New York City

The night before we drove to New York we went to see Coldplay in Saratoga. They were brilliant! The venue was half outdoors with a lawn section behind the indoor seated sections. We were sat here but the weather was great and the view was still really good. The show included sections where the band left the main stage to play a few songs in other really small stages. One was to the side of the seats but still a long way off. But the other stage was just a hundred yards from where we were stood! They left the stage and walked all the way outside through the crowd and into the lawn area to play an acoustic section. It was an awesome night!

We found out earlier that day that our RV park in Jersey City was fully booked. This meant our only option was to find a hotel cheap enough, in the right area, and with somewhere to park the rv. Not an easy task, but we managed to find a Ramada in central Jersey City with a good rate and access to trains for Manhattan. We weren't sure about the parking but we took a gamble and booked the hotel.

We got up at 7.30 and arrived at the hotel at around 1pm. We had a nightmare with parking! They sent us to a car park but it was height restricted. We then asked if we could use one of their spaces at the back, but we wouldn't fit in the ones offered. Then they told us to try a few blocks away...we walked over to check it out, offered the bloke double the cost of a normal day but he wouldn't take it. We pretty much ran out of options in the end so we went back to the hotel and luckily the manager was there who kindly let us put it in one of the employee spaces. Its basically squeezed into a corner of the parking lot behind the hotel. its perfect though, because its free and also really safe.

With the parking sorted we got checked into the room and relaxed for a bit before heading over to the city. The train only takes 20 minutes and takes us right within a few blocks of Times Square. We had a wander about and had a really expensive beer in a bar before heading back to the hotel. We were shattered after a long day but glad to have it all sorted and looking forward to a few days in New York!

Today we visited the Statue of Liberty. We got off the train at the World Trade Center stop. As you might guess, its fairly obvious where the World Trade Center site was. Its all being built on now but the massive space between the other buildings is quite clear. It was only a short walk to the dock but the queue was massive for the ferry. We eventually got on and 10 minutes later we were at Liberty Island. I was hoping that it wouldn't be smaller than expected like Mount Rushmore. I wasn't disappointed as it was a really impressive sight! The weather started to turn as we were finished on the Island. A big thunderstorm had moved in and it started to pour with rain as we got back on the ferry. When we got off we were soaked and there were massive puddles everywhere, so we just headed back to the hotel and ordered in some pizzas.

We're going up the Empire State building tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get some better weather the next couple of days!

New York

So it looks like we've got some competition on the blog front! (http://alderman-valentineusa.blogspot.com/) I'm sure theirs will also include some depravity and a whole lot of mischief :-)

Niagara Falls was breathtaking. We decided against going on the Maid of the Mist Boats and instead opted for going behind the waterfall. Everyone was given a waterproof poncho (Yes, I did look like Clint Eastwood) as it was going to get wet!



Anyhow, from Niagara Falls, we coasted down to New York State. We crossed the border with consummate ease ( I'm sure our visas helped). We stayed just south of Buffalo, the RV park was nice enough, if a little basic - We're budgeting at the moment so gone are the days where we can spend 40 dollars a night on a park. After that, we drove east towards Saratoga, however before we got there, we stopped over in Utica.

Utica was tolerable, definitely not nicest city we've been to. The main reason we stopped here was to get the van serviced - we've been looking forward to this for ages... (That was sarcasm for those who don't own a sarcasm detector) We spent 400 dollars on getting 2 new tyres or "tires" as they say over here and the actual service. Weirdly, whilst we were chatting to one of the mechanics, we discovered he actually knew where the Isle of Man was! It turns out he was watching a TT Special on American TV not 2 days before we met him! This has been a rare occurrence on our trip (We usually just say "The UK" when someone asks us where we're from) as the IOM isn't that well known outside fans of Motor-sports.

The reason for us visiting Saratoga is we have a gig to get to! Coldplay are playing at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, otherwise known as "The SPAC"... seriously :-D They're playing tomorrow night (Mon 27th) which means today we've got a day off from driving, so we're going to plan our visit to NYC.

