By this time, we've made it up to the Erie Canal, and we're bearing down on Niagara itself. Kim sees smoke on the horizon, and worriedly wonders what could be causing such a huge fire :-) Ah, but of course, that's the plume of mist 10 miles away from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls!
Our friends and family had certainly advised us correctly, "the Canadian side was 'better'", but we decided to start on the American side. For $10, we parked within the oldest state park in America, New York's Niagara Falls State Park. We entered through the visitor's center, and marched right up to the Falls edge, and commensed taking the first of some 800 pictures! Kimmie was on the wide angle and video recording, and I was tag-teamming on the telephoto zoom SLR. With minimal success at getting a decent picture of the two of us, we employed a handful of bystanders over the course of the day to shoot a picture of us. I generally believe that people are kind at heart, and it's certainly nice to see so many people offer to help out and take your picture. Unfortunately, kindess and strong photography skills are not related. So we went for volume, over quality, and just hoped one or two would pan out. With a little cropping, this is probably our best...
We shot a couple of nice portraits of one anther too, with the soft mist of the waterfalls as an out-of-focus background.
Oh, and the arms-length photos are always fun. Modern day equivalents of automated photo booths.
We stood in a long line and paid $2 to go out to the long, high pier over prospector's point, and see both sets of Falls from above. After another long line, we went to the bottom and took in the Falls from nearly water-level. After much deliberation, we opted to skip the Maid of Mist voyage, saving it for next time (and staying dry!).
Having seen most of the views to be offerred at Prospector's Point, we went back to the car for a quick snack. Thinking about heading to the Canadian side, we opted to drive over to Terrapin Point to get a view of the Canadian Falls from the American side. It turned out to be a good plan, as Goat Island was far less crowded than the other part of the park. We wandered around each of the view points, snapping more pictures, and still absorbing the enormity of the whole spectacle.
Again, we checked out the endless line to the Cave of the Winds tour, and decided to save it, too, for our next trip to Niagara, when we can dedicate a day to leaving the camera behind and getting totally soaked. Taking high resolution zoom pictures of the windblown, wet souls below, Kim and I decided we had made the right call for the second time that day ;-)
Having seen the Falls from a good dozen different viewpoints on the American side, we saddled up, donned our passports and headed to the border, perhaps a bit afraid that we're going to need some other damned insurance card.
We did have to stop and ask for directions. Unfortunately, Short Circuit here was a bit too far sighted to help.
But eventually, we passed a tremendously long line of people on the opposite side waiting to enter the land of the free, home of the brave, while we drove right up to an open booth, eh. Two passports, two stamps, and a few questions later, we're in Canada, hoser -- you know what I'm talking aboooot :-) (Okay, I got all of my Canada jokes out of the way.)
We paid another $10 to park (after asking the kid at the $15 parking lot where the cheapest parking was -- that kid is my hero), and walked down to another rail overlooking the falls from the opposite side.
Now we were told repeatedly that the Canadian side was "much better", and that there's "nothing really on the American side", and that "all the action is on the Canadian side". A bit of clarification is due, here. I loved the American side because it *was* a park, with minimal restaurants, bars, and hotel chains. The Canadian side is covered in restaurants (TGIFriday's), bars (Planet Hollywood), hotels (you name it), and casinos. That part isn't as appealing to me.
However, the view from the Canadian side is totally breathtaking. The scale and volume of the Falls is impossible to appreciate from the American side alone. A half an hour earlier, we were standing at the rim of the American falls...
But here's the view from Canada!
The panorama is just unbelievable.
Kim's plume of smoke is actually the mist emanating from Horseshoe Falls.
From the American side...
And then the Canadian side...
The crowd was a bit overwhelming, but we ducked and weaved our way around, walking the length of the overlook rail, to the very tip of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls.
Sufficiently satisfied with our Niagara experience, we indulged ourselves just a bit more, having dinner on a patio at a grill with a view of the falls at night. We were seated up front, in the "money beets" spot.
At night, gigantic spotlights from the Candian side illuminate the falls in a changing rainbow of colors. I played with the telephoto lens and shutterspeed on the SLR and managed to take some interesting pictures with 6 - 30 second exposures!
I liked the plain white lights best...
But Kim preferred the colored lights..
And inspired by those, I setup the tripod at the car just before we left to use the same technique and shoot the Ferris Wheel we parked near.
And that's about it for our Niagara experience. We have a few things to return to do (Leigh says we should have done the cable cars, and I'd like to leave the cameras behind and do the Cave and the boat tour). But we're quite satisfied with what we did manage to accomplish. We drove a bit further to Burlington, Ontario (about halfway to Toronto) to cut down our long drive to Montreal the next day.
:-Dustin
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