Day 39: Niagara Falls

Thursday July 21

Niagara Falls

Thursday July 21 is our day to tour Niagara Falls.  We get going later than we had hoped but drive in and park on the Canadian side of the falls.  We buy tickets for the adventure pass which allows us admission to 4 events:  Maid of the Mist boat ride, Niagara’s Fury movie, Journey Behind the Scenes walk and White Water Walk.  We catch the movie first at the Table Rock Visitor’s Center.  The movie provides rain gear and warns pregnant women, people with heart conditions, neck or back issues to not go on it.  I am wondering if I should go on it since I get motion sickness so easily but I decide to go for it.  The movie was lame but we did get wet and the room underneath us rotated and shifted some but not enough to cause me any problems.  We went from there to the Journey Behind the Scene Tour.  Again you put on rain gear and go down an elevator about 150 ft.  You come out in tunnels that go to 2 observation holes.  They are just that- basically 2 areas where you can look out into the water flowing over the falls.  I am disappointed until we find the observation deck.  Here we really get wet!  We are in the falls and water is splashing everywhere.  I try to take a few pictures and as soon as the lens gets wet, it will not work anymore. 

Maid of the Mist

We have lunch at the Elements Restaurant where each table has a view of the falls.  It is a pricey meal but we are paying for the scenery too.  After lunch we take the shuttle to Maid of the Mist.  We have about 2 hours before we need to be at the White Water Walk, farther down the road.  Scott and I have done this ride before when we visited with Scott’s cousin David and his wife, years ago.  We wait to don the raincoats until we are on the boat because the air is so hot and sticky.  Within minutes we are all getting wet and Isabella starts to cry that she is wet and unhappy.  She moves to the middle of the boat while Lexi and I enjoy the ride and I try to take pictures while not getting the camera too wet. 

We're a little wet!

After the Maid of the Mist, we ride the shuttle down to the White Water Walk.  It is so hot at this point and we have a long wait outside (in the heat) for the walk.  We take an elevator down to the river’s edge and walk around the river.  It is cooler here and very pretty watching the river race past us.  Along the side of the walkway is a wall with colorful gum splatted everywhere.  I am disgusted by this but the tourists love it.  Overall the whole Falls experience is so different from the National Parks experiences we have had.  There is a lot more liter and graffiti in all the places at Niagara Falls and the wooden walkway down to the river looks like it could fall apart soon, some is closed because the wood is rotten.  It reminds me we are not in America and that the sole purpose of the park is to make money- not to preserve it for the future.

We return to the truck and head back to the campground for a swim.  It is very hot and humid and the swim is very refreshing.  We head downtown for dinner and eat at The Love Boat restaurant.  From there we return to Niagara Falls to see the park lit up at night.  It is so hot tonight that we do not notice the horse and buggy rides that were out the night before.  The falls are beautiful with different colors lighting up the falls.  The lights change colors and it is gorgeous.  The sky is filled with the night life lights as well.  Lexi would have loved to eat at the revolving restaurant in the Skylon Tower.  We figured it would be way too pricey but later that night I looked it up and dinner was $40 and I noticed a sign advertising ½ off dinner sale at the tower itself so that wouldn't have been too bad a price for the experience.  I told Lexi she should put it on her “bucket list”.