FRIDAY SURPRISE: All in all, I'd rather be in...

As a child of the West, I'm generally not one to get excited about the upper-right quadrant of our country. I've visited the northeast, and in general am not all that attracted to the region. However, one thing the inhabitants of the region have that I'm quite jealous of are layers of old infrastructure, just waiting to be explored.

In the distant past my job occasionally required me to travel to upstate New York. Even the things that residents of the area consider commonplace - say, the remnants of the Erie Canal - just fascinated me, because of the long and storied past of that engineering marvel. Thus I spent a large portion of my "off" time visiting local museums and historical attractions.

On one visit to the Rochester area, I took the time to follow the Canal's path from there to Tonawanda. Since I was in the "neighborhood" - literally just a few miles - I made the short hop up to see the fabled Niagara Falls. (It must be said that even I, somewhat jaded by close encounters with much higher waterfalls, was amazed at Niagara Falls. It's worth the trip.)

At the time I wasn't aware of the history of power generation at Niagara, let alone the extent of the abandoned facilities that were literally right under my feet. I am now, and boy would I like to go back and see some of it!


Courtesy of www.vanishingpoint.ca

Check them out at vanishingpoint.ca, which is a great site for urban explorers.

-=[ Grant ]=-