27.) There for a Moment - Buffalo & Niagara, NY

27th Stop.  I’m doing a lot of traveling this summer, so I’ve decided to share the moments, the places I found unique and special.  I’m calling them ‘There for a Moment’ because as I travel I’m not just experiencing a place, but I’m experiencing that place at that particular time.  If I went back two years later, both that place and myself would be different and I would see and experience it differently.  I want to share these experiences with others so that maybe they will be inspired to see a place they might never have thought would interest them.  Due to my travels I don’t always have instant access to internet, so some of these might be posted on top of each other, my apologies in advance. 

Here was a big surprise to me, Buffalo is HUGE.  My old roommate lives in Buffalo and would be the happiest person in the world to live there for the rest of her life, so that’s where I know Buffalo from but even with her telling me about it I was expecting a medium size town not a full-fledged city.  I got into Buffalo about nine o’clock at night after having driven over eight hours the last two days from Nova Scotia to Augusta, Maine, from Augusta to Buffalo to make it in time to see her before she left. 

She was out with a whole group of people from her rugby team at a Mexican place, so I met her there, then she took me to her favorite bars, and night spots in that part of town.  We then slept at her friend’s house who lives nearby.  She was still finishing up classes for her master’s degree so had to finish writing a paper over the next two days.  So she took me out to breakfast and then gave me a list of must see places in that area for me to go to while she finished her stuff before meeting up with her later. 

I went to one of the art museums.  Which is apparently insanely famous, again another shocker to me.  I just had never heard about Buffalo in a good way except for her so I guess I wasn’t expecting a whole lot.  The Albright Knox Gallery was fairly small but had some unique things in its collection, it mainly focused on abstract and twenty and twenty first century art.  One of my favorites was a mirrored room, the insulation was about ten by ten by ten, with all the walls, floors, chairs, tables made out of reflective glass.  Visitors could enter one by one with the help of security to be completely enclosed for a few minutes.   The idea was perception of reality, if everything reflects back at you there is no beginning or end, its infinite, everywhere you look you can’t get away, bigger or smaller version but all version of the same thing, seen a million times, in a million different ways.  It’s trippy for sure.  They also had a Picasso Blue period, I’ve seen several of his works but never his blue period in person.  I must say that I became a fan of his work after seeing his abstracts up close in real life but his blue period did nothing for me. 

One of my favorite parts of the museum was its staircase.  An artist came in with a graphite pencil and drew on the walls from the first floor, to the landing to the second floor and the first room at the top.  From afar it looks like wall panels curving in shades of grey from dark to light to create an almost cylinder highlighted look, but up close its intricate squiggles, so that even the darkest parts are a mass of squiggles drawn not shaded onto the wall.  It reminded me of Seurat’s pointism, far away the viewer sees a scene up close all they see is a colorful jumble of dots.  

Upstairs was all visual motion media art, everything video game or moving reproductions of famous pictures, animated tales.  Some were interesting, most didn’t do anything for me.

On the grounds outside were large scale sculptures, after I got done with the museum I wandered around the park across the street, which was apparently a pretty big deal around there afterward, one of her friends had gotten married there.  It was nice, quiet.  The landscape changed from a main area with a large pond, to a more serene area with trees dotting the rolling lawns with twisting paths and benches, to a play area and more open field for picnics and games. 

I then drove to Grand Island where her grandmother lived and she was staying to pick her up so that we could go see Niagara Falls on Maid of the Mist.  This was the top thing she said I absolutely had to do, and even though she’d done it more than a few times she really wanted to do it again.  I had no concept of how big this thing was.  We could see mist, which I had thought was from a factory until she pointed out that it was the mist ten minutes before we got there.  It looks big from the top but when we took the elevator down to the bottom to get on the boat, I happened to look up and over top the elevator shaft I could just barely see a section of the falls and looking up at that, seeing how it was still taller then that I remember looking at my roommate saying, “Holy shit!  That thing must be at least fifteen sixteen stories tall!”  She just smiled at me.  We got on the boat, a thirty minute round trip, standing at the very front on the bottom level (the best spot according to her), I got my first view of both falls together and the amount of water and mist in the air.  We were soaked even with the ponchos they gave us.  I decided to put my lifeproof phone case to the test and we took some pictures.  I was surprised at how warm the water was, I was expecting even the mist to be cool but it was very warm, it made me want to jump into the water and go for a swim.

