Canada Day (7/1/2015)

Raining again, during the night and off and on most of the day.  I headed over to the laundry at 7:00 a.m. with my laundry basket, but someone else had gotten their first, and there was only one washer.  I was going to wait her out, but then I saw her coming back to the laundry with another load, so I decided we would go find a laundromat.  So Joe and I took off, and with Lucille's help, we finally located a laundramat in Ridgeway.  Along the way, we saw this sign, so it looks like we are in euchre country.

 We got the laundry taken care of, then went to find some breakfast, which was not easy because it is a holiday here, and it is 11:00 a.m.  After 2 failed attempts, we did locate a nice restaurant and enjoyed a very good breakfast.  But in the course of our search, we ended up at Crystal Beach, right on Lake Erie (they didn't serve breakfast). We meant to drive back out here after breakfast, but it was raining so we skipped that, and I didn't get any pictures of that beach.  It looked like a good place to look for flat rocks too.

Then we drove around the town, dodging the raindrops, for a while before heading back to camp to put away the laundry. The other 4 Ruskateers had gone to Fort Erie for a tour this morning, so we did that this afternoon.  Very interesting, and it didn't rain on us until the very end.

Although this was originally a British fort, during the war of 1812 the Americans won the battle here and flew the American flag.

We took a guided tour and our tour guide, and the others we encountered along the way, were dressed in costume.

The musket demonstration was interesting, and our guide's musket misfired twice but he finally got his shot off.

Then we toured the buildings.  First was the soldiers barracks.

Then the officers quarters, a little more plush.

Then the officers kitchen where we were treated to lemonade (made from lemon grass) and freshly baked shortbread cookies. 

Outside were various pieces of armory including this cannon.

This fort is right across the Niagara River from the beautiful city of Buffalo, New York.

Upstairs in the fort were other exhibits, including the quartermaster supply room, the surgery and an Iroquois encampment.

As we left, Joe took his "ready" position.

We finished this tour about the time the rain decided to come again.  On this drive, we were also checking out our route out of here tomorrow because there is a low overpass (11'9") along the Niagara Parkway.  We found that bridge, and turned to locate another road, and we found one just up the street with a taller bridge but it wasn't marked what the clearance was.  So after our Fort Erie tour, Joe decided he needed to measure the bridge to make sure we would fit under it.

(It's a wonder we weren't arrested).  But it is 14'8", so we are all good to go.  We are somewhere between 12'3 and 12'6 (we measured it a long time ago but forgot what the magic number is, and of course I haven't found where I wrote it down).  Remeasuring is on our to-do list, but it requires someone on a ladder (Joe is not allowed, but he still gets on them to wash windows), and a board, and a tape measure.  We don't have the board at this time.

We got back to camp, had dinner, then headed back to the Falls to watch the fireworks since today is a big holiday here, Canada Day (like our July 4).  This is such a beautiful sight that you can't help but take pictures.  Joe even thought about leaving the camera in the car so he would just look at the scenery, but of course, he rethought that idea.

The rain had finally stopped, so all we were getting wet with was the mist from the falls.  Although the sky wasn't completely clear, the moon was trying to peep through as it got dark.

And downtown was beautiful with all the city lights through the mist.

The American Falls was light up well tonight, and the Hornblower boat offered "illumination cruises" to watch the fireworks from the water, so we saw two of their boats lit up down on the river.

Finally, the fireworks went off, but they were down the river a little, not over the top of the falls where we had situated ourselves.  But it was easy to see them out over the water, and although they only lasted about 10 minutes, they were pretty spectacular.

We were parked across the road again, in the $20 lot (thank you, Mazie), but getting out of there took a long time.  Traffic was really deadlocked for a while, but eventually we got on our way and made the drive back to camp.  I think it was about 11:00 when we got back.  We haven't seen the Brundiges yet to find out how their evening went with their fancy dinner overlooking the falls.  I'll have to report on that tomorrow.

