Hit or Mist

It’s been a full Niagara day…We started very early, going into the Falls.  We got amazing parking right across the street and spent some time walking about in the mist and marveling at the view.

All the people who say, forget the American side, just go to Canada, are 100% right.  The falls are amazing, when viewed from CA.  At their opening, we journeyed beneath the falls.  Very wet.  Very cool. It was truly amazing.  I was soaked, and didn’t care, watching the water come over, the amount and the power of it was incredible.  Knowing that we could walk behind them, was also, for me, just amazing. 

Back

Front

 

We then walked a bit to see the falls and hoped on the WeGo bus.  Thank goodness for the WeGo bus, because walking or the continual find parking kind of approach would just be hellish.  But the buses run every 12 min, are comfortable, clean…

They do things right here, just like Disney.  Good crowd control and things move right along.  So continuing our trek up the river, we next visited the famous Maid of the Mist boats.  Very cool.  Very wet.  Thank goodness for the souvenir rain poncho’s.  I did not keep mind, choosing to recycle instead, but they are definitely needed.  The view from the bottom of the falls was, understandably more impressive then from the top.  Plus there was a wall of seagulls hanging out, and we got to see all the “walk next to and under” spots with all the people on them.

Back to our WeGo bus and we followed the river north to the White Water Walk way.  I was a little nervous about this, little wooden pathways next to rushing water ranks up there about at the same level as roller coaster and small mountain roads, but I was not willing to miss something.

Like the other two attractions, you ride a long elevator down, down, down.  And then, like below the falls, you travel through a very cool (as in temperature) tunnel, in which you don’t want to think about how much earth (and in some cases water) is above you.  But once outside, the walk way is pretty far from the river.  (10 ft?)  It’s not like the US where they’d probably put up a guardrail and a sign that says don’t jump.   (To be fair, there were a lot of signs that said don’t jump!)

The water was gorgeous though.  All the water here is a light jade-y green – from the minerals in the water that get eroded and swooshed about.  The rapids here that we walked near for about a half mile are class six, the roughest level.  They’ve tried a few times to have jet boats or guided rapid tours, but when they’ve tried, people died, so….

This too was amazing (my word for the day?).  It was like watching the North Atlantic surf in a hurricane, but on a nice day, in a river.  The path was far enough and sturdy enough I was not nervous in the least.

Next up the river: the cable car.  It’s been running since the turn of the century.  (Not the same car they told us, though looking at it one certainly would wonder.)  Since my rapids experience was so calming, and the cable car had a solid floor and didn’t swing, and moved slow, I was confident.  Yeah, okay, the cable car goes across the river over a whirlpool, but… it didn’t look that whirly.  The lady behind us in line was freaking a bit.  Though she also told us that she’d once gotten stuck in the air on a carnival ride for a few hours.  I could understand her being scared then, but I was still okay.  Even considering the fact that this whole car seemed to be held up by little wheels with a few inch of rim, going over a few wires…. 

So I got the car, thinking – two minutes across, two minutes back (I counted) this will be fine.  Huh.  Know that commercial where the older lady talks about riding her son’s motorcycle and says, “this is NOT fun!”

i did this

Yeah, for a good half the trip, it was NOT fun, but… it got better and I’ve experienced much worse.  You get used to things too, so by the time we were half way back, I was breathing normally again, and able to have a bit to eat and go back on the WeGo bus!

At this point we considered a power plant tour.  Niagara Power is planning, or maybe has started (I’m not sure) a big project in which they are going to build a tunnel under the city of Niagara Falls.  It will be 6 semi trucks wide and will travel from one end of water /power collection – bellow the falls to a spot above the falls, and be able to regulate water and power.  It’s pretty fascinating and a little, okay - very scary.

While I was curious as to watching/hearing about how they use the power of the water to generate electricity and learn more of this plan, we could not bring ourselves to go thru the 40 minute tour.  Pretty sure it would be “yay power plant!  See we are safe and environmental!”  Which, I suppose in comparison to maybe some other things, they are… but … 

So instead we got back on the WeGO bus, and into the crazy, midway part of town for one thing I just HAD to do.  Let me preface this by saying, I knew what this was going to be.  I knew it was going to be a ridiculous price for what it was (and it was) and that it was going to be lame (and it was) and there was no reason for most people on earth to do this (and that was also the case), but I HAD to.  In fact, we were probably among the ONLY people today to do this, and let me publicly say here, how wonderful Mike is to have indulged in this.

What was it?  The Criminal Hall of Fame wax museum (www.criminalshalloffame.com)  If you are picturing a very dark, smelly, fairly cheesy midway kind of wax museum with no budget.  You’ve pretty much got it.  I did not learn anything new, but I did see two original John Wayne Gacy painting.  This for me was worth the admission and the trek up a steep hill through craziness.

Sunburned, tired, and content, we headed out of town.  Stopping at Walmart for aloe, we had our next adventure… a young man in a BMW decided to back into our car.  This sounds worse than it was, really.  His car is fine.  Ours, the bumper clips popped a bit.  From a far you wouldn’t even notice it.  But we filled out all the paper work etc.  This was complicated by the fact that the young man was Chinese and did not speak a great deal of English.  But we got all info and shall stop at the car rental place first thing in the morning.

All in all a good day, though we are sooo sun burnt and very tired.

I also can’t imagine – one of the big stories here is from the 60’s when a kid (like 6?) fell out of a boat above the falls and with nothing but a life jacket made it over.  He survived and was pulled  out by a maid of the mist boat.  This was a miracle. 

And that lady from MN, I think it was, who went over in a barrel with her cat…. Ah yeah. I don’t know how they survived either.  Or what she was thinking… there MUST have been a different option.

All in all, Niagara Falls is definitely a place to see, but I’m feeling very contented with what we’ve done and ready to move on.  I would think about coming back to see it in winter, though the wet… and the cold?  The Maid of the Mist runs year round.  I can’t imagine.