Blue Jays tickets on weekends can be hard to grab but I have found Seatgeek is a great secondary market choice with occasionally great deals.
If in fact driving west from Toronto/Niagara to re-cross back at Detroit is the choice, there’s another wine country south of Windsor. It’s less busy and more spread out. Spectacular country. If you like birds, to to the Jack Miner sanctuary in Kingsville. (The small town south of Windsor. Not Kingston, the city, which, if you arrive in, you have driven in the wrong direction.)
Sorry neither of us could stay longer! but I really enjoyed that conversation.
When, exactly, are you coming through? I’m happy to meet up, but I’m going on tour to Ottawa and Westben starting tomorrow - won’t be back until Saturday, July 15…
I did Greenfield Village and Fair Lane (his house – which was more interesting than I expected). But I really liked roaming around Cranbrook, and I accidentally did an unauthorized tour of Cranbrook House.
Nothing says I’ve been to the Motor City as much as actually watching a truck get built from the frame up at the Ford Rouge River facility. This is one of the few places in the world to actually see a working automotive factory in use. Another being the Corvette factory in Bowling Green Kentucky.
I highly recommend this place.
I have a ticket to the last tour tomorrow.
Just need to get there in time (about 2:30 for the 3pm tour)
OK. Appealing for navigational advice.
Niagara to Detroit (Dearborn River Rouge)
My GPS plots three routes, 2 on the polite side of Ontario, one stateside.
As a novice I’d pick the middle option but is there any must-see attraction on the alternatives? If the ducks line up have max of 3 hours leeway in the schedule. And what does “severe weather warning” mean? Rain, wind, electrical storms, snow?
In this case, it looks like there’s a line of thunderstorms moving through Michigan and southern Ontario right now, which have likely triggered some severe thunderstorm watches and/or warnings*, which you might want to avoid if you were driving that route right now. Those probably won’t be there tomorrow.
*- A “watch” means that conditions are favorable for a severe storm to develop; a “warning” means that actual severe weather is in progress, or will be arriving in the area very shortly.
And were anybody interested and wanted a catchup for a drink, have booked accommodation in Greenfield Village. Dearborn MI.
The Canadian side of the falls is much cleaner, friendlier and a better view. But you also risk getting stuck at the boarder crossing. I would take the Ambassitor Bridge just south of downtown Detroit coming out of Canada. Good city view and closer to the pickup spot for the bus to the River Rouge tour at Greenfield village. Parking at the village should be a breeze on a Wednesday afternoon and the buses are right outside the main ticket entrance.
Whatever source is giving the weather warning ought to amplify – or was this on a highway LED-type sign which didn’t have room?
At this time of year thunderstorms seem most likely [and I see that’s what @kenobi_65 found); which can combine rain, wind, and lightning, but generally not for very long in any one spot. If the sky gets really dark and you’ve got a place to pull over and wait for it to pass, do that. Often you can keep driving through a thunderstorm, but occasionally it starts raining too hard to see, or hailing.
22:00 Eastern Niagara Falls Day28 prompts.plums.uneven
Well if my hotel at Watkins Glen has a panoramic view of Lake Seneca, then tonight’s accommodation is equivalent as this one has absolute river frontage onto Niagara River and views of Grand Island.
Today’s leg only being 160 miles I made a late start and then meandered through the B roads and enjoyed the upstate New York countryside. Easy drive on good roads.
A very impressive head of water rollicking down through the cataracts. Can’t really comment on the relative merits of Horseshoe Falls vs American Falls because:
- I was only on the US side and
- A brisk northerly wind kept a refreshing spray of mist which fogged out much of the view.
Plenty of people around the rim. A lot of people under the Cave of the Winds or on the Maid o’ the Mist. If you were going to get wet, today wasn’t a bad day for it.
On recommendation, I took dinner at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo. Apparently lays claim to be the original home of Buffalo Chicken Wings. The bar itself Americana writ large. The interior is clad in license plates with an extensive and eclectic array of motor cycles. Plenty of local craft beers on tap and my selection of Kona Golden Ale showed potential and but the Woodcock Brothers Niagara Lager was a standout. The wings, well absolutely not to my taste.
The program tomorrow is cross the border, if not much delayed then perhaps a visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake and then beetle across Ontario for a tour of River Rouge, Dearborn.
BTW, there have been reports of the Northern Lights being visible this week. Anybody have suggestions as to how best to catch a glimpse of them?
It’s very hit-or-miss at that (relatively) southern latitude, as they don’t often extend much below 45 degrees north (Niagara Falls is at about 43 degrees north, and Detroit at 42 degrees north). Best bet is for a clear night, being away from city light pollution, and some luck.
Agree with @kenobi_65 . The Northern Lights are rare in southern Ontario, but certainly not unknown. I’ve seen them there before. The important thing is to find a place well away from light pollution, because at that latitude, they’re not going to be the dazzling green curtain spectacle you’ve seen in photos. They’ll be rather faint, so surrounding darkness is necessary.
