New England – Fall 2010 – Day 9: Watertown to Niagara Falls

We were hoping to enjoy some time in Sackets Harbor before travelling along the coast roads towards Niagara; this meant that we rose relatively early in order to get on the road.
Breakfast was included in our deal and it was one of the best on our travels. The real treat was the egg and omelettes chef who was also a baseball nut and a Red Sox fan. He tipped the Yankees to lose in the first round of the American League playoffs against the Minnesota Twins; he was entirely convincing as to how they completely failed to match up and were, anyway, in a slump limping into the playoffs. The fact that he was a Red Sox fan may have coloured his opinion because the Yankees progressed 3-0 to meet the Texas Rangers.
Once again there was a sizable contingent of soldiers and their families eating breakfast but also we had another set of bikers sporting their leathers and Harley Davison clothing.
We left Watertown without regrets but unfortunately when we got to Sackets Harbor we found that the museums were closed, but we were able to walk round the battle ground walk. We followed the numbered signs and explanations and formed some impressions of the battle. It appears, from memory rather than research, that the final result was a score draw. The British forces landed at Sackets Harbor with the objective of capturing the town and the ship-building facilities, with a secondary purpose of capturing or destroying the American supplies stored there. They failed to do both this but when it looked like the Americans were going to be overwhelmed someone panicked and destroyed the supplies to avoid losing them to the British. The British were finally repelled but by default they had achieved part of their plan.
We watched a pair of eagles patrolling the airspace over the battle ground walk and at times they stooped to earth quite near to us but never quite in camera shot.
Very much at the end of our tour the rain returned and we decided to make our way as straight as possible to Niagara.
We were aware that we were booked into the Canadian side of the falls so we couldn’t use the SatNav which only had the USA loaded. I got round this problem by setting it for Buffalo NY and assuming anything as large as a country would be signed from there. I then used Google to look up a route from the Canadian border to the hotel using street names.
The plan worked and we found ourselves approaching the USA Canada border. The immigration booths were very much like the toll booths we had become accustomed to on our travels, thus Julia was following the car in front oblivious to notices. The fourteen year old Canadian official yelled through his speaker system, “Get back to the stop sign!”
We retreated and advanced again only when signaled forward, but by now the young man was, as my mother would say, “drunk with power”. He greeted us with, “Did you see the sign that time?”
There was no easing of the attitude as we admitted that we were indeed foreign to his shores and we had to give a fairly detailed account of most of our lives leading up to this meeting, and a less detailed description of our future plans.
We were eventually allowed to enter his country where it was to emerge that plans were already in place to fleece us of as much currency as possible.
After some small navigational problems we located the hotel. Not Best Western this time but the Oakes Hotel Overlooking The Falls, we had specified a higher tariff hotel to guarantee a memorable experience, and in fairness it was memorable.
Let me digress, I have a very variable amount of sympathy for victims of scams, at one end of the spectrum is the victim who receives an email from a bank, where they actually have an account, asking them to confirm their security details, when they comply the recipient of their information uses it to rob them. They may have been unsophisticated and trusting but they still get my sympathy.
At the other end of the spectrum, I regularly get emails which ask me permission to use my name and personal details to claim money left in a foreign bank after the account holder has met with a tragic accident. This is clearly an invitation for me to enter into a fraud and therefore I have no sympathy for anyone who provides their personal details and thus gets robbed.
Taking all of the above into account you can chose if you wish to extend your sympathy to us being “scammed” by the hotel, in all this hotel they must have about a dozen rooms which face away from the falls, we collected our room key and pulled our luggage to our assigned room on the second floor, it faced the car park not the falls. I returned to reception and explained our situation, and sure enough there were upgrades available at $20 per night.
Now having two agencies, DialAFlight and American Driving Vacations, dealing on our behalf did not help my case, as I couldn’t categorically state that we had asked for a falls view and our instruction had been passed on. The $40 was money well spent but I remain convinced that there would have been a regular parade of people arriving at a non-falls view and being charged to upgrade. Reading reviews of the hotel have since confirmed my theory.
When we transferred rooms it involved going up and down a small flight of stairs in the corridor, as I did the down leg dragging the smaller bag on wheels, there was a snapping sound and I had the handle in my hand and the bag three steps behind me on the floor.
Julia turned on hearing my expletive, saw the handle and said, “Where did you get that from?”
I collapsed in laughter and promised her maximum exposure for her remark.
We found our way to the replacement room on the eleventh floor and the view was mind-blowing, we were ideally placed to see the Canadian falls but also had a good view of the American falls in the middle distance. The power of the water is such that there is a permanent plume of water vapour rising from the rocks below the drop.
The room was also clearly better than the previous one but that only tended to confirm my suspicions. We unpacked and while Julia had a swim I took a wander to see what restaurants were available and to pick up milk and cookies to go with our afternoon tea. Although I got caught in the next shower I completed both parts of my mission and returned to the room to brew up.
We decided to eat early to have an early night in preparation for a long day enjoying the falls.
We ate at the attached Applebee’s restaurant and were shocked that it was much more expensive than we had expected, we put this down to the fact that it served the hotel trade and not the locals. Insult was added to injury when we were later in bed watching TV and an advert appeared for “One starter and two Mains for £20” and I thought that will be Chilis but no it was Applebee’s and had never been offered to us in any shape or form, both our entrees were over $20 each.
While I watched TV Julia insisted on having the curtains open so that she could see the falls as she lay in bed. At night they are illuminated by floodlights of changing colours and the mist reflects the colours to increase the magic. At midnight the lights are switched off and Julia drew the curtains.