If there's one thing we learned from the History Channel, it's to not repeat the History Chanel

I am currently in Louisiana, BFE, with a stomach ache.  It's hard traveling because I mostly stay in casinos that are located in the middle of the woods and I have to eat out.  I am convinced that all casinos have one kitchen in back that serves out to all of the "different" restaurants inside.  The food is rarely good for people without food issues.  My food issues just seem to never ever end.  Most recently I have crossed raspberries off my list.  My most favorite fruit of all time.  Of all time.  Forever.  As long as I can remember.  When I eat just one, I now will throw up violently within 10 minutes of eating it.

Just ask my truck.  Now instead of just being a Sweet A$$ Mo'Fo' Truck, it's a Sickly Sweet A$$ Mo'Fo' Truck.

They stuck secret sneaky raspberries into all the fruit platters today too.  Luckily I am a master food detective and found them.

Niagara Falls was nice.  Just nice.  The falls themselves were amazing!  I've never seen them from the American side before, but I must say, it's a completely different and more intense experience.  As for the town itself...not so much.  The casino there is one of the nicest casinos I've been too.  Not the food, but the layout is pretty great and it wasn't very smokey and the artwork and carpet design was relaxing. 

Niagara Falls has 30,000 visitors a year and a casino, yet none of the money gets put back into the town.  None.  The houses are all mostly abandoned and falling apart, there are abandoned industrial buildings everywhere (it's too expensive for the town to take them down), and the crime rate is very high.  It is not a pretty place, yet it is soooooo close to something amazingly beautiful.  It's history is a terrible history though.  It had over 100,000 people at one point, in the early 1900's b/c electricity was cheap there (hydropower) and so all of these industrial plants built up providing tons of jobs for people.  Then something happened and the cost of energy went up and the jobs left, along with the money and the people.  The government there has been corrupt as well AND it's the site of Love Canal.  I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure I was interested in Love Canal and learned about it in high school.  But it's my experience that people don't know about it in general.  How can that be?  It's one of the things I'm terrified of happening again and it's why I care about the environment the way I do.  If there aren't rules and regulations in place by our government it will happen again, and it's just not acceptable.  I'm sure it's happening in China right now and other countries with lax toxic waste regulations.

What happened is sometime in the late 1800's this guy named Love wanted to dig a canal around there.  He got it 1/2 mile long and then the money dried up.  People started to use it as a dump.  Then all of the industrial businesses used it to dump their toxic waste.  Waste from the Manhattan Project (nuclear bombs) went into it.  Who knows what went into it.  Think of the Ninja Turtles or any super hero or super bad guy who was changed into a mutant by toxic waste, THAT's what is in this pit.  Exactly what you imagine, 55 gallon barrells filled with third eye creating slime.  Then they buried it and sold it to the city because the city needed land to build a school on.  So they built a school on this stuff.  It caved in at one point and filled with water...which was an awesome place for the kids to play in.  It seeped up into peoples basements and into their yards.

After years of government cover up and denial (think the same thing as Errin Brokovich), I think it was Carter, who signed it a national disaster, creating the first Superfund Sight.  A Superfund Sight is a place that is no longer livable b/c humans buried too much toxic stuff underneath it improperly (I doubt there is a safe method but they argue one exists) and it got into the water system and it's too dangerous to live there.  I didn't like drinking the water there now when I visited.

This is why we can't get rid of the EPA, and whichever candidate that wants to do that is stupid and is playing to stupid people.  Don't be stupid.  Support the EPA. (Environmental Protection Agency)

This world is a scary place and the more I explore it, the more I want to become a hermit in Northern Canada where the water is mostly still clean.  In a few years it won't be so cold either.....of course, then we'll start looking for oil there...and my refuge will be gone.  I can also go back to my old stand-by:  horse nomad in Mongolia.