Trips | CasaRodante - Our House on Wheels

We were in northern-ish Pennsylvania. West Virginia to the south and New York to the north. We succumbed to the adage of “we were in the area so…’. The area we were near was Niagara Falls! Honeymoon capital of the USA! This is one of the places that Roxie and I have both wanted to see but for years it seemed unattainable. Not until now.

We were unsure where to stay until I looked at the WBCCI courtesy parking for the area. I had tried this before for a couple locations earlier but it didn’t pan out. This time we got a quick response from Mike Clack and he said he had plenty of room for about 6 or more trailers and we could come on by. I wanted a secure place to drop the trailer for the day while we went to the falls. This worked perfectly.

We made it to Mike’s, not until I had missed the turn once and had to reverse. It was easy to get to his parking area and setup the trailer. Very grassy. As soon as we go there it started a downpour of rain and it was on and off all night. The next morning there was standing water in the grass by our trailer, about 1-2”. I was unsure if I was going to get out the next day. Here are some pics of his location and the secluded entry for it:

Yes, those are ruts I carved getting out in 4×4.

Mike’s location is about 30 minutes from the falls themselves and we enjoyed seeing them. The first stop was down from the falls to see the whirlpool:

Everything at the falls was a bit commercialized but I kind of expected it to be, still a disappointment. We immediately set off on the Maid of the Mist:

Yes, you get wet but you don’t care.

We also went to the edge of the falls:

We have heard the view from Canada is prettier and also there will be fireworks. So we decided to head north.

We got to the Canadian border guard and he asked if we had any weapons with us. No, did not bring the gun. But he mentioned pepper spray as one of the ‘weapons’ so that sent us under the ‘canopy’ for a bit more investigation. They looked in the truck, in the shell. Roxie thought they might want to take everything out of the truck and look in each bin. Oh well, if that is what they wanted, we had some time to kill. They didn’t look too thoroughly and let us go our way. They were somewhat interested in our full-timing and why we had so much stuff in the truck.

Since we were over the border we did a bit of driving around, went to Niagara-by-the-Lake and was able to see a glimpse of Lake Ontario. Got some diesel and had to convert liters to gallons, and USD to CAD (it was more expensive than the US). We went back to the falls and decided not to pay the parking price of $5 per 15 minutes. We finally parked up the hill, ate some dinner and walked down to the falls and waited for the fireworks.

Since we are so far north it doesn’t get dark until 9:30 or so. Fireworks didn’t start until 10 and there were lots of people. They also light up the falls. You can see the American Falls in red, white, and blue with the Canadian Falls in red and white:

It took us a while to walk back up to the truck but not too long to get back to the US. We were back to the trailer about 11:30 and leaving the next day.

We were able to see Mike on the day we left and thanked him for the spot. We said that he welcomes anyone to stay there when they want. Look at the Airstream Courtesy Parking group on Facebook for more information.

We headed off down the road to our next destination.

There are a few “Airstream Only” parks scattered through the country. We almost stayed at one in Texas but we went a different direction. This time we were so close we could not pass it by. We were also looking for a place to relax after over 2 weeks of going and seeing things (Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, DC, Gettysburg, Johnstown). The price is $25/night or pay for 6 nights and get the 7th free. Go!

Pen Wood Airstream Park is in the Northwest quadrant of Pennsylvania, just south of Clarion and I80. It is a very nice, homey, well-kept park. Full hookups are provided and there was a steady stream of Airstreams coming in and out while we were there. Many of them on their to Escanaba MI and the WBCCI International Rally.

We used this time to unwind and take care of things. The usual one is laundry (FYI the laundromat there has EXCELLENT WiFi!). We do that once a week and Clarion was a great little town to do it in. We also took in a couple of movies while we were there. We threw in a day trip down to the Pittsburgh area as both of my parents grew up in the area. We found my Dad’s old house easily as we had the address and had seen previous pictures:

We actually chatted shortly with the owners that were outside but they did not seem impressed with the fact that my father grew up there.

We tried to find my mother’s old house but they did not have a specific address in those days so we could not narrow it down. We took pictures of almost every house on that street but we still don’t have a definitive house.

After the week was up we had to go somewhere else, see where in the next post.

Here are some Penn Wood pictures: