Hitting The East Coast

So we drove out of Chicago as the evening was closing in and we joined the toll road. The alternative added miles and hours to the trip so despite having to pay to use the road it certainly worked out cheaper in our gas guzzler. The plan was to visit Cedar Point in Sandusky as Mike Jnr. had recommended it to us so we had a fair bit of driving ahead of us and we lost an hour crossing from Central Standard Time into Eastern Standard Time. We drove until it was dark and then went to a Wal-Mart to get some food supplies for the upcoming days. While we were in the queue for the checkout we saw a bride and groom buying some things in Wal-Mart, very surreal. We got some dinner in Applebee's and continued on until we got to a rest area about an hour from Cedar Point and went to sleep.

The alarm had us up nice and early so that we would get a full day on the rollercoasters. It's built on the banks of Lake Eerie, one of the 5 great lakes. As we arrived it was raining so we parked up on our timber blocks, put on our raincoats, packed our lunches and headed in. The park had 17 roller coasters and queues were a bit bigger than at 6 flags so we only went on the 5 star rides which were rated as "aggressive thrills", of which there ten. The best ones we went on were Raptor (a leg dangley one with plenty of loops and twists), Millenium Force (a really fast sit down ride with lots of steep turns and crests), Maverick (overhead brace with vertical drops, loads of twists and loops and a section where you get accelerated really hard in a tunnel), Magnum XL200 (the first hyper coaster - roller coaster with a drop bigger than 200 feet at the start - built with a big drop in, lots of fast turns and crests), Wicked Twister (similar to Deja-Vu in that you fly past the loading area a couple of times going backwards and forwards straight up with twists) and the best ride of the day and the one we went especially for: Top Thrill Dragster. For this you get strapped in with a big over the head brace and go out to the waiting area. Here you have the lights like at a drag race and when they go green you are accelerated from 0 to 120 mph in 4 seconds, go straight up vertically 420 feet, come straight back down and finish beside where you start about 11 seconds later. It's an absolutely mental ride and one of the best I have ever been on. Highly recommended. It closed down for a bit while we were in the queue and alot of people left but we got to ride it when it reopened. A while later the ride closed again and the wind didn't let up for the evening so I reckon we were one of the last to ride it that day. We drove again for a while towards Cleveland which is our next stop. We had dinner along the way and stopped in a rest area for the night.

We didn't set an alarm as we were both knackered after the late night the previous night and all the excitement of the roller coasters. We drove into Cleveland paying more tolls along the way and parked down on the docks. We were in Cleveland to visit the Rock and Roll Museum and arrived around lunchtime. It was really enjoyable looking at all the various memorabelia from all the inductees. Their collection is incredibly extensive, alot of it donated from various estates of famous dead (and living) stars like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Eric Clapton, Slash, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, U2, Pink Floyd and every kind of inductee in between. There is plenty of space in between all the various instruments, clothes, costumes, notes and all sort of memorabilia on the first three floors and then they have the Wall of Fame on the 4th floor with all the inductees signatures on the 4th along with videos snippets of them being inducted and some music videos of alot of their hits. The top floors are a rotating display and on show when we were there it was Bruce Springsteen. They had an incredible number of artefacts related to The Boss from lyric sheets and the desk he wrote most of his songs at to the clothes on the cover of Born In Then USA and his iconic Telecaster. I really enjoyed this museum.

Next on our list of To Do's was Niagra Falls but we stopped at the cinema on the way for the evening and went to Terminator Salvation. It wasn't too bad but it's nothing on the first two films but they never will be. We headed to another rest area on the route towards Niagra Falls and got some sleep before crossing over into Canada. There was alot of rain during the night drumming down on the roof which kept waking us during the night so neither of us got up when the alarm went off at 9am. When we did hit the road again (still with the tolls, grrr) there were some flash floods along the road which was slowing down traffic but we were through them relatively quickly. Another toll road brought us to Buffalo and soon we were crossing the bridge over to Canada, having our passports stamped and we were back in the metric world. A few kilometres down the road and we were driving past Niagra Falls which is a spectacular sight. We parked the RV down the road and got a shuttle back to the viewing area. We joined the throngs looking over the edge at the mist being kicked up by the millions of gallons pouring over the edge every minute. The sun was shining behind us and was creating a rainbow through which the boats were going into the base of the falls. Before we arrived I had wanted to go on the boat and when we found out it was only 13 dollars each it was sold to me. We strolled down along the cliff to where the boats board, received our blue poncho and boarded the boat. A few minutes later we were sailing upstream into the mist and then the boat was working hard to keep us in the base of the falls. The roar of the water was incredible and surrounded us and a big cheer went up when the announcer welcomed us to Niagra Falls. After a few minutes of getting wet the boat turned around and brought us back to dock downstream. I picked up some Whisky for a friend in Duty Free on our way back across the border and we hit the road again back into USA. This crossing was alot more uneventful than coming back in from Mexico and we rejoined the toll road I-90 towards Boston.

We woke up at another rest area but couldn't find any milk for breakfast so hit the road to the next set of shops where we got gas and milk. We had breakfast and then hit the road to Boston. We continued our routine of staying in an RV park the night before we reach a city and Boston was no different. We booked into one about an hour west of the city and put it in the Sat Nav. We encountered some incredibly heavy rainfall and went through a load of different classic rock stations as the miles ticked away. It cost us $28 when we left the toll road for the last time and we reached the RV park in the evening. It was a large park with lots of trees which is nice but unfortunately they block the Wi-Fi signal so we had to do without internet. Emer cooked stew, we touched base with Garrett (a guy we met in San Fran when we were staying with Jack who offered to put us up and show us a good time in Boston) and gave the RV a good clean. The next morning we filled up the tanks and drove the last few miles to Boston for the July 4th festivities.