Week 14 - "put together as many pictures as you can with the vacation story"

Posing in front of the Horseshoe Falls in Canada

      OK, this might not be what you had in mind, but it comes close enough.  We had been planning a road trip at our retirement for almost a year.  Since we had never been to Niagara Falls and Bill wanted to return to Cooperstown, this seemed like the ideal time.  Friends had told us to be sure to stay on the Canadian side because the view was so much better.  And we would definitely recommend that to anyone else who wants to visit there. 
     Our trip didn't start off as we had planned.  Bill developed a cold and cough and we almost turned back after the first night.  We stopped at a really creepy, little motel in Ashland, Ohio.  The
room smelled like mold and we couldn't open the

Maid of the Mist taking visitors to the Falls

 windows because there were no screens.  Of course with Bill's cold, he couldn't smell anything, so he actually slept that night.  When we arrived in Niagara Falls, Ontario, our room was not ready.  We left our bags at the bell desk and walked down to the Falls to explore for three or four hours.  Upon returning, we realized that I left one of our bags sitting beside a chair in the lobby and it never made it to the bell desk!  It took us a couple of hours to figure this out and to find out that someone else had stored it behind the front counter.   But when we finally got to our room on the 30th floor, it was worth the hassle.  The bed 

was huge - almost twice the size of a king.  The view from the window was of the Horseshoe Falls and a
 window opened so that we could hear the Falls as we fell asleep at night.  The room was advertised as a hot


The American Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls

tub suite where we could sit in the hot tub and see the

Falls.  I think you would have to be a giraffe to be

able to do that, though.  At any rate, we had a beautiful view and spent lots of time standing at the window just looking down. 

     We took several tours in the two days we were there.  We boarded the Maid of the Mist and donned rain ponchos and sailed to the bottom of the Falls.  It was really impressive to be that close to the power of all that water.  Another tour was a walk in the man-made tunnels to portals behind the Falls.  If we had been brave, we could have jumped the barriers and actually reached out and touched the water.  We also shuttled to an area after the Falls to view the rapids before the water gets to the Niagara River and then empties into Lake Ontario.

There was always a rainbow over the Falls



     The force of the water causes mist in the air above the Falls.  Depending  on the direction of the wind, the area surrounding the visitor center is usually wet.  At times the area around our hotel and the surrounding restaurants were wet.  Plants grow really well there with the constant mist they get.  All this mist causes rainbows over the area most of the time.  We were told that there are also moonbows, but they are difficult to see today because the Falls are lit with colored lights all night.
     We were surprised that it was only a 12 hour drive from Niagara Falls back to Charleston.  Maybe we will go again someday.