And indeed the domestic violence police have been called to our motorhome several times since we began our voyage.
I made that up. The truth is that we've had no big blowout arguments and damned few small ones. Nancy has always been a sweet person, and some of that may have osmotically rubbed off on me. I appreciate her for her many good qualities, and she apparently thinks I have some of those, too. We get along beautifully and always want the best for each other. Boring, I know.
We've worked out a pretty good division of labor. I do the driving and maintenance and most of the setting things up when we pull into and out of campgrounds. She does most of the cooking, shopping, pet care, and laundry. But we both are always willing to pitch in for whatever needs to be done. An excellent partnership. And thank God for that.
Our campground was outside Buffalo, New York and not far from Niagara Falls. We didn't go to the falls, which we had visited some years ago, but we both yearned to return to the Canadian town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, which had impressed us on that earlier visit.
The internet told Nancy that there were no unusual delays at the border in either direction. We sailed through Canadian customs in our pickup truck without delay. But we soon knew we would be in trouble on the way back, because we then passed what looked like a mile of traffic backup heading the other way to enter the US.
Niagara-on-the-Lake, in the Canadian province of Ontario, was as beautiful as we remembered it. The city fathers have made it their mission to make the downtown as charming and welcoming as any town we've come across on our trip. The amount of money spent on flowers and plants must be huge.
We had a very tasty lunch at an outdoor restaurant on Main Street. Don't miss Niagara-on-the-Lake if you pass by anywhere close in the future. You'll never find a prettier.
The return border crossing took thirty minutes of jockeying for the best traffic line, but we had been expecting worse.
We also hit the sights in Buffalo, New York, which is a fascinating place. Statistics show that Buffalo has a very high crime rate and the average price for a home is very low - but an urban renaissance is underway. And the bones of the city are quite impressive. Many old buildings in the downtown are wonderful and varied. My favorite was City Hall, which looks straight out of Gotham. You can picture King Kong carrying Fay Wray to the top.
While I parked illegally and ran inside a downtown cathedral to take a few photos, Nancy spoke with two ladies on the street. They told her that we must not miss Buffalo's basilica, and they were super excited because the man who was the first priest in that church, Father Baker, needed only one more miracle for sainthood. Nancy refrained from telling them that getting her and me into a church might count as a miracle but probably wouldn't put the good father over the threshold.
We drove to the basilica and were astonished at its otherworldly beauty. The external architecture was wonderful - not nearly on the scale of the great gothic cathedrals of Europe but perfectly lovely.
And the interior! Every square inch was designed by a true artist and magnificently finished by brilliant artisans. We sank to our knees (before the grotto containing the remains of Father Baker) in awe at the beauty that humanity is capable of.
The sculptures, which included the stations of the cross, looked to this untrained eye to be the equal of the artwork in the great cathedrals of France and Italy. Skeptics though we may be, this church felt like a holy place.
Nelson Baker was a soldier on the Union side in the Civil War, later a businessman, then felt a calling and became a Roman Catholic priest. He did many good works in the Buffalo area and then in 1921 spearheaded the construction of a new church to replace St. Patrick's in Lackawanna, a suburb of Buffalo. The Lady of Victory Basilica was completed in less than five years and cost $3.2M, paid for by donations from around the country.
Nancy and I both were moved by Father Baker's basilica. I hope he gets credited with that second miracle.
No comments:
Post a Comment