Niagara Falls - June 2008
In June we went to Niagara Falls with Kristina and two of her college
friends. I was in the midst of a lot of trouble due to my WDDD paper,
so I hadn't had much sleep the night before. Kristina was worried about
rain, but happily it cleared up just as we got there.
Here is a view of Horseshoe Falls from the American side:
Nearby is a statue of Electrical Engineering hero
Nikola Tesla.
For some reason his statue is quite popular and I had to wait a while to
get a picture that didn't have families posing in front of it.
Here is the American falls:
We always like visiting Goat Island, and from there you can go out into
the Niagara River on the Three Sisters Islands. Here's a view from
there looking upstream:
After eating a picnic lunch, we went across to Canada. Marie
didn't have enough ID so we got yelled at by Canadian customs.
Then we had to find parking, which was a bit of an adventure,
and expensive due to the current lousy exchange rate.
Here's a view of a barge that got stuck in the river not far above
the falls:
You have to watch our for that unusual ice.
Here's a front-view of the American Falls. Down below
you'll see a
Maid of the Mist boat which we'll be on shortly:
We met up with a Canadian friend of Marie's and then hiked down
to the Maid of the Mist terminal. It was an actual hike, as the
elevators were broken. Here's a view of the Canadian Falls
from the boat (it was really misty that day, so I apologize for
the lack of good Canadian Falls pictures. Also, imagine us
all wearing bright blue ponchos during this all).
Here's a GPS map of us walking around, and also our boat trip to
the base of the falls:
After this we walked back to our car, and stopped in at the greenhouse
in Queen Victoria Park. We said goodbye to Marie's friend, and
then drove North along the river (well, the gorge). We stopped
to overlook the Whirlpool, which if you are brave you can
cross on the Spanish Aero-cars. We did not, but we'll be back
on the other side the next day.
The drop in the Niagara River is used for power generation. Here's
the dam on the Canadian side, across the river is the American dam.
We crossed back into the US, and Marie got yelled at again, this
time by the American customs people. We camped at the
Four Mile Creek State Park campground, which is on Lake Ontario.
The site saw action during the French and Indian War. It was a
really nice campground. Here is our campsite, we had a direct
line of sight to Lake Ontario:
We cooked supper over a driftwood campfire, and later watched the
sun set over Lake Ontario:
Here's a GPS map of where we stayed and of some walking around I did:
The next day we were up early, ate breakfast, and packed everything into
the car. We went to church at the
Our Lady of Fatima Shrine near Lewiston, NY. The dome is shaped
like a globe and inside you can see the outline of the continents.
You can climb to the top to see the 20-ton statue of Mary, and
have a nice view of the surrounding countryside. You can
see
Brock's Monument in Canada (though you can't see it in this
picture).
After church we went to Whirlpool State park to hike along the Gorge
(this is one of Kristina's favorite places). We hiked down a massive
amount of steps, and then walked along the old railroad right-of-way
that impressively hugs the cliffs. Here is the Whirlpool:
We walked a ways, being impressed by the rapids. Here I am, with
the Whirlpool Bridge in the background:
It's hard to capture on film (well, on CCD) how impressive the
rapids are along this stretch of river:
Here's an approximate map of our hike, as always the GPS has trouble
in gorges:
Then it was time to leave, because our guests had far to travel that day.
We did stop in to see where Marie's brother is going to college this year,
at Daemen College. And then
we stopped by Charlie
the Butcher's for some Beef on Weck (plus a birch beer float...):
And then our Niagara adventure was over, for now...
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