What a weekend.

First off, I think we may have found a dress. May being the opperative word, but there are a couple to pick from, but first Kelly has to have her mom and maybe her fiancee's sister take a look at it. The dress is gorgeous though, and I really like it. The picture is pretty dumb though, because it totally ignores the best feature -- there are little roses on the back of the dress and a fun train. It's chiffon and looked pretty good even on me with my hips. I hope Kelly goes with it -- pretty soon we're going to have to pay extra for "rush" delivery and I seriously don't want to spend over $200 on a bridesmaid dress.

But back to my trip. The drive up was really long -- it's supposedly around seven hours, but after running into an accident and several construction areas in Pennsylvania and having major problems finding the street Kelly's sister lives on in Buffalo, I ended up taking about eight hours to get there. Some highlights from the drive up -- running into a funeral procession on the highway -- yes, with their flashers on and everything! I also got to experience truckers blocking the way for cars zipping ahead when the road narrowed down to one lane for construction. I ate my favorite car trip snack, cheddar cheese cracker Combos but couldn't find Diet Code Red Mountain Dew. Sad.

I finally did get into Buffalo -- or more correctly, Depew -- and ate some of the left over food from Colleen's Japan party. It was all kind of different, but in a good and culturally enlightening way. I did like the ground rice balls rolled in bean powder, but it was even better with the sweet red bean paste. I know it sounds gross, but it's tasty!

We dress shopped on Saturday -- went to a couple bridal boutique-y places without much luck and the mall, where we didn't find anything! Finally, we ended up at David's Bridal and found a couple dresses that are nice, including the one previously mentioned that I hope Kelly decides on.

Durand, Kelly, Colleen and I headed to Niagara Falls later that night to see the Falls at night. Niagra Falls was gorgeous, and I would totally go back there -- so long as I could spend more time vacationing and less time driving. Canada is gorgeous -- although I was disappointed that they haven't put together a Mounties calendar. If firemen in the US can do it, why not Mounties in Canada? We mostly walked around and looked at the Falls on Saturday night -- we got there a little too late to do any of the Fall-related activities. We finally ended up eating dinner at Ruby Tuesdays, where there were some problems. Basically, the waiter couldn't remember which table got what -- and they brought to our table food that wasn't ours. And we had to point out that it was probably the table across from us -- we'd heard them ordering a baked potato. And then our food got delivered to the booth behind us -- and we had to say, hey that's our food! Yeah, the service definitely doesn't make me want to go back, and the food wasn't that great either.

The next day we got up kind of earlier -- especially considering that Colleen's roommates (a married couple) had gone out on Saturday night and then wanted to stay up yakking for a while. I had slept out on the couch the previous night, so I somewhat patiently waited for them to finally realize that we wanted to sleep. I ended up sleeping in Colleen's room that night, and she got her roommates out of the living room and slept on the couch.

So we went to Niagra Falls and did all the touristy things -- rode the Maid of the Mist which was awesome and Journeyed Behind the Falls and walked the Whitewater Rapids! Yes, it was quite the adventure. I hope my pictures turn out -- especially the ones of us in our Maid of the Mist ponchos afterwards.

I didn't leave Buffalo until almost four-thirty on Sunday night, so I didn't get home until around eleven-thirty. It was a loooong drive home, and there was one part when I went down quite a few hills in Pennsylvania where I was a little nervous, especially because I was driving in the dark. I managed to get home in one piece, and my car seems none the worse for the wear. The worst part wasn't being tired, but rather that my neck and shoulders have been hurting since Monday morning!

I came out with one question from this trip though -- Why was Niagara Falls the capital of honeymooners? Some of my East Coast friends have postulated theories of its proximity to the East Coast and people not being able to go real far, but I don't find that to be a creditable answer. Any other theories?