289 miles, 8 hours.

We woke up earlyish so we could walk with Peter to breakfast. There's a little hole-in-the-wall around the corner that serves great simple breakfasts (eggs, bacon, toast). It was nice to go with Peter on his way to work.

We weren't entirely sure, but we decided to leave today. We went back to the house to finish getting ready- we had laundry in the dryer that we had to wait for, and we needed to pack up. We were finally out of there by 11, though we stayed in Toronto for a while- we wanted to ride through the old brick buildings in the Distillery District. It turned out to be uneventful, though riding through the city to find it was interesting, architecturally speaking. The Distillery District is being heavily redeveloped, so there isn't much to see.

Next, we headed across town to the Black Bull Tavern. It's apparently a motorcyclist watering hole, so we wanted to check it out and see if there were any cool bikes nearby. There weren't, which wasn't surprising since it was a midmorning workday. Again, the ride over was worthwhile.

We then rode out of town and northwest to Waterloo. A lot of Amazonians are from the University of Waterloo, and I've always wondered what the campus was like and if it was an interesting school. It's certainly large, and (unfortunately) somewhat spread out. It reminded me why I love urban campuses. I'm glad we took the time to detour through campus, though, because it's easier to place (and makes future educational decision-making better informed).

Our next stretch was a transit southeast to Niagara Falls. Tamara piloted this stretch, and I quickly fell asleep behind her. I must have slept fairly soundly, because quite a while later I tilted slightly in my seat and startled awake once I remembered I was on a bike and felt like I was falling! Of course, I had only deviated a tiny bit, but the sensation was a surprise.

We rode down the Niagara Parkway from Niagara-on-the-Lake to the falls. The gorge that the river is in is very pretty, though it was usually only visible through the trees. Niagara Falls itself is pretty and massive, but the crush of tourists was unreal. The traffic was busy, people were lined up several deep for a mile along the viewpoint, and it was just a zoo. We decided to get some simple pictures (which was difficult to do without paying $13-18 for parking) and get out of there.

We then rode across the Rainbow Bridge to the American side. Getting across the border wasn't too difficult, though we saw a lot of trunks and seats being searched. It's one of the advantages of being a motorcyclist- even if you were a smuggler, you couldn't haul large enough quantities to be successful.

Our only stop on the American side was at Love Canal. I have a thing for failures and disasters. It would be easy to miss the Love Canal disaster area unless you had the coordinates on a GPS- the only real sign of it is a large grassy area with a 6-foot chain link fence around it. There are no signs indicating it is/was Love Canal, or even signs warning of danger or against trespassing. The only other signs were a few sections of concrete roadway and sidewalks that remained, hints of a suburban neighborhood that has been gone for almost 30 years.

In fact, it was the understatement of the whole place that I found striking. It's too bad- it would be a great place for an interpretive center or museum.

Our final riding as a transit south and west along Lake Erie to Buffalo and then on I-90. We camped for the night in a place that was on the waterfront of Lake Erie; it's a great campsite: quiet, right on the lake, with great views and sounds of the lake. Not bad.