As both of us have never been there, we want to hit all the tourist traps - The Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty etc. Unfortunately, the only RV park in the city costs 60 dollars a night... We've looked into it and there's no way around it so we have to stay there. On the plus side, it is in a prime location (Just across the river from Manhattan) so we've got superb access to the city. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to seeing New York!

Ontario, Canada

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We've had a pretty good week so far. Starting with the Green Day gig in Chicago on Monday. It was in the United Centre which is massive. It holds about 25,000 for concerts. We were about half way down the side seats right near the top. The view was still really good though. The sound was perfect too. They were definitely one of the best bands I have seen live.

During the day we wanted to go to the Fields Natural history museum in the city. Unfortunately we had a nightmare finding places to park. The museum was on the shore of the lake so we expected there to be a lot more space for parking there, but it was all multi-story. We searched for a few different car parks and ended up driving right through the centre of the city, so at least we got to see quite a bit of Chicago even though it was from the van. We gave up on the museum idea and headed away from the centre to get some shopping at a walmart. After this we still had a lot of time to fill before the gig, so we decided to try the cinema. We found a couple but the first one had nowhere to park and the second one wasn'y showing anything we wanted to see! It was actually pretty late by now as we had to take long routes due to loads of low bridges that we couldn't get under. We just headed for the United Centre for the gig and got some food on the way. I would definitely like to visit Chicago again to get a proper look around. Once the gig was over we had to drive for an hour and a half to an rv park we had found. We arrived at about 1am so just found a free spot to park.

The next day we left the park, passing through Indiana and into southern Michigan where we camped a couple of nights. I had read that this area of the country had a lot of Amish living there. There were a lot of signs warning about horse drawn vehicles, and we did actually see some Amish people with a horse and cart going along one of the roads we were on.

We had decided to go to a shooting range at some point and found one in the outskirts of Detroit which was on our route. (http://www.firinglineguns.com/) It was at a gun shop where we literally walked in, filled out a form, then picked from a cabinet of guns which ones we would like to hire for $10 an hour. We were shown how to fill the magazines and talked through the safety rules then were left to shoot on the range until the ammo we bought had ran out. It was a lot of fun and will probably go again during the trip.

We left the range and headed north past Detroit towards the Canadian border. We paid a toll to go over the bridge and then had to sit in a queue for the actual border where we showed our passports. They asked us a few questions and needed to see the lease agreement for the van which I thought would do, but then they told us to pull into the search area by the immigration offices. We had to stand away from the rv while 4 people searched inside and outside. They then decided they would have the sniffer dog check inside too. They used two dogs infact! I realised whilst they were doing this that we had left on the table; two massive paper targets with loads of bullet holes in them..! They didn't even ask us about that though. They were just interested in why we wanted to go into Canada and how long we would be in the country. Eventually they stamped the passports and we were on our way. We had to navigate without the sat nav for the first time as it doesn't have Canadian maps. We were fine though, and made it to the campsite after about an hour.

Today we drove about 3 hours and are now just south of Niagara falls which we will be visiting tomorrow!

Rockford, Illinois

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We haven't done that much since we left Rapid City which explains the lack of blog updates. We also didn't have internet access for over a week.

So we moved on to Minnesota where we stayed a night just outside Minneapolis. The next day we headed to the city where we were visiting a huge mall called "Mall of America" http://www.mallofamerica.com/
This wasn't just a shopping mall, it had roller coasters and other rides in the centre as well as indoor mini golf which we had a go on. We had a look around and bought a few things and finally got a haircut too. We stayed an hour north of the city in a town called Princeton. There was a park with hook-ups for the van which was on $7 per night. We needed to save some money after spending quite a bit in the mall so we stayed here for 5 nights.

We were at this park during 4th of July but there wasn't that much going on apart from fireworks. We just took it pretty easy here so we didn't spend much at all. We then moved on south aiming for Chicago stopping for a few nights near a place called Baraboo. The park itself was in the middle of nowhere though so again didn't do much. We will be spending quite a bit in the next few weeks though, so it's doing us some good.

We're now pretty close to Chicago and have a few days to fill in before we want to go into the city as we have tickets for a Green Day gig on the 13th. We will just move around the rv parks where we can get discount until then