Canadian Niagara Falls (6/30/2015)

This morning we headed into Niagara to "do" the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  Joe changed the setting on the GPS to read distance in kilometers instead of miles so he could keep an eye on the speed limit.  So we are driving along, and GPS Lucille says "turn right in 900 kilometers."  Like any of us had any idea how far 900 kilometers is!  We all had a good laugh about that.

Marilyn needed to find a bank, so she and Collins left in their car, and the rest of us went back to that Visitor Center we drove by last night, and got the scoop on the choices of things we wanted to see here.  We all planned to meet at the library and figure out their GPS situation.  We had to wait on the Brundiges for a while, and when they met up with us, they had figured out that Marilyn and Mazie were going to have to buy the Canada edition to add to their GPS, which they could either do online or by buying a chip.  They decided to buy the chip, and it started raining again, so we drove across the street to lunch at Tim Hortons.  By the time we finished lunch, it had quit raining, and we were set to begin our Canadian Falls adventures.  Remember you can click on the pictures to make them larger.

Our first attraction was the White Water Walk, which is a walk along "viewing platforms and a 1,000 ft. boardwalk, where the water crashes by at about 30 miles an hour with waves 3 to 5 meters high."  It was beautiful along this walk, the water was clear turquoise with white splashing waves.

Fortunately, there were no steps to get to this boardwalk, we took an elevator and then walked through a tunnel to get to the boardwalk.

Next, we went to the Table Rock area for our next attraction, Journey Behind the Falls.  We got a few pictures here before we headed down another elevator to another tunnel.  Only Marilyn, Joe and I did this attraction.

For the Journey, we were handed out yellow ponchos.  Engineers in the mid-19th Century built a tunnel through the rock.  Today, these concrete tunnels lead on a totally different view of the Falls.  There was a platform here before we got into the tunnel and we could see our boat, "Maid of the Mist" was out with another group.  This is where we needed the ponchos because we did get a little wet from the mist from the falls.

Then we walked through the tunnel over to a portal to view the water crashing over the falls from the backside.  There were two portals, the first we walked right up to, but the second one had a long line, probably a 45 minutes wait, before we got up to it.  Although the view seemed the same, we were quite a few feet further behind the falls than the first portal.

We quickly took our pictures and headed back up the tunnel to let the other people step on up.

We got back to the top and looked at the view again for a while, even caught a few rainbows through the mist. It's hard to walk away from such beauty.

We could really see the horseshoe shape from this vantage point.

 

And of course, there's always ice cream.

We waited here to catch our bus back to the cars.

and then we were on the bus

We had to change buses at the Whirlpool Aerocar stop (we did NOT do the aerocar), and Joe had a little adventure here.  Or his umbrella did -- yes, he new, manly umbrella.  While he was trying to take pictures, somehow his umbrella escaped his grasp and landed on the aerocar platform below.  It was way beyond his reach, and he had to ask for help, so when the car got back, one of the workers went out on the platform and rescued it for him. So he was reunited with his new best friend -- his umbrella.

Lots of photo opportunities, and Marilyn just loves to get her picture taken!

We went back to the RVs, but Joe, Mazie and I drove back down to view the falls with the lights on.  And that was amazing (although we did have to pay $20 for parking!).

And Joe took some pictures of the city skyline.

 The (below) is where Collins and Marilyn are having dinner tonight.

And more photos.  It is hard not to just keep taking pictures of such beauty.

We finally called it a night, but we had been fortunate that we just had a few sprinkles during our time here tonight.  We got back to camp just before 11:00.  Collins and Marilyn did not come down to the falls tonight because they are doing a "fine dining" experience tomorrow night to see the lights, and watch the fireworks, from the Skytron restaurant, a revolving restaurant with a view.  I think it shows up in most of the skyline pictures, as well as the "SkyWheel", a ferris wheel with "climate-controlled gondolas that soar the skies 175 feet about Niagara Falls."  We didn't ride that either, but I could have done that.  Joe and I could have done the Aerocar too, but we didn't.  It went over a whirlpool area called the Niagara Gorge, rather than out over the Falls themselves.  We hadn't planned to riding the Aerocar, and after the umbrella episode, it was probably better that we vacated those premises.