New York City & Niagara Falls

We moved on to the greatest city in the world, the big apple, NYC baby!

We had some awesome friends join us for the weekend and we did some of things I've been wanting to do around the city, including High Line Park (created from the old rail line elevated over the city), Chelsea Market (we rose'd all day), and an awesome outdoor food market in Brooklyn. 

The only downside to the weekend was it was miserably hot - I'll never go in the summer again. We attempted to go to the zoo the next day and instead were defeated by the heat. 

Our friends departed and we entertained ourselves for a few more days in the city. We spent the next few days around the city, exploring central park, seeing as many shows as we could and ate ridiculously delicious meals.

I love New York, but we were already missing the mountains. We never feel right at home in the cities and even more so now the outdoors seemed the place to be. 

It was time to get back in the car and drive back across the country, but first we made a stop in Niagara Falls for the Fourth of July. 

There's quite a few touristy things to do in Niagara Falls and we picked the one that suited us - Cave of the Winds. There's a natural cave behind one part of the falls, and while it sounded pretty cool the lead up to it was a bit dull. The tickets sell out pretty fast, and you're forced to watch a video and spend time in their museum before you get to go down. The experience itself was pretty cool though:

We had a pretty great hike and after a rest saw the second best firework show of my life (the first in Burning Man, nothing can top that). The interesting part is - the Canadians put the firework show on for our Independence Day - nice of them, eh?

We started out the next day on a grueling journey to meet our friends out in Yellowstone NP. Our next National Park loop of the trip officially started, Yellowstone, Teton, Glacier, up to Banff and on to driving all the way to Alaska. We were back in our element.