First week in Buffalo NY

July 12 - 18, 2014 

We have been planted in Grand Island now for a week to visit friends and family.  So far that’s exactly what we have done too.   We even had a surprise from some Texas friends who were staying close by in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada which is only 9 miles from us.  Lastly, our bed has a new life with a new gel memory foam topper we added this week.  It has been an eventful week!

Some pictures of the Niagara KOA.  They have very nice cabins with furniture and grilles.

KOA has 2 pools.  This is mainly the kid pool.

This is the adult pool.

The KOA is behind Fantasy Island Amusement park.  The roller coaster is in the background.

Just up the road from our site is a farmers market with fresh produce.

We had to have sweet corn.  Our first of the year!

Saturday we went out for dinner with Patty’s parents (Shirley and Tom) to a favorite local restaurant (Mr. Dee’s).  Saturdays they have a Prime Rib special and we have not had Prime Rib in a while.  We were not disappointed; the Prime Rib was some of the best we have had in a very long time. The only problem was that we all ate way too much.  The rib was just too good to leave any behind, at least for me. Patty’s parents took enough home for another meal which is what we should have done!

Sunday we stayed with Patty’s dad while Shirley went to a Jazz society picnic in the afternoon.  Shirley has been on the board with the local Jazz society for some time.  Both of her parents are avid Dixieland Jazz enthusiasts.  However, in the past year or so Tom has been suffering with dementia and incontinence preventing him from attending to many outside events.  So we stayed at their house with Tom while Shirley attended the picnic.

Patty’s sister Cheryl and her husband Joe came over later in the afternoon to help out and to visit.  After a couple of hours we decided to venture to Cheryl and Joe’s house for dinner.  Cheryl made hot Italian chicken sausages for us to make sandwiches with.  Tom seemed to really like the sausages and had 2 of them.  A little after 7pm we took Tom back to his house and we made our way back to our RV for the night.

The next couple of days we just hung around the campsite relaxing.  We don’t do this too much and not nearly as much as we had thought we would when we started Full Timing. We did make a couple of runs to Walmart for nothing special to pick up some small things.  I needed to return a pair of flip flops I had purchased in PA a few of weeks ago that were mismatched in size.  These are the type shoes that are hanging and tied together so I didn’t look at the size of both shoes.  One was my size 10 and the other was an 11.  I wore the shoes for a couple of weeks and didn’t notice until Patty said that it looked like I had one foot smaller than the other. That just didn’t seem right to me as I never had any such problem before with different sized feet.  That’s when I discovered that I was in fact wearing 2 different sizes of shoes!  I now have a new pair of correct sized flip flops, yea me!

Patty and her sister at Jared's Jewelry shop where her sister works.  Patty is having some work done on her jewelry.

Wednesday we went to Niagara Falls in Ontario Canada to spend the day with some Texan friends.  A few days ago friends Terry and Ken from Texas called to say that they are staying just a few miles (9 miles) from us in Canada at the falls.  We decided to meet up with them and do a little sightseeing.  I think I have been here before but am not really sure and it has been a very long time since Patty has been here. 
  

On the Rainbow Bridge going to Ontario Canada.  Canadian falls in the background.

Rainbow bridge with a 50 minute wait to get across!

We started by having a great lunch at the top of the Skylon Tower.  This is a restaurant that rotates so you get to see the entire skyline as you eat.  It also overlooks both the US and Canadian Falls.  After lunch we took a fairly long walk down to the edge of the Niagara River to get a closer view of the falls.  We were close enough to get misted by the falls. There was even a rainbow between the 2 falls!  We some more walking and needed to call it quits by then so we could get back to the US before dark.  We had a great time with very good friends.  We will see them next time back in Texas in December.

The Skylon Tower.  Patty and Terry taking the lead.

American Falls from the top of the Skylon Tower.

The much more impressive Canadian Falls also from the Skylon Tower.

Maid of the Mist tourist boat getting close to the falls.

View of the Rainbow bridge from the Skylon Tower.

Closer view of the Canadian Falls from the street level.

We had a rainbow under the American Falls.

Thursday Patty’s father Tom had a surgical urinary catheter inserted at Sisters Hospital in Buffalo.  We met Patty’s parents at the front entrance to the hospital to help with getting parked and settled in for the surgery.  Surgery was at 10 am but they needed to be at the hospital by 7:30 am so we arrived at 7 am just to be sure we were there in time to help.  All went well and Tom was in a regular bed by 1 pm.   It was decided that he stay the night for observation we think mainly due to his age and to make sure the catheter was healing correctly.  We are all hoping that this makes both of their lives a little better now.

Sisters Hospital in Buffalo.

Friday was Patty’s 40th high school reunion from Maryvale High School in Cheektowaga NY.  Patty had a fairly large graduating class of all most 600 students.  They had a good turnout of about 200 people of whom they had about 80 graduates, the rest being spouses.   They had a DJ, lots and lots of food, and an open bar!  This class knows how to have a great time!  We stayed until about 11 pm and there was still over half of the people there.  Our RV was about 40 minutes away so we got back about midnight. Patty had a good time and so did I. 

The reunion was held at The Cove.  This was a water fall behind the bar.

Various images from the mid 70s were projected for all to see.
Patty's graduation picture is the far right bottom.

Us with our usual after 4 pm libations!

My graduating class was around 175 in the farmlands of Indiana. I didn’t realize this but it seems that to have a great turnout at a reunion you need to have a large graduating class.  Patty’s class had only 13% of the graduates attend but since the class was so big, they had a nice 200 people for the event.  That’s probably why my class has only had 2 reunions in 40 years, the 5th and the 25th.  If only 13% of my class shows up with spouses it would only be an event of 46 people.

Tonight was going to be our first time sleeping on our new gel foam mattress topper.  We purchased this one on-line from Amazon last week after many days of researching.  We bought the King size 3 inch Beautyrest Gel Memory Foam Mattress Topper.  It really is unbelievable how many foam mattress toppers there are for sale and for a very wide range of prices.  I found these toppers anywhere from $100 to over $600 and from way over 50 suppliers.  I read reviews until I just had to stop reading on many days before I bought this one for $188.  

Our new gel memory foam mattress topper as shipped.  It is 37 pounds and small with all of the air squeezed out of it.

This is what it looks like an hour after taking the plastic wrap off of it.

We wanted a topper that was cooler and would add some life to the 2 year old RV memory foam bed we have.   RV beds are not made to last very long and ours was starting to sag a little in the middle.  I also wanted the memory foam to come with its own cover.  We also didn’t want to spend much more than $200 on the topper.  

After the first night we can both say that the mattress lived up to the hype and did what we wanted it to do.  We stayed cool and hardly moved throughout the night.  The next morning our sheets and bedspread were still in place at the end of the bed.  Now that is remarkable as usually the bed is a total mess in the morning from my constant tossing and turning.  We just need to see how long that lasts now.

That’s it for the first week here in the Buffalo area.  I am hoping this week I can tackle a project I have been thinking about for a while now.  The area under the sink doesn’t have any light so it is very difficult to find stuff under there.  We put some battery powered lights under the sink but we are always leaving them on and running down the batteries.  I am planning to put an LED light bar down the center of the cabinet with an auto switch mounted to the cabinet door.  I’ll post how that project goes next time, hopefully.

Stay Tuned!