Both sides of Niagara

Niagara Falls, American side – 28/05/10

We left Montecello, NY this morning and headed straight up the highway too Syracuse, New York. In Syracuse we changed onto the Interstate 90, also known as the New York State Thruway. This is a toll road, known here as turnpikes. They’re cheaper here though. This road took us straight to Buffalo and Niagara. This is the first time we’ve spent any time on a turnpike and on the along the way we finally saw some decent-sized trucks.

90% of all semi-trucks in the USA are single trailers and most of the rest are what they call Pup Doubles. These are like a baby Road Train, with 2 tiny (26-29ft) trailers. They are no bigger than a full-size single trailer unit.
But here on the turnpike we saw a Rocky Mountain Double, which is a full size (53ft) trailer with a Pup trailer behind. It is about the same size as an Aussie B-Double, but lighter-weight.
Also saw the big daddy of them all for the USA, which is the Turnpike Double. These units may only operate on certain turnpikes, hence the name. They have 2 fullsize (53ft) trailers one behind the other. It is like the Aussie Double Road Train, but again, lighter-weight.

The scenery we passed through was again very, very pretty with lots of rolling green hills, very densely forested, and glorious mountain streams and rivers everywhere.

We got a great campground in Buffalo, on Grand Island, right near Niagara Falls.
The falls themselves are simply stunning. We stayed on the US side today. There are 3 main falls: American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls are on the US side, while Horseshoe Falls circle around (in the shape of a horseshoe, duh) with half on the US side and half on the Canadian side, eh.
The USA/Canada border runs right down the middle of the river.
You can (and we did) walk all around the river edges as they lead up to the falls and again, as at the Grand Canyon, we were surprised to see safety rails at a minimum and never more than thigh-high.
The power on the current as it approaches the falls is amazing and the water is super-clean and clear. It is glorious.
You can stand on the edge of the cliff 2 feet from where the falls go over and it’s just amazing.
There is also a viewing platform that has been built out from the US side so you can get another perspective of the falls. Maybe they were tired of people saying the view was better from the Canadian side? Either way it is an astonishing view, and the viewing platform has an elevator which goes down more than 200 feet to the bottom shoreline, where you can board the Maid of the Mist, the ferry that runs right around the bottoms of all the falls.
Based upon my mom’s advice (and she thinks I don’t follow her advice, hah) we rode the Maid around the river and got well sprayed. It was awesome.
The mist that rises from the bottom of the falls is extremely dense and actually rises half-again higher into the air than the falls themselves drop. I’m not sure how that could be physically possible, so I’ll have to read up.

The whole area is NY State Park (the oldest State Park in the USA), dating back nearly 200 years. And it looks like a State Park should. There are lovely walking trails everywhere, leading from one fall to another and there are great amenities (not too expensive, either) and there are beautiful lawns stretching to forever. And admission’s free.

In the early evening we sat on a manicured, sloping lawn overlooking the Horseshoe Falls and had a take-out dinner. It was picture perfect.

We stayed into the late evening and saw a bit of the “light show” but even though it was pretty, it was nothing compared to the beauty of the falls themselves.
Today has been one of the stand-out days of the trip so far. It was so amazing. I certainly hope that we can remember it (and how it made us feel) forever.

The view of Canada from American Falls

Niagara River

A rainbow amongst the mist

One of many 'Maids of the Mist'

Crazy people walking up to the power of Bridal Falls, otherwise known as
'How to get saturated and blown away in 2 seconds flat'

Horseshoe Falls and its ever rising mist

Niagara Falls, Canadian side – 29/05/10

This morning we got a late start. Not because we slept in, but because we had to do some laundry. The campground we stayed at had a laundry but we did it in the morning and it took a couple hours so we used the time to catch up on yesterday’s blog and make friends with the owner of the place. We gave him an Australian 10c, 20c and $1 coin and he gave us a couple dollars of US quarters, some of them were one we needed for the collection.

For those who don’t know (probably most of you all), the US over the last few years have issued commemorative quarters (25c coins) for all of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and the 5 territories. That’s 56 collectable coins in general circulation. Lucy, our niece, collects coins and we decided (about in Florida) to try and collect the whole set of Commemorative quarters for her. We have most of them now, but not quite all. Today we also added a couple of Canadian quarters but I’m getting ahead of myself…

About 10 or 11 this morning we left our lovely, quiet campground on Grand Island, Buffalo, NY and drove the 20 minutes or so to the Rainbow Bridge (International Bridge), through the toll gate ($1 US), a few metres to the customs guys (a quick look and they passed us through – no passport check, no van check) and then across the bridge we progressed. Along the bridge and into no man’s land. But then we hit the Canadian check point. Passports at the ready and ready to have the van searched. But, the van wasn’t searched. Our passports were scanned and Pia’s was stamped (Mark’s American wasn’t stamped, much to his dismay, Pia two, Mark none). And then, on into Ontario, Canada.

We decided to follow Suzi and BJ’s idea of finding your accommodation first and then setting out to enjoy the sights. So that is exactly what we did. We made our way down the QEW to Fort Erie (south of Niagara Falls, Canada) and registered our camping sight for that night. We checked out where we hoped to spend the night and then set off to Niagara Falls, again, but this time to be seen on the Canadian side.

We had some fun trying to find a parking place, but eventually found one up the hill from the falls and paid about half the price to boot. We set off on foot and made our way down to the falls and were yet again blown away by the majesty of these natural wonders. They really are just incredible. And it is true that they are better seen from the Canadian side. You get the full view of both falls and the smaller (much less noticed) falls.

