Goodbye Maryland, Hello Upstate New York

This first post is from a tent in Niagara Falls, Canada. Over the past couple of months Dana and I have conspired to uproot everything we have of comfort and stability. We sold our house. Everything we own is located either in our 10x15 storage unit or packed into Dana's Hyundai Sonata. Huckle (our dog) is crammed into the backseat of the car with barely enough room to get comfortable. And the three of us are loving it.


As all you you already know, we're moving to Auckland, New Zealand in about a week. We are starting this blog to chronicle our travels 'Down Under' and hopefully inspire one or two of you to visit us while we're there. But it felt relevant to start the blog before we jumped across the big pond because we've been doing some pre traveling beforehand. We moved out of the house (goodbye 3025 Cascade) Thursday July 14th, have a family wedding on July 22nd, and our flight to New Zealand departs on July 25th. We're leaving Huck with Dana's parents in Atlanta, so to give him a big goodbye we've taken him on vacation. He said he wanted to go to upstate New York. Anyone know what the boundaries of 'Upstate' are? I was under the impression that anything not in New York City or it's surrounding suburbs was 'Upstate'. If that's incorrect, please correct me.


So here's where we've been so far with each stop highlighted by a description and/or fact that we learned, and since this is Huckle's trip, a good Huckle story:


Gettysburg in Pennsylvania - They have a beautiful new LEED Gold visitor's center (sorry, I've left the real estate world for now, but I still need to mention that). We got an audio tour and drove the battlefields that are among the rolling hills. For Huck, this was his Marley moment...we stopped to catch up on the audio CD and put down his backseat window all the way to indulge his intense desire to stick his head out the window. Ten seconds later and the backseat was dogless. A squirrel caught his attention and he was gone. After the squirrel quickly disappeared, he knew he was in trouble and walked back to the car with his tail between his legs.

Rickets Glen State Park in Pennsylvania - If you like waterfalls, visit Rickets Glen. We saw 21 waterfalls on a 4 mile hike. Of course we probably should have thought this one out better. Waterfalls mean steep inclines and wet trails. Huck wanted to lead the way and pull us along, making the hike a little dangerous. Luckily we all made it out with the only injury being rope burn on my hand trying to hold him back from flying down the path. There was a huge smile on Huckle's face at the end and he quickly feel asleep in the car. On to the Corning Glass Museum of Glass and....

Finger Lakes - Keuka Lake, New York - Beautiful lake surrounded by steep inclines, providing spectacular views. We visited a handful of wineries (this region is known for their white wines, especially Rieslings). Huck enjoyed a jump into the lake where he could see kids playing, but he didn't make it in, we were getting hungry....

Buffalo Food - Buffalo, New York - Well the city itself wasn't exactly pleasing on the eyes. However we didn't make this stop to see glamorous sights, we came to eat. We had targets previously picked out: Anchor Bar (where Buffalo Wings were invented) and Charlie the Butcher (Mom & Dad raved about their roast beef sandwiches) We got 10 medium wings from Anchor bar to go and got 'Beef on a Weck' sandwiches at Charlie's. The wings were fantastic, just the right amount of heat and these were meaty wings. The roast beef sandwich was placed on a unique bun called a kummelweck roll, the top coated with caraway seeds and coarse salt. The highlight for me was to watch the butcher cut the massive slab of beef into thin pink slices (sorry for the image vegetarians). This ordeal had its ups and downs for Huck. We gave him a little taste of buffalo sauce to begin with.....well it might have been a little too hot for his liking. He spent a couple minutes smacking his lips trying to get rid of the heat. The roast beef sandwich went better for him. The hungry beast has the eye of the tiger in this picture. Clearly, this was a sports center top 10 highlight for Huck.

Niagara Falls - Canada Side - My best description of the area: A mix between Reno, NV and Las Vegas with two pretty big waterfalls close by. A little touristy for my liking. The falls are no doubt impressive, but perhaps Niagara's reputation is built up a little too much. Apparently Niagara Falls is/was a popular honeymoon destination.

Niagara on the Lake - Canada Side - Just 15-20 miles away from the hectic falls, this town was quiet, beautiful and relaxing. There was another wine trail to follow and we followed it to a few different wineries. Ice wine was the specialty of the area and Inniskillen was our favorite.

And so that brings us up to date on Huckle's trip. We're on to Lake Placid next, then wedding, then New Zealand. We feel like we're a little bit in limbo, can look to the past with slight disbelief that we're done with work/residency, and look forward to the unknown life that awaits us in New Zealand. Thanks for reading the blog, and sorry for the long winded first post!