After saying goodbye we headed of Wellandport towards Niagara Falls. We got about 5 miles away when we noticed that out tires could use a little air so we pulled into a church parking lot to pump them up. What we forgot was that we had changed the attachment on our pump and we couldn't figure out why it wasn't working (oops). After a little bit we figured it out and pumped up the front tire, but while pumping up the rear tire we broke the valve off. It was still holding air so we decided to keep on going. We rode for another mile until Chatale's pedal fell off, but that was a quick fix. We rode about 15 miles to Welland to visit Chantale's sister, Lynette, at work for a delicious cup of coffee. From there we said goodbye and headed on our way to the Falls.
When we got into the downtown area in Niagara Falls we starting hearing some noise from the chain. We dismounted the bike and saw that one of the links was broken. We weren't sure the best thing to do to fix it so we just popped of the link and kept going towards the border.
It was a beautiful day to see the falls and we got some great views from the rainbow bridge. We thought that we would have to walk our bike at the pedestrian crossing but it turned out that we just biked along with the cars. It was a really quick and easy border crossing.
We biked on some great paths along the American side of the Niagara river and made it easily to the start of the erie canalway trail in Lockport, NY (a 400 mile bike trail with a few on road segments). At the start of the trail we bought a book with maps and information about all the towns along the Erie canal. This is the first real map we have had since our first day of the trip in San Francisco!
The trail is really flat because it's right along the canal and is mostly composed of crushed stone which isn't too bad for biking. There's also a nice on-road bike route that parallels the canal so when we get sick of the crushed stone we will probably switch to the roadway. Right now we are in Middleport, NY and are camped right along the canal in a free campsite. Apparently there are a bunch of free or suggested donation campsites along the way it should be a really pleasant stretch. Tomorrow we will continue along the trail and hopefully will be able to go an entire day without getting lost.
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