You could really notice the difference between the US side and the Canadian side. Yesterday, on the US side, it was a Friday and the crowds were really minimal. The state park made it very pleasant to walk around and you really felt you got the most out of the falls and its surrounds. Today, on the Canadian side, it is a Saturday. There seems to be an awful lot of tourists around today, from all over the globe. We swear we have heard accents from every Continent and then some that we couldn’t even recognise. But there were too many people for our liking today.

We enjoyed a hotdog for lunch and then moved on. We walked from the beginning of American Falls and made our way up to the amazing Horseshoe Falls. The view from the Canadian side truly did amaze us both. We have been having many of those moments, you know the ones. ‘I can’t believe we’re in Canada’. After getting sprayed on, considerably, by Horseshoe Falls, we made our way slowly back towards the van.
Along the way we walked along the length of “Tacky Street”. It is named this (by us) because it is a two block long tourist trap with nothing but theme restaurants and gift shops etc.

In the evening, we returned to our campsite, the loveliest so far, and enjoyed a bottle of Australian red wine by the campfire, by the lake, with our gourmet canned pasta. Late in the evening, I (Mark) went to the neighbouring campsite and helped them put up their tent in the dark. It was almost 11pm.
They were a young(ish) couple who had emigrated to Canada from Poland. We agreed to share a campfire and a drink later.

While they were sorting out their campsite, I got bored and began my usual boredom-relieving game of pestering Pia in some way. While she was putting something back in the van, I got a hold of her headlamp (a little flashlight on an elastic strap that you wear like a miner’s lam) and, holding it by the elastic, began to spin it around very fast, delighted that it made a whir-whirring sound just like a bullroarer.
Of course, Pia grumped at me behaving like a child and at that moment, I lost my hold on it.
The momentum carried it high into the air, where it inevitably lost it’s brief contest with gravity and arced down gracefully into the lake about 5 feet from shore, in about 5 feet of water. It floated briefly, then went to the bottom.
Feeling bad about losing a very handy headlamp and also littering in a beautiful lake, I resorted to stripping to my underwear and wading in after it.

So I’m standing up to my thighs in a Canadian lake in the middle of the damned night wearing nothing but my Superman-red underpants and trying desperately not to slip and fall on the algae-covered rocks, thus splitting my noggin open, when, with all of the perfect timing typical of my life-experiences, the nice ex-Polish couple from nearby came wandering over to our campsite. There were wide eyes and a stunned silence, eventually broken by Pia’s laughing.

While I was standing up to my waist locating the missing headlamp, the fellow I’d helped with the tent earlier, came barrelling past me and dived straight in.
Imagine my surprise. It turns out he is a mad-keen diver. After a few minutes of teamwork, we located and recovered the headlamp. And although it was never advertised as being waterproof, it still works fine.
We joined them around their campfire. And warmed up drinking beer and wine and talking into the early morning. Good fun.

Mark and Pia with American Falls as a beautiful and powerful backdrop

The Edge of Horseshoe Falls

American Falls in all its glory

Horseshoe Falls in all its glory - and how small does the Maid of the Mist Look?

King Kong on Tacky Street, the name we gave the street.

'Why so serious?' - Wax cast of Heath Ledger's Joker

Our beautiful campsite

(the blog doesn't like to change the layout, so am being a little tricky with it)

Oh, Canada – 30/05/10

We got up this morning, thankfully hangover-free, but I had about a litre of soon-to-be-second-hand beer demanding my attention. It was a glorious morning, already about 20-degrees at 6am. We walked under bright blue skies around the lake and got washed in the bathhouse. Most of these campgrounds have really good bathhouses. For breakfast we had granola bars and mocha boiled on the gas-cooker. Yummy.
No, seriously, it really is yummy.

We had another chat with the couple from last night and wished them all the best. We were very sorry to leave the Windmill Point RV Park and Campground. It is simply the most stunning spot to relax.

We drove west, destination: Windsor, Ontario. We were on the back-roads and old highways all morning, passing through really fertile, green farmland. It is quite flat here but the farming countryside has its own beauty.
We had burgers for lunch in a modest little rural greasy-spoon.
In the mid-afternoon, the road we were on, Provincial Highway 3, came down to the coast and we drove for a couple hours along the north shore of Lake Erie. Surprisingly, the southern shore (Pennsylvania, USA) is not visible from here. It’s water all the way to the southern horizon.

More surprisingly, it turns out that Pennsylvania is not where the pencil was invented.

And before anybody asks, we haven’t gone to any Amish villages, but we have seen Amish and Mennonite people around from Virginia up to here.

In the later afternoon we stopped at a lovely campground called The Ponds RV Park, near Windsor, Ontario. Again we are camped by a small lake, stocked with carp so numerous that you could just about walk across it without getting your feet wet. There is a white, cotton-ey substance floating around everywhere on the wind and it covers everything. It’s the seed pods from the local variety of poplar tree. It’s like dandelion seed pods but much finer. It’s very pretty.

Tomorrow we plan to head through Windsor, cross the bridge into Detroit, Michigan, USA, and head south for Ohio, to see Aunt Edna, Gary and Norma again. We can’t wait to see them.

PS: The proprietrix (I just invented that word. You like it?) of this park has warned me not to go swimming in the lake here in the middle of the night as the snapping turtles might get cranky. Good advice, I reckon.

Lake Erie (drive by Photograghy)