Heather and Barry's Homepage

Barry woke up to thunder at twenty-of-seven this morning, and given that rain had yet to begin, he assumed it was on its way. He woke me up and we hopped out of the tent; within twenty-two minutes we had broken down camp by throwing everything into the car haphazardly, regardless of the fact that both of us hate mess and disorganization. Still dry outside, we headed to the shower rooms. It was the first time in some amount of unspecified days that shampoo and soap touched my body. The showers had those annoying push-the-knob-every-x-number-of-seconds buttons but the water was preciously warm and the pressure plentiful.

When I left the shower room all clean and rebeautified, the rain began. “Phew,” I thought, “Barry waking me up disgustingly early was not for naught!” We tried to find a covered location were we could make breakfast and clean up the disarray we created and were fortunate to come upon a pavilion on the campsite on the other side of the breakwater. We parked the car underneath so that we could unload anything necessary without it getting it wet and set to our tasks. During our breakfast a little old man on a golf cart from the grounds approached us; stuff was still strewn everywhere and we thought we were goners. As it was, he, too, was simply trying to get out of the rain and perhaps talk a little, for he was very friendly. Barry and were both shocked, however, to find out through our dialogue that this prior veteran had never heard of Boston!

Just as we were loading everything neatly back into the car, another gentleman in the official park pick-up truck drove over. He was very nice and informed us that “the park does not usually allow vehicles under the structure.” I apologized and told him our situation, informing him that we were just finishing and that we would be done momentarily. Like promised, we were soon driving out of the facility and found the Ramada Inn in hopes of stealing some Internet access. We scored, looked at some maps, downloaded images to the laptop, and posted an entry on the website. Trouble started when we tried to upload a GB or so of pictures to Barry’s server space. We lost our connection and were unable to reestablish an IP address, so we packed up the technology and made our way to Niagara Falls.

Buffalo was soon in the distance, and I navigated our way into the city of Niagara Falls proper. It had been a while since I have been to the area so I thought it would be helpful to stop at one of the many information stations along the side of the road. Little did I know that this place was actually just posing as an information site. Rather, it was this company called Gray Line Tours. The man working behind the counter was selling hard. I caught on right away what his scheme was, as he was not addressing any of the questions I was asking him directly and refused to provide me with - probably because he did not possess - a map of Niagara Falls Park any of the five times I asked. The tour package he was trying to sell us was $71 and covered a lot of the main attractions. It did so, however, in four to five hours, and Barry and I quickly assessed that we (a) had no desire to be suckered into his trap, (b) did not really want to ride the tour bus with a bunch of “traditional tourists”, and (c) would not have the time and freedom to do what we wanted in the area when we wanted to do it. We did allow Mr. Con Man to offer us his rate of a hotel room that was practically the same amount it would have cost us to camp and set off to make sure that the accommodations were satisfactory, which they were.

Using the map that Mr. Con Man provided, we made our way to the park and found a parking garage right before it for $10 per 24 hours. We quickly found a REAL information visitor’s center within park grounds and after talking with a ranger there purchased a “Niagara Falls State Park Passport” for $24.95 which covered the main attractions (Maid of the Mist, Cave of the Wind, The Trolley, the aquarium, the Niagara Falls Discovery Center, and the Festival Theatre production about the history of the Falls) AND lasts until the end of the year. She provided us with the official state park map, wrote down the ending times of each of the attractions, then proposed an order for us that she felt would be the best of all possible worlds given that we were just exploring for the evening.

Our personal tour began with some walking a long the Niagara River and Barry saying every five seconds or so, “wow, that’s an awesome hole” or “look at the size of that wave”. After about thirty or so minutes of this, I dragged him off to the docking location for the Maid of the Mist. We used our first Passport tickets and were soon on the boat covered in our complimentary blue ponchos. Barry made sure that my SLR camera was protected both in its bag and out and I made sure that his waterproof camera was easily accessible. Maid of the Mist IV left port soon thereafter. We listened to the announcer talk about the falls, the mist, and the attempts going over them; the fact that 10 out of 15 people who have tried have succeeded did not help Barry’s whitewater ego to squelch it’s desires to run the Falls [No, no, no; I have no desire to run the falls, just the excellent rapids above them –Barry]. We asked a man to take our picture in front of American Falls, which he kindly did, then spent the remainder of the trip admiring the majestic beauty of these great geological phenomena. Departing from the boats, we followed a walking trail up a stairway that paralleled the American Falls. The path dead-ended on a porch half-way up the downpour of water with heavy winds blowing all around us from every direction. Our second shower of the day came from the Falls, and because of the fast and furious sprays from the river, we were unable to take any pictures from this viewpoint. :( None-the-less, the hike itself was a total blast (no pun intended) and we left the Maid of the Mist trip as happy as drenched clams.