Regarding your map above, the middle route seems the shortest, so if you’re trying to arrive for the factory tour at a specified time, it may be your best bet. Ontario’s Highway 401 is exactly like an American Interstate, and the signage will be very similar, so you should have no trouble.
Remember, though, that you’re going to encounter metric signage in Ontario. This should present no problems to you, as an Australian, but I’m sure that your American rental car has MPH prominently displayed on the speedometer, with km/h in smaller numbers. Just watch out, and when you see “Maximum 100” on a speed limit sign, remember that it is not in MPH! (100 km/h is actually 63 MPH.) If the km/h numbers are too small or faint on your speedometer dial, as the MPH numbers are on mine, just keep up with conditions and you’ll be fine.
20:00 Eastern Detroit Falls Day29 goal.eagle.store
My first day heading westward. Turn left on River Road and Katie almost purrs “Continue for six minutes straight to Canada”. There was only one gate open on the Canadian border at 7am and an avuncular customs agent allowed me thru in a couple of minutes. “You just taking the short cut?”, he deduced. 
Rather than going east directly I hung a right and cruised into Niagara-on-the-Lake via a jigsaw pattern of local roads. Pretty place, And wineries. And wineries, And wineries. A dipsomaniac’s dream. Alas it’s too early for any to be open. Nor are the farmer roadside fruit stalls, At 7:40am, even Tim Horton’s is shut. If a visitor were to just turn tail and return to the US, you’d have a rather different perception of Canada.
So it’s chuck a Uie without making any material contribution to the Canadian GDP and head west. Katie directs Rog and I along QEW and then 401 which are much closer proximations to the US interstates.
There are ample signs that we are not in the US. Signs in French. Signs in metric. Signs saying “Government Drain #3”. No signs for ambulance chasing lawyers. Katie seems to enjoy giving directions along named roads rather than numbers.
401 is one of those deceptive roads where you can beetle along at 70-75mph and because the surface is good and virtually everybody else is travelling at similar velocity, you get the impression you are moving much slower.
By just on midday the signage indicate the approach of the US border and we wind our way towards Ambassador Bridge. The GPS route resembles a pretzel. Then I do a left to avoid a squeeze with an 18 wheeler and find myself in a queue at border control … but I’m heading north. Bugger! So for the day I manage to exit Canadian twice and enter the US once. Clearing US border control wasn’t much more severe interrogation or time consuming than Canadian.
The destination I’m seeking is The Rouge in Dearborn, Ford’s gold card example of vertically integrated mass production. The scale of the site is bewildering. My primary aim is a tour of the F-150 production plant as recommended by @Si_Amigo where vehicles roll off the line every 53 seconds. Having got there with plenty of spare time I am able to see the museums dedicated to industrial America, From farm equipment, to the monumental Allegheny class steam locomotives to the Lincoln Continental used by JFK in Dallas. Very good day.
Tomorrow it’s on to Chicago.
To be fair, most of us were talking about I-95 SOUTH of Washington, DC.
In New Jersey, it can be crowded, but I’ve not found idiopathic backups to be nearly the same problem there.
Your experience in Times Square / the Theatre District meshes with mine. Tacky as hell, but that’s part of the experience. And sometimes it’s so crowded with people that it can take a while to get through it even on foot.
I haven’t been since January 2020, what with Covid. Might visit it later this summer with a friend, a last hurrah “girls’ weekend” as she is moving to the midwest. I lived in the city in the early 1990s, for 2 years, and there is a lot to offer but I fully agree it is NOT for everyone.
The subways are definitely tough to navigate if you don’t know the routes - we once accidentally got on an express train and wound up in Queens versus the upper west side. On another trip, we were on the east side with my daughter and her friend. We wanted to hop a train down to Little Italy, and followed the signs through the station, up and down stairway after stairway, at least 5 or 6 different flights… until I said the hell with it, and we emerged and flagged down a taxi.
I’m glad your border crossings into the US went smoothly. Our last trip, in 2019, we crossed into and out of Canada 3 times. Two were short jaunts, a couple hours; the third was after several days in Quebec. The US border agents displayed a lot of suspicion each time, including once basically snarling at me “There must be more to it than that!”. We were with a gathering of friends in Vermont, we all drove to some small touristy town for lunch / shopping, and my car contained 4 people from Virginia and one from Michigan. All middle-aged people - clearly criminals at heart. And on the final approach, the closest thing to a search occurred: the agent opened our cooler lid… but in such a way that he could not see inside at all. We theorized there was some kind of chemical sniffing device at play.
There’s a milestone for you; now you’re on the backstretch. (Slow down, don’t speed up! at least, if there’s room in your schedule.)
Reading / riding along here in W Michigan
it’s the buns of steel award for you at this point!
Having read histories of the US WWII production effort I was familiar with “River Rouge.” Did the museums cover that aspect?