July 16, 2016
Crossing the border
For the last 6 weeks whenever someone asks us where we are heading, an easy answer was "Canada". It's surprising how often I forget the name of the last town we stayed in or the next town we are heading to. Today our goal was to get to Canada.
We continued to hug the shore of Lake Erie. The Adventure Cycling route follows route 5 a bit further inland, which has better pavement and more services, but we loved the quiet roads along the shore and saw more people jogging and cycling than driving cars. We suspect they get lots of snow here. Apparently one way to prevent having your house get buried in snow is to proactively burry it in dirt.
After a while Buffalo came into view, and Canada beyond.
We were lucky to hit the border on a weekend. Traffic in Buffalo was light and Jeanna had found a bike path that would take us right to the Peace bridge. There was some confusing construction right before the bridge but we found our way around the construction to the base of the bridge.
The Peace bridge has bike/ pedestrian sidewalks on both sides, but the Canada bound sidewalk was closed for yet more construction. We asked for directions from a guy directing traffic who sent us to a policeman for directions. The policeman gave us helpful but vague directions about going around the back of a building. Eventually we spotted some signs for cyclists heading to Canada that lead us to a turnstile.
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Even with all our confusion finding our way onto the bridge, we got across the bridge and into Canada way faster than the people crossing in cars and trucks. Traffic was backed up all the way across the bridge. Team S was slightly ahead and went through passport control first. We saw them talking to the border agent for a long time. At one point Jeanna turned around to show him the map of our route on the back of her jersey. Finally they went through, then a car, then it was time for team A to go through.
The border agent was obviously expecting us. He took our passports, but I don't think he looked at them. Instead he tried to repeat all of the states and provinces on our route. He got most of them, although it took a long time. He did not seem at all concerned about the long line of cars queued up waiting to enter Canada as soon as he finished this important matter.
I was concerned that we would now be on busy streets on the Canadian side, but we were lucky enough to be able to take the Niagara Parkway all the way along the river, past the falls and to our hotel. There was almost no traffic for much of the way and an excellent bike path when there was traffic.
Most of the Niagara Parkway is residential. The older houses are fairly modest, the new construction is mansions. We came across the Chippewa battlefield along the way, site of an American victory in the war if 1812. All that changed when we got to Niagara Falls. The view is spectacular, but the crowds don't make it a place to linger or enjoy the view.
We had not changed any money. Every place to eat wanted cash, or was ridiculously expensive, or tremendously crowded, or all of the above. We were close enough to get cell phone coverage from the US, so we were able to locate a promising place called Lococo's fruits and vegetables a few blocks from the Parkway. Lococo's turned out to have not only lots of fruis and veggies, but an excellent deli and good bread. We stocked up for dinner and headed to our hotel. Fortunately we were going down the escarpment, not up the escarpment with our groceries.
At the hotel we stashed our bikes in a garage and set about eating our dinner. All that was lacking was some wine. The hotel is not within walking distance of a store and no one felt like biking back up the escarpment. But wait! We struck up a conversation with the guy next door to us at the hotel and he ended up giving our stokers a bottle of wine.
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