It is still October and we are still in Niagara Falls, still having fun.
Bird Kingdom, in Canada, has a beautiful assortment of birds and other creatures, many of which are allowed to fly or roam freely in large open aviaries. Gail got to indulge in one of her favorite activities, feeding nectar to the Lorikeets. 
Time for other adventures.
Gourdlandia in Ithaca is part classroom, part garden, part gift shop, part showroom. Gourds are grown on site and then turned into art for sale. On the day we were there, visitors could build a gourd nightlight with a design of their choice, and that was quite a bit of fun.
The Corning Museum of Glass is wonderful. There are glass blowing demonstrations throughout the day, an awesome museum of ancient to modern glass exhibits and lots of pretty glass objects for sale. 
Our next tour stop was New York City, and what a place! We found an RV park in New Jersey, overlooking the Statue of Liberty (which was lit up at night)
with sites so tight that we could not fully open our door without hitting the RV next to us. But, the park was within a short walk to a subway station and a short ride to NYC. Of course, we had to figure out how to use the subway system first.
Day One, we did our usual Hop On/Hop Off bus tour to see lots of tall buildings and other NYC sights.
Then we started to visit the must-sees on our list:
Day Two we went to Times Square to watch a Broadway show.
Day Three – We visited Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty via a boat ride.
Day Four was overcast, but that did not stop our visit to the top of the Empire State Building for some serious sightseeing. It was just before Halloween, but Macy’s was ready for Christmas already. (Used them for a pit stop before the ESB.)
The queue for the ESB elevators wound through a semi-museum of interesting displays about the building.
The ride to the top is actually done in stages as stops are made at the 20th,
86th (the most famous with the iconic fence)
and finally to the 120th floor.
We had our first, and only, celebrity sighting at the top, Heidi Klum stepped off and on the elevator a few times for a photo shoot and then was gone.
Central Park was all decked out in fall colors, perfect for some scenery shots.
The next day was dedicated to finding the house where Gail’s mother lived from birth to 8 years old, in Maspeth. This involved taking a new train and exploring new neighborhoods; neighborhoods that looked like a nicer place for kids to live than in Manhattan.
It was fun to imagine Mom and her brother walking to school, visiting with friends, playing on these same streets and sidewalks.
The subway system does not cover that area, so we became first time Uber users and got a ride to the Brooklyn Bridge, which we wanted to walk across. A lot of other people had the same idea, so it was a fun walk and also good people-watching.
On Halloween, an orange boat took us to Staten Island, the only island not serviced by trains.
We walked around a bit and found it …quiet…not at all like Manhattan.
Of course, we did not go too far since we were on foot. We ate lunch at a waterside restaurant and then took the free 25-minute boat ride back to the noisy island.
The Tenement Museum was next, where we took a docent-led tour of a typical New York tenement that had been preserved as a museum. It was pretty eye-opening to see the tiny spaces that held large families.
This was our last day in NYC, and we wanted to eat a pastrami sandwich at the famous Katz’s Deli, but the line to get in was a couple of blocks long, at 3:30 in the afternoon. We reluctantly decided not to wait in line; the streets were getting blocked off for Halloween festivities, people in costumes were filling the streets and we thought it was best to head for home. Back in New Jersey, late afternoon, those streets were also filling up with parents and kids in costumes.
We had decided to make this our final day in New York City because even though there were so very many more places to see, we had seen most of the ‘big’ tourist sites and we were really tired of fighting the crowds everywhere we went. Time to move on.
It was time to see more of New Jersey than just the small area where we were parked. Plus, it was November and RV parks were closing rather quickly, so we had to keep heading south and take what we could find that was still open.
We wanted so see Atlantic City, although there really is not too much to see there, especially in late fall, unless you like to gamble. A lot of places were closed down, but we did get to walk on the famous boardwalk.
We enjoyed walking on the beach more than just about anything else we did there.
Lucy The Elephant has lived in nearby Margate since the late 1800’s. Originally built as an advertising gimmick for a real estate agent, now she, and her perfect pedicure, is a tourist attraction.
Batsto Village, an outdoor museum, began life in the 1700’s as an iron works that made cannonballs out of bog ore (found in nearby bogs) for the Continental Army. 
In the early 1800’s, the iron works were expanded to include a glass factory and the village grew to several hundred people.
Worker houses were built as well as businesses to support them.
A small home that was originally built when the iron works was built, was gradually added to over the years until it became a sizable mansion. 
New iron and glass manufacturing techniques eventually made those industries obsolete.
Cape May, located at the very southern tip of New Jersey, is known for some good birding areas, something that we are always interested in. We found several places to check out birds at Cape May State Park, plus a WWII bunker built on the beach. 
Then we found a WWII lookout tower to climb up and explore.
From the tower, we could see the off-shore wreckage of the SS Atlantus, one of only 12 concrete ships built during WWI that sank during a storm. (Not sure who thought boats made out of concrete would be a good idea… but it wasn’t.)
Cape May turned out to be our favorite New Jersey spot; mostly because of the beautiful homes that we spotted around town, while on a trolley tour. It was an added bonus that some of the homes had begun to decorate for Christmas. 
We were at the end of New Jersey, with no more land to drive on, so we chose a ferry ride to continue our travels.
As we pulled away from land, on November 13, the milestone that we mentioned in our first post of this series was met: We had visited all 48 lower states, the District of Columbia, 5 Great Lakes; and accomplished all of this over 7 years and 70,000 miles!
And, we were not finished with 2024 yet, there were still more adventures to be had.