People lined up along the Black River to watch a parade of yachts passing below the raised bridges (which made getting through the city quite tricky) before entering the Port Huron to Mackinac Boat Race which would start the following day. The announcer’s deep voice echoed down the streets and along the waterfront as he called each boat out.

I had been to Niagara one time, years before. Neither of us were quite prepared for the Disney-esque throw-up that comprised the downtown near the waterfront. But that doesn’t stop the wonder inherent in seeing those thousands of gallons of water rushing through the air, blossoming upwards to wet the air and spread rainbows before us.

We made it back into the U.S. and drove into the Finger Lake region of New York. Though no longer home of the world’s biggest pancake, Birkett Mills is (still) the world’s largest producer of Buckwheat products.

Two men walked off this dilapidated bridge, having given up fishing because of oil in the water. Road signs and a shopping cart joined the floating, shattered oil in the river.

Our innkeeper directed us to Watkins Glen, a town hugging the southern tip of Seneca Lake. Many people mention only the wineries in the Finger Lakes, which added to the shock of seeing the Gorge.

Eight hundred stone stairs wind along the steep sides of this mini-canyon. Nineteen waterfalls cascade from above to crash along the rocks. Large, deep pools of water collected throughout the gorge.

Seneca Falls, reputed to be the inspiration for Bedford Falls (where It’s a Wonderful Life was set), sits at the northern tip of long Seneca Lake. We walked the waterfront and came around through the short downtown, which offered some crumbling masonry and multiple empty storefronts. This store displayed these shadowboxes illuminating tiny rooms and people with make-believe lives.

The caption at the top says "'It don't matter if you're black or white.' -Michael Jackson"

In the tiny town of Lincoln, VT we stopped at what could be considered the downtown—a church, general store and post office.

Near Burlington, VT, at Shelburne Farms, this immaculate barn houses school programs, a cheese making facility, an organic bakery and a furniture maker.

The rain stopped just long enough to walk and explore part of the 1400-acre working farm. Shelburne Farms was created in 1886 by William Seward Webb and Eliza Vanderbilt Webb as a model agricultural estate.

The sticks inside these figures when rubbed or hit against them send wooden echoes toward the surrounding hills.

Just off Middlebury’s ridiculously cute mainstreet is a little display about the old town mill next to Otter Creek Falls. Sharpie marker statements litter the display calling for more of the town’s electricity to be water-generated.

Middlebury College’s influence can be seen everywhere from Greenpeace activists stopping passersby, the beautiful buildings and campus, and an awareness of cuisine rare in small towns.

We celebrated our second anniversary at this treehouse bed and breakfast, nestled in a crook of the Green Mountains. The kind and warm proprietors live in a house next door. It felt like visiting someone’s childhood, except forty feet above a sea of ferns.

Our introduction to Maine came from this logging operation that ran right alongside the road. We watched the arm grip, move, and place the raw, thick logs.

From the top of Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the United States Atlantic Coast, you can see Frenchman Bay peppered with the Porcupine islands. The mountain’s namesake, the Frenchman Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, also founded Detroit. We planned on getting up to see the sun rise the next day, to perhaps be some of the first people to see the sun in the US that day. But we overslept.

Acadia National Park astounds in its breadth, despite most of the property being a single island. The park offers a driving tour that covers beaches, mountains, bays, cliffs, and more. Our innkeeper laughed at us when we told him we were only staying for two nights, but in a good-natured way. He obviously loves the place. “You’ll be back,” he said. “There is just way too much to do in two days.” Nearly every car sported kayaks, canoes, or bikes—the symbols of recreation strapped wherever the drivers’ could manage it.

Besides the only fjord on the eastern seaboard, Acadia features biking and hiking trails left over from the 50 miles of winding carriage trails designed and financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr when it was still his private property.

In the distance on the left of the photo, you can just make out one of the only beaches, applicably named Sand Beach. These cliffs and rocks stretch around the island, sometimes dipping down or rising up, ringed by pine and birch trees.

The Bubbles overlook the pristine water of Jordan Pond. The town of Seal Harbor—where Martha Stewart has a house—relies on this water as a drinking source. As I approached the pond, the water shivered with motion as hundreds of minnows fled from my shadow.

A trail leads around the pond, this twisted tree the only oddity along the small walkway.

Left behind after the tide went out, these snails covered the rocks as strangers dug for clams and mussels.

On our way out of Maine, we spotted a front yard full of coastal detritus. Hundreds of buoys, bottles, bikes, signs, and even a couple cars surrounded the house.

Before stopping to sample the infamous Maine lobster roll at Thurston’s Lobster Pound—where you get to pick out your lobster before they cook it—we walked around the quiet pier.

The following day in Gloucester, MA, Kate’s friend Maren and her boyfriend Pete took us lobstering on their lobster boat, Restless—a 35-foot, Bruno-style lobster boat with a Detroit diesel engine.

The lobster eggs cling to the underside of their tails. Females with eggs must be thrown back. They threw back over half of what came up in their traps, many of the females covered in the rich mass of lobster roe.

Among the different sea-critters that came up in the traps like crabs and fish, were these two guys along for the ride.

For most of the time on the boat, we sat on their lobster tank to stay out of the way. They drained the water out before transferring them to the auction house for delivery.

Maren took us around Gloucester for some sightseeing. The city treasures its fisherman. And well it should, being a vital center of the fishing industry.

For hundreds of years, men have fished the waters off Cape Ann. People ran up and down the beach in front of this monument, enjoying a bright summer day along the cool Atlantic Ocean.

We made a quick jaunt into Salem where we found the amount of practicing witchcraft strange. Isn’t this a community famously against witches, albeit falsely accused?

The Charter Street Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in the country, includes another Captain, Richard More, who arrived aboard the Mayflower.

After a jaunt through the Catskills, we made it to Pennsylvania. The Kinzua Dam created the expansive Allegheny Reservoir (24 miles long with 91 miles of shoreline), effectively submerging the towns of Kinzua and Corydon beneath its mass.

Along the water below the dam, signs warned of sudden shifts in current and possible flooding. The rushing, pounding water filled the air around us with its powerful echo.

Wild apples and fat raspberries grew in the underbrush near the dam, next to trails and walkways.

“Kinzua,” a Seneca Indian term meaning, “Place of many big fishes,” lends its name to this massive dam built in 1965. Even far below us as we stood on the dam, we could easily see massive fish congregating along the dam’s wall. Walleye, trout, muskellunge, bass, catfish, northern pike, and the elusive paddlefish grow huge in the reservoir.

A sign at near the reservoir read, “In 1791, for appreciation of Indian assistance and diplomacy in the years following the American Revolution, Chief Cornplanter received three tracts of land from the Pennsylvania Assembly…Construction of the Kinzua Dam flooded most of the Cornplanter Tract. More than 500 native Seneca relocated to Salamanca, New York.”

We stayed in Warren, PA for our last day of the trip. Our drive back was no doubt fueled by gasoline from the United Refining Company that lit up the night with belches of fire and rows of bright lights.