seeing them from above was staggering.

After a third day of driving, we finally arrived at our luxury hotel in Cambridge with a view of the Charles River and downtown Boston across the river. I was delighted to find a lovely plate of fruit waiting for us, but I was even more delighted to see the fireworks display from our sixth floor window right on the river. It was as if Boston said -- We're awful sorry you missed the fireworks over the falls. Here's some better ones to cheer you up and welcome you to our city. They were most likely in honor of Juneteenth since that's the day we arrived, but I like my reason better. :)

I'll write about our Boston excursions in another post. Just know that the fireworks and the sight of the lit-up skyline put a rare smile on my face. I was happy we had arrived, and I was looking forward to what was in store for us during our stay.