RAT Meetup late April (Buffalo NY area)

[Dan Diffendale]

April 29th is good for me. I'd be coming from Massachusetts (Belchertown - Amherst area) so if there's anybody else in the Mass/Conn area we could probably split gas and driving.

[Quintius Clavus]

This is to Dan/Danno Ulpius:

I live in Connecticut and I am planning to go. Are you attending UMass in Amherst? As I had posted above, I will be at a company dinner Friday night, so would not be heading west to Buffalo until early Saturday morning. But I'd be happy to share the drive/gas etc. I'm sure we've met at Roman Days in Maryland - I've been going down since 2002.
We will just have to work out where to meet and whose car is going. Mine is equipped with EasyPass.
Leave me a message and we can begin to work out the details. I'm not sure whether my office email will accept a message from you, and I off-line at home right now.

Marcus Quintius Clavus
Quinton Johansen

[JRSCline]

I'll see what I can do... leave while in command is not so easily negotiated, but will look into it. 29 APR was it?

[Praefectusclassis]

Yup, that's it. Would be great fun if you could make it!

[Praefectusclassis]

Bump!
Matt? Are you unsick yet? Do you have any ideas about lodging in the area?

[Magnus]

If everyone is in agreement about meeting up and coming over to the Canadian side (which is better...tee hee hee), there isn't much we can't do. Depending on where we meet up...we can move along the parkway ( a very nice drive..hopefully the plants are starting to go green by then), which is the road that runs along the Niagara River, and hit many of the attractions there run by the Niagara Parks Commission. I wouldn't recommend the Lundy's lane area...it's all tourist traps. Here is a really awesome site listing pretty much everything along the parkway http://www.infoniagara.com/attractions/indexf.html along with an interactive map showing what's along the route. But it depends on where we meet up...I'm thinking if you guys are right in buffalo, maybe the rainbow bridge to come across into canada. From there, I can find us a coffee shop to meet up at.

Along the parkway, one cool thing that isn't too expensive is the Butterfly Conservatory here http://www.infoniagara.com/attractions/butterfly.html . It's cheap, its indoors (in case the weather isn't cooperating) and it's pretty cool.

We can also stop by and check out Fort George http://www.niagara.com/~parkscan/ , an 1812 era fort before we hit the main town of Niagara-On-the-Lake http://www.infoniagara.com/d-att-notl.html .

There's also the new casino...but that's just a money pit...but it's pretty cool inside (though parking is a pain, and not free either!)

For accomodations, that site also has an exhaustive list. http://www.infoniagara.com/hotels_and_motels/index.html

I can make a few calls to some of them and find out prices if you guys like, or if you have a preference, like a quality inn, i can inquire the cost of rooms there. It's still the off-season for tourism, so the rates shouldn't be that rediculous yet.

So let me konw what you guys think, and once we have a plan kind of loosely drawn up, we can make arrangements to get it in place.

[Praefectusclassis]

We had a blast! Thanks for organizing everything Matt!
So, here are 6 people having great fun (despite the formal pose), l-r:
Quinton, Matt, moi, Christy, Tom & Dan.

[Chuck Russell]

what a motley bunch

[Magnus]

Glad everyone enjoyed themselves. Next time we'll hit a few more places so long as they're open this time around. In that picture, we're actually standing in front of an 1812 era Fort, but you can't see much of it. In fact, that's about all we saw too since it was still closed. lol

[Dan Diffendale]

Here are some more pictures from the weekend...

First, there's apparently something amusing at Ft. Erie:

[Dan Diffendale]

Then, we went looking for papiliones, and there was even some faux-classical statuary to make us feel at home. You'll notice the azure blur in the lower left corner that is the fabled blue morpho butterfly. Matt's colorful shirt attracted some insectoid attention.

[Dan Diffendale]

No trip is complete without a stop to do some shopping for all our ankle-armor needs...

[Marius_Ursus]

We had a blast! Thanks for organizing everything Matt!
So, here are 6 people having great fun (despite the formal pose), l-r:
Quinton, Matt, moi, Christy, Tom & Dan.

Who's that tall, good looking bloke in the glasses?

[Magnus]

That's Jasper, but he was wearing a mask that day.

Awesome pics Dan...glad you snagged the one of the Greave store.

What the heck were we laughing at in Fort Erie...lol.

[Quintius Clavus]

I had a great time. It was worth the long drive to meet with Jasper and everyone. Dan was a good traveling companion and his mom sent me home with fresh baked cookies. Many thanks to Matt and Stacey, who were our hosts and "native guides"!



Quinton/Marcus Quintius Clavus