We packed up our stuff and left Brennan Beach in Pulaski, NY, and continued driving west to Gasport, NY, which is near Niagara Falls. Our trip today was almost all on Hwy 104 and it is a very nice drive through rolling hills and farmland. We passed through Rochester, where Kodak made film for about 100 years but they have shriveled up considerably since the creation of digital cameras which do not require film. Their factory is an enormous old gob of brick buildings that extend along both sides of the highway for about 1/2 a mile. Rochester has a bunch of traffic lights cleverly timed to operate in such a way that those of us pulling trailers through town are rewarded with long views of town and the abandoned Kodak facilities while waiting for red lights to allow us to continue on our way. There is no bypass road. Outside Rochester Hwy 104 is in fair shape most of the way and driving through was uneventful but very pretty.
We checked into a campground called Niagara’s Hartland (sic) which may be in a heartland but really is not very close to Niagara Falls. They are about 35 or 40 miles west and we will give them a sniff tomorrow. We decided to head down the road to check out the local area and we drove initially to Lockport, NY. Lockport has some neat old buildings but it appears there used to be a lot of industry here in the past. Now there are a bunch of unused industrial buildings that seem to have lots of broken windows. Once in Lockport, we realized we had forgotten the camera so we drove the 20 miles back to Niagara’s Hartland where we recovered the camera before setting out again.
From camp we then went to a place called Gordie Harper’s Bazaar, which was advertised as a restaurant along with a bunch of craft shops so we had to take a look. Normally when we go places like this the food is pretty good but this place was the exception. I ordered the fish plate which came with soup, fries and a big hunk of beer battered fish. The soup was alright and the fries were okay but the enormous chunk of beer battered fish was only nominal, particularly when coupled with the Kraft pre-packaged tartar sauce. Peg chose the fried chicken which also came with soup and green beans. Peg offered me some of the chicken and, fortunately, it was a small piece because it seemed the powder-dry meat had been thoroughly vulcanized somehow giving it a pencil eraser-like consistency that made it almost inedible. Peg stated the green beans, despite being served in a restaurant located in the middle of a region of extensive farming, seemed to be canned and also nominal. To cap this experience off, the waitress seemed unable to remember anything, like what you ordered to eat or drink and she also exhibited an arithmetic acumen when totaling up the bill that was frightening. Her tip was not thrilling.
After a quick foray through the rest of the Bazaar (Bizarre?) and finding nothing of value, we departed. Next on the agenda was a search for diesel since we want to travel to Niagara tomorrow. It seems diesel is a product with scant demand in this farm community amply supplied with diesel farm equipment because we were challenged by our efforts to find someone who had fuel for sale. After the first 20 minute drive, we arrived at a diesel distributor who was closed when we arrived at 7:00 PM, maybe because he had been killed by the food at the Bazaar. We then took another long foray over roads that looked startlingly familiar until we found another station that was only about half an hour from our campground. This vendor, fortunately, had sufficient fuel that we were able to pump into our tanks such that we did not need to be concerned that we would be unable to leave town. We found our way from this remote location back to Niagara’s Hartland where we chickened out on further exploration and rolled into the Invader for sleep.