When we got off the boat, she led me to a path that went up the side of the falls, it steadily got more and more wet, the roar of the water was amazing, it felt like it was raining on us and we weren’t even near the water.  We could look out through the mist between us and the Canada side to get glimpses of the city through the waves of mist.  It was incredible.  I’ve seen some cool waterfalls before but this is definitely something I would recommend being on the top of everyone’s to do list.  I’ve heard of Niagara Falls before just like the Statue of Liberty so I didn’t expect to be wowed by either of them, but they were both something that needs to be experienced in person.

Afterward she took me to get some true Buffalo wings at a place called Duffy’s.  I generally like Buffalo wings but I’m not a fanatic, well I had never had true wings before apparently.  I was craving those things for weeks after I had them.  I don’t know what the difference was, all she said was they are cooked better and they use a blue cheese dip instead of ranch but those things were freaking amazing!  Best food I had in Buffalo!  Afterward since it was Thursday, we went to food truck Thursday with one of her best friends who is studying to become and hearing doctor.  We each got some pirogues and mac and cheese.  It was good but nothing like those wings.

The next day she scrambled to finish her paper before she had to leave at noon to make it to a music festival that her and about ten of her friends were going to before she went back to Savannah.  So we went and got breakfast and then I did some more things on her list.  I saw the botanical garden, it had some very unusual plants in it, and a good sized collection of bonsai trees.  I’ve seen other botanical gardens that were much larger but this one was nice in its variety of plants for its space.  It also had an artist featured in it that they interwove his sculptures in with the plants.  He used all natural materials and forms from nature but with vivid blues, reds, and blacks.

My old roommate went to the music festival for the weekend, and her grandmother was going camping for a week and needed a house and pet sitter.  Since my schedule was wide open now that I had visited her, and it was a free place to stay I stayed.  Her grandmother was very sweet she didn’t want me to miss out on having a friend so called her’s up.  I ended up having dinner with a professor of clinical technology one night, where I tried the fish fry.  Which is much different than a fish fry in the south.  Another day her neighbors were going tubing down the river right out in front of her house and took me with them.  The water was amazingly warm, it was the perfect day for it.  Then her grandmother came back, I stayed another week helping her with computer stuff, some things around the house, and I also did a few day trips, one was to Toronto, I wanted to see Toronto (article 28).

So on the way back from Toronto, I stopped and Niagara on the lake.  It was a place that the couple my roommate knew that had recently got married went on their honey moon.  It was a smaller community right on the water with lots of green surrounding it.  A pretty little park and walk way that in the very distance I could make out the towers of Toronto in.  I sat there looking out over the water until it was mostly dark.  I had been told that I needed to see the falls from the Canadian side at night.  So I drove up the twisting road following the river that left Niagara Falls back to it.  There was a power plant along the way, I stopped at the overlook.  I don’t know why but there is something interesting about looking about older industrial technology like that, something built on a huge scale to create something like hydroelectricity that’s been around for thirty to fifty years it’s just cool to look at.  Then I headed up to the city of Niagara on the Canadian side.  This place is almost like Las Vegas with the lights, and the amusements, gambling, rides, the falls were lit up in rainbow colors, the towers changes colors, lights danced circling in the sky.  I don’t know, sometimes that’s all fun but here in a place where nature is doing something that isn’t done anywhere else on earth it’s going to be celebrated like that?  Something about that feels wrong to me.    

For my last day trip in the area, my roommate’s grandmother and mom took me to what is the grand canyon of the east, Letchworth State Park.  They seemed disappointed because they were used to coming when the leaves were changing, and they said it was much more beautiful and the water was a lot higher, but I thought it was pretty neat.  Deep canyons, with thick forests all around, I could easily have been happy to camp or hike there for a while.  At the south west end was a waterfall that was picturesque too.

I had a lot of fun in this area, and there was a lot more to do then I thought there would be.  That being said, I’m sorry but I’m not a Buffalo girl.  I am very glad that I did the Maid of the Mist and Niagara Falls but besides that I would only ever go back to visit friends and eat the wings.