The thing that surprised me most about Niagara was that the town was way more of a tourist trap than Sandusky- and that was on the Canada side!
After Niagara Falls, we crossed the border back into the US and headed for Corning, NY, the other surprise hit of the trip. Corning was another coworker recommendation. It's in the Finger Lakes region of western New York kind of near Ithaca and is "famous" for producing Corningware. We were there to see the Rockwell (Bob, not Norman- I made that mistake) Museum of Western Art and the Corning Museum of Glass.
The Rockwell museum was in a beautifully renovated old building in downtown. The main exhibit was of Remington and Russel western paintings, sculptures, and drawings, but there were also works by contemporary artists.
Yep, that's a buffalo jumping through the side of the building.
Sunday morning we visited the museum of glass, which was HUGE. We saw some beautiful pieces
Can you tell I like glass? It's pretty much the only modern art that I like.
We saw a glass blowing demonstration.
And decided to try our hand at making our own! This was possibly the coolest part of the trip.
The finished products had to be cooled overnight and they just arrived in the mail yesterday. What do you think?
Daniels' is the orange one on the left and mine is the purple one on the right.
After spending the morning at the museum (really you could spend a whole day) we drove to Sandusky, OH, for our last day of gallivanting.
Daniel dropped me off at Cedar Point to get my brains rattled on the roller coasters while he spent waaaayyy more time than I would have had patience for pouring over famous guitars at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. You might not think that going to an amusement park by yourself would be all that much fun, but being a "single rider" gets you on many rides a lot faster. Awesome, awesome, awesome rides.
We finished the day driving to an exit with good hotels on I-90 in Indiana, spent the night, got up, and drove back to Madison on Tuesday, arriving back in town around 1pm.
This was the largest, most ambitious vacation we'd ever put together, and I'm happy to say it went well. We got to see and do stuff, but also had time (although much of it was in the car) to rest up. While I was definitely ready to get back home by the time it was over, I can't help but prepare the next trip in my mind...
