by Nick Taylor

The idea for a road trip began in the Audi dealership in the last week of 2021. “Let’s get the car we want,” Barbara whispered in my ear. “We could die tomorrow and if we get a nice car, we can drive to Colorado in June to see the family.” 

Barbara has a way of cutting to the chase, and that was good enough for me.  So what that gasoline prices were going through the roof?  The price of three fill-ups would buy an airline ticket, but weird weather and a pilot shortage meant your flight might never leave. We traded our old car in and started planning.

Colorado’s Vail Valley was our destination.

Lots of places we hadn’t seen and didn’t know lay in between. Time wasn’t a big factor. We started looking at maps and plotting routes. I’d never seen Niagara Falls, never visited my mother’s hometown in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That would put us on a path to Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, foreign territory to us both. We went to AAA, where members can get a set of maps and turn-by-turn instructions called a TripTik. We didn’t want to drive more than five or six hours a day. We searched for hotels that seemed interesting, and were in downtowns. 

We left on Thursday, June 9, our two large rolling suitcases wedged snugly in the A3’s trunk and spillovers crowding the back seat.  Traveling by car, you always think there’s room for another pair of shoes.  Until there isn’t.  We set off around noon, headed for Niagara Falls.  The odometer showed 779 miles.

Barbara took the early driving shift. Following our TripTik — and Google maps, which does the same thing but with turn-by-turn voice instructions — we took the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey and continued west through the Delaware Water Gap into Pennsylvania, headed toward Scranton and turned north into western New York. Along the way, late spring wildflowers painted both sides of the highway in shades of yellow, pink and purple.  We’d been locked in the city for going on three years. Now the flowers, the green hills and sheer rock faces, distant mountains, stands of hardwoods and firs, reminded us that there’s been a glorious country out there all that time.  Near Syracuse, we turned west toward Buffalo and Niagara Falls. 

We got to Niagara Falls around 8:30 and checked in to the Comfort Inn at 1 Prospect Point.

We chose it because it was the closest hotel to the falls and the state park on the American side of the Niagara River. We headed for the Red Coach Inn across the way for dinner after learning that the falls were lit at night and we could saunter over after we ate. It was raining when we left so we grabbed our rain gear from the car.

The nightly fireworks were just finishing and people streamed from the park as we headed toward the falls. Waiting turned out to be a good thing because we didn’t have to elbow our way to the railing at the river’s edge.  Below, a bank of lights lit the plunging spray in alternating colors.  The sound alone signaled the water’s incredible force.  Niagara Falls was magnificent, even in the dark without the fireworks.

Going down to breakfast the next morning, we shared the elevator with another couple. The wife was telling her husband about a mystery she was reading that disturbed her. “Ah,” I said, “the victim heard the sound of rushing water!”  They laughed.  After breakfast, we walked to the falls again, following the Niagara River’s northward flow from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.

 At the end of the river the panorama stretched before us in bright sunlight – the wide white-capped river flowing toward the brink, the roar of tons of falling water.  At the precipice, the sun made rainbows in the mist from the rising spray. The falls you see in the distance are on the Canadian side of the river.  

The Canadian falls are wider, the American falls higher at 180 feet.  And this video feels like it puts you there.

The park was filled with tourists enjoying the natural wonder and putting the pandemic aside for a bit. We lingered taking photos and talking to a young couple and their son from Texas. Satheesh Makam offered to take our photo.

And then we took a photo of their family.

For us, the road beckoned.  We loaded the car and crossed the nearby Rainbow Bridge to Canada and the quickest route to Michigan, our next destination.

We’d seen a sign on the highway heading into Niagara Falls that to enter Canada since the COVID pandemic you need something called ArriveCAN. Barbara investigated and downloaded an ArriveCAN app for each of us. We filled out the questionnaire on our phones and still we needed the help of a patient border agent at the crossing to help us with some on-the-spot corrections.

Once across the border, we headed almost due west leaving Toronto and London to our north. Our route took us through Ontario’s Niagara wine country south of Lake Ontario. Vineyard names along the highway let us know what we were missing. One in particular stood out: the Organized Crime Winery.  Nice little bottle you’ve got there.  Be a shame if you didn’t like it.

We left Canada a little west of Sarnia, crossed the Blue Water Bridge over the St. Claire River, south of Lake Huron, to a long lineup at the U.S. entry point where only three of seven lanes were open.

Once through, we continued west and hit I-75 north to our destination of Bay City along the Saginaw River. We had a room in a Doubletree Hotel that overlooked the Saginaw, which flows into Lake Huron.

Bay City officials have revived their pretty downtown with festivals and fairs. This was a Friday night and people filled the river-facing restaurants.

A good number of shops on the main street feature antiques and there’s even a large store divided into an antiques mall with a lot of midwest Americana.  Outside on the street, young people moved around on electric scooters that the city, with a private company, had placed strategically.

The weekend we were there tents and stalls lined several blocks. They featured jewelry, crafts, T-shirts, and food. 

We walked along the river, wandered around, and enjoyed a meal. Then on Saturday morning, we got back on I-75. About fifty miles up the road, we stopped in West Branch to fill up. Eighty-nine octane was the same $5-plus that we were used to in New York; the tank took almost twelve gallons that clicked to $66.52 on the pump. The Audi calculated we were getting over thirty miles a gallon.

Back on the road, we continued north for the Mackinac Bridge to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There I hoped to learn more about my mother’s family, which had a curious story.

Come with us to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Or, here.