NY

Last week we headed to upstate New York, starting at Niagara Falls, which really wasn't NY at all. I'm happy to report that it only took me seven months to get back out of the country, even if it was only for a few hours. I hadn't been to Niagara since I was about 4 or 5 when I refused to get on the maid of the mist. And then, once convinced to get on, refused to get off. Man that was awesome.
This time, we did the behind the falls tour on the Canadian side. Someone thought it would be a good idea to build a tunnel behind the falls which is actually pretty cool as you are literally behind the falls. The view was um, watery.
We then visited illustrious Watertown, NY, a veritable hotbed of activity. If you count the production of car freshening trees and memorial day BBQs. From there we headed into the mountains and hiked and camped for three days.
The first day we left from a little town called Wanakena. It was warm, but the sun was baking the piney smell right out of the trees and the air was filled with the most pleasing aroma.
That is, until the air was filled with black flies. Nine miles of hiking and all I could hear was buzzing in my ears. The trail was fairly flat, and great for a first hike of the season. We camped at high falls, a great place to be where instead of bugs, the sound of crashing water filled the air and made for a pleasant evening.
I had my first shelter camping experience and it turns out we dragged a tent into the wilderness for no reason at all. I didn't much care for the shelter, it was strangely warm all night and inside the sleeping bag was too hot, while outside, every exposed piece of skin was susceptible to an endless supply of mosquitoes. But, though a chipmunk tried to rob us, we didn't get eaten by a bear, and the shelter was nice at 5am when a storm stirred up and blew a bunch of branches (logs, I should say) out of trees right in front of us. Scary.

The next day we did have a maybe, kind of, could have been run in with a bear. We heard a very suspicious noise and C thought he saw it, but we didn't stick around to make sure. We just STARTED TALKING VERY LOUDLY FOR POTENTIALLY NO REASON, but it made me feel better about the whole situation. From there we traversed beaver dams and at one point had to cross a terrifyingly high log over an otherwise impassable creek. Did. not. like. Turns out, we found more obstacles I didn't like the next day. By day two we had almost 16 miles under our belts and set out to the high peaks.