Weekly Recap: New York (Cooperstown, Buffalo, Toronto)

Our first longer travel day was unfortunately very wet. There was steady, pouring rain from upstate Vermont all the way to our campsite in Cooperstown, NY. When we arrived, we set up in the rain and got soaked through. 

Arrived in Cooperstown

Bryn had to miss most of our 3 night stop in Cooperstown, New York. She had a work visit to do nearby and then had to drive to Connecticut for another work visit. This did give us an opportunity to see how one of us traveling without the other will work. Shawn drove the camper from Cooperstown to Buffalo alone, including tearing down and setting up camps, giving us confidence that we can handle these solo when needed. While in Cooperstown Shawn took the opportunity to check out the Baseball Hall of Fame as well as the disc golf course at Ommegang Brewery.

Baseball Hall of Fame

We got a campsite about 20 minutes from downtown Buffalo and stayed for 3 nights. We used the first two to go into Buffalo. The Bills happened to be playing the NFL season opener on our first night, so we went to a bar to try out their buffalo wings and watch the game. The fans at the bar were very enthusiastic about the game. Our second night we used Planet Fitness for the first time then went to dinner at the Southern Tier taproom. Afterwards we checked out the nearby Pearl Street Brewery as well, which had a very cool fan system that felt almost steampunk. We liked their pumpkin beer so much we grabbed a four pack to go.

The next day we did a day trip to Toronto, stopping at Niagara Falls on the way there. They were definitely worth the visit and reminded us of Gullfoss in Iceland (Horseshoe falls at Niagara is definitely larger, but you can't get as close). We skipped all the tourist activities around the Canadian side except for seeing the falls themselves to save more time for Toronto (about an hour and a half drive away).

In Toronto we walked along the waterfront and then went to King Taps for lunch. After lunch we checked out the Hockey Hall of Fame. They had a special "9/99" exhibit on Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky. We also got to see all the NHL trophies, including the Stanley Cup.

After the Hall of Fame our next stop was the Museum of Illusions. This was a fairly small museum with a bunch of optical illusions. It was very cool and a great way to spend an hour. Our favorite illusion was a  stationary walkway through rotating tunnel walls. Despite being on a solid walkway we both felt like we were going to fall over.

Finally we grabbed a poutine appetizer and headed to dinner. We ate at Pearl Harborfront Chinese Cuisine. Bryn loved the dinner dim sum they had. Once we finished there it was time to head back to our Buffalo campsite to get ready for our next travel day (and to see Percy!).

We decided to make a big push west after Buffalo, so our next drive was long! Stay tuned for our next recap.