The elevator up the tower to the observation deck was zippy, and we soon found ourselves looking from yet another perspective of the American Falls. After a few moments, we left here and decided to catch the movie. Created by the History channel, the documentary is a historical “recreation” of Niagara Falls turning from an uncharted mystery to one of the world’s largest tourist attractions. As a side note - I highly recommend going to see this twenty-two minute film if you have never done so.

Time was tight when the show ended; it was 8 PM, and we calculated that we were going to be unable to ride the trolley, eat something, and catch the Cave of the Wind. We spent some of these minutes reading the historical timelines that cover the walls outside the theatre, leaving us with fewer hours to complete the passport we purchased. Back up to the Official tourist information center we went to ask about food. The young woman behind the counter said that one of the best places for good cheap vegetarian food nearby was this joint called The Misty Dog. She had a menu on file and I was shocked to see the number of options available to me. Given such an opportunity, we jumped on it, found the place next to an ice-cream cone shaped building - I kid you not - and placed our orders. We realized as we bused our table at the end of our meal that we needed to make our way over to the Cave of the Wind very quickly if we wanted to catch the last tour.

We arrived at the elevators as the attendant was filing people in around 9:40. He told us that we needed to go to the ticket booth to pick up our bright yellow ponchos and footwear before we were allowed on the elevator. We followed instructions and were handed our ponchos and a plastic bag for our shoes, then were provided a pair of water shoes. It never ceases to amaze me how people don’t listen, for twice I told the shoe-giver-outers that I needed a size 8 in women’s or a size 6 in men’s, and both times they got it wrong. In their defense, perhaps they had no shoes for my feet, for when we tried the ponchos on they barely covered us; the elevator man told us that they had run out of adult ponchos earlier in the day and so we were all wearing children-sized yellow plastic bags. sigh Our camera protection commission went to work again as we did our best to make sure that the SLR was covered up as much as possible under the poncho and the waterproof camera was out and ready to shoot.

The tour guide at the bottom of the cave was a riot. He raced through his script, barely annunciating his words, and then herded us along the stairway path. It was dark out and the Niagara light show had begun; the color of the falls was spectacular! Barry decided that because it was dark, there was no point in taking any pictures. I took the camera, put it into night mode, and used the railings as a stabilizer. My picture was vivid and clear, and Barry took the camera back from me. The shots he took were superb, and I wanted to see if we could get one of the two of us at Hurricane Deck. This platform is literally 15 feet from the consistent edge of Bridal Veil Falls and we were getting plenty wet. The tour guide attempted to take our picture but was unable to get a shot that wasn’t blurry.

After the Cave of the Winds we walked back to the main trail and passed the viewing area among Bridal Veil Falls where, of course, we took more pictures. Our night at the park ended by taking a look at the illuminated rapids. The darkness precluded my ability to get any decent pictures, but it mattered little. Barry once again was analyzing the way to run the upper falls [See above. –Barry] or at least play in all of the huge holes and giant waves that come from the massive amount of water that flows through the river. Wiped out, we walked back to the “Rainbow Garage” where hours earlier we had parked the car. A pleasant surprise was awaiting us when we left the lot at 11:30 PM EDT; the parking attendant had left for the evening and we were able to leave without paying for parking. What Mr. Gray Lines Tours had told us was going to be a lot of waiting in lines and parking far away for a lot of money in order to see the Falls turned into a perfect evening of no waiting, no hassles, being able to take all of the pictures we wanted without being rushed, and much less expensive then his proposed adventure. We drove back to the Holiday Hotel with memories that will last forever and the hopes of returning to hike along the river, take more pictures during daylight hours, and complete the activities in Niagara Passport in the future.