With me off work and Kristy scoring Friday off for the Eid Al Fitr holiday, we figured we’d take our proper anniversary celebration a week late. So early Friday morning, we popped on a 1 hour flight from New York to Buffalo – destination: Niagara Falls!
I’m going to pitch one way out into left-field here and assume that everybody knows of Niagara Falls, but did you know that:
- Niagara Falls is actually made up of 3 seperate waterfalls – The American Falls, Bridal Veil falls, and the Horseshoe Falls (the most famous);
- The Canadian and American border is about half way across the Niagara river;
- 90% of the water that flows over Niagara Falls – that’s 156 million litres per minute – goes over the Horseshoe Falls, and the river carries 20% of the world’s fresh water;
- The only person to unwillingly go over the Horseshoe Falls and survive was a 7 year old boy named Roger Woodward who was the victim of a boating accident;
- The water at the base of the Horseshoe Falls is 50-60 metres deep; in contrast, the base of the Bridal Veil and American Falls is solid rock.
Ok, so I could sit here and sprout facts at you until you were fast asleep, and since there’s a good chance you’re at work right now I’ll save you the embarrassment of snoring at your desk.
What else do you do at Niagara Falls except (a) propose to your missus (note: Steve and Allie’s couch is a much better venue to do this), and (b) tourist it up? Since option (a) wasn’t available to us, we did as much of option (b) as possible. The highlight was probably in Canada, where we took a Journey Behind The Falls. Basically you don a raincoat, trolley down in an elevator, and come out in some tunnels that are dug – you guessed it – behind Niagara Falls. There’s a couple of viewing portals where you can see the water thundering past, and an observation deck from which you can see the falls real close. It was simply amazing.
The other thing we couldn’t help but notice was – as Bender put it – “how beautiful the Northern Hemisphere is during Autumn”. All the trees were various shades of yellow, green and red. Coming from Brisbane where winter is basically a slightly-less-hot-summer and plants are basically brown all year, Kristy and I were just blown away. Suddenly it materializes exactly why the yanks call this season “fall”.
We’re back at home now, and still have another day of the weekend to enjoy winding down. Our trip to Niagara was just brilliant, we can’t recommend it enough. I’ll put up some photos as soon as I finish my new photo album component!
. But I’m wondering why you still need a scanner? I have downloaded a great scanner app for my phone so I just take...
5 comments
Happy anniversary it seems like yesterday.
I got to the part about "Ok, so I could sit here and.." and then I fell asleep. <br><br>Before I dozed however I happen to nitice how becoming KJ looked in that little golden and sunset ensemble…
How cold did you find the place? Right near the falls at night time seemed to make the air a lot cooler, at least I found when I was there.
It does certainly look a little warmer than when we were there last February. How can I tell you ask? Well you don’t appear to be wearing 5 layers of clothes, gloves, scarves and beanies. It could be a guess though.<br><br>And what’s with the leaves and stuff? They must have glued them on as there weren’t any on the trees when I was there. They painted them all white.<br><br>The US/Canadian do a great job at themeing the place. I must go back again one day.<br><br>I’m glad you guys had a great time. <br><br>I see that the helicopter ride didn’t eventuat?
Bender: Nup, we didn’t end up doing the chopper ride. We were pretty keen but when we walked outside it was quite dark, and about to storm. So we figured it probably wouldn’t be worth it, and we didn’t see any choppers running so figured maybe they don’t run with storms looming, anyway. Next time!<br><br>Pat: Actaully we were pleasently surprised by how warm it was! You’re right that it was definitely colder next to the falls, but generally the temperature was quite nice. Even at night and right next to the Horseshoe falls I was only wearing a t-shirt and my ski jacket unzipped, and I wasn’t cold…