Day 1 - Port Clinton, OH to Hamilton, Ontario

Ohhh Ca-na-daaaa.....we made it! Today we rode 330 miles and it was all smooth sailing. We began by picking up my rental at the Harley dealer and as soon as I met "Fat Bob" I knew we were going to be great friends, even though I'm not a big fan of the "matte red" color. While I was getting my rental all sorted, Dad got to work installing a part on his bike to help with his "oh no, you'll have to push start me" starting problem. Once that was taken care of we hit the road. Today was mostly highway driving so the mileage went quickly. We went through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, zipping around the edges of Cleveland and Buffalo. We only encountered a few sprinkles through a mostly overcast day, so not too bad. When we arrived at Niagara Falls, the sun came out and we had a lovely, misty visit to the falls. We parked on Goat Island, which is in between the two sets of falls so we were able to walk to both sides for different viewpoints. The falls are so huge they have an enormous spray and even parking our bikes in the parking lot you could feel the mist. In fact, if you take the tour down to the caves under the falls they give you water shoes and ponchos to wear and the people still looked drenched when they came back up. Interesting though, they have these huge bins to recycle the shoes afterwards and they send them to the needy. After Niagara it was a short jaunt to the border where we lined up to cross in to Canada. While I was waiting in line, a woman from a car in the next line asked me what kind of bike I was riding because she thought it looked so cool. I told her it was the "Fat Bob" and she seemed smitten with it too. Me and my new friend are already turning heads :) So, after some pretty basic questioning by the border patrol we all three were ushered through to the Canadian side. Off we went for another 40 miles or so down Queen Elizabeth Way to get to our resting point for the night. We're staying in a small mom-n-pop motel, so we were pleasantly surprised to discover they have wi-fi! Nice! We checked in and then took a run down to Lake Ontario so we could dip our fingers in the water. (We've decided we need to physically touch each lake on this trip). One down, four to go. Then we found this great place for dinner, Jack Astors, and got ourselves some grub. The wait staff all had funny sayings on the backs of their t-shirts, my favorite being "I'll try being a better waitress if you try being smarter". Now we're back in our rooms winding down for the evening. All in all a great beginning and we're looking forward to tomorrow, which includes a ferry ride on the Chi-Cheemaun ferry across Lake Huron. You can click here to see pictures from today.

We'll try to check in again tomorrow...