Maid of the Mist V

Once again, we managed to get quite wet today! We have been here at Niagara Lazy Lakes Campground since Friday, but today we finally made it to Niagara Falls. The Falls are located in Niagara Falls State Park, the oldest state park in the United States.

The streets around the park are filled with restaurants and souvenir stands, including a huge five story glass building that seemed to be just one huge food court.

We found parking (everywhere around and in the park for $10 per day) and walked across the street to the actual park. We could see the mist from the Falls before we got anywhere near enough to see it.

And is it ever an impressive sight! The American Falls are in the foreground while the Canadian Horseshoe Falls are in the back ground behind the mist. I've seen so many pictures over the years -- and we had watched the IMAX movie of the Falls at the Visitor Center -- but in person, it is incredibly awesome!

Today's main objective was to take a ride on one of the Maid of the Mist boats to take a closer look at the Falls. The building in the back houses the elevators that take you down to the bottom of the gorge to the dock. It also extends out as an Observation Platform for viewing the Falls.

As we got off the elevator at the bottom, we were each handed a blue poncho --

The ponchos are a very lightweight vinyl complete with hoods --

This was the Maid of the Mist IV that was operating from the Canadian side coming back from her trip to the Falls. It was a very bright sunny day today, all the mist and gray you see is from the Falls --

I was brave enough the first part of our trip to pull my poncho up enough to expose my camera for a few shots (sure wish we were close enough to our friend Leslie to have borrowed her water-proof one!). This is as we approached the American Falls. We couldn't get as close to them as we would to the Canadian one due to all those large boulders you can see at the bottom of the Falls (the Falls are eroding backwards up the river.) We are at the bow on the bottom deck of the boat. There were not too many people down here as it is a much "wetter" spot than the upper deck!

This is the Bridal Veil side of the American Falls. We're about as close as we'll get to this set, you can see the mist creeping towards us a bit --

As we approached the Canadian Falls, we totally lost any visibility we had. The mist actually became hard water droplets -- like being out in a hard rain storm! There were rapids along the foot of the Falls that were every bit as wild as the ones we went through on the jet boat yesterday.

The Niagara Gorge is amazing. That's Goat Island on the left that divides the Niagara River and separates the two falls --

 Can you see the rainbow over on the left in the mist?

 After we left shook off our very wet ponchos and deposited them in the recycle bins, we walked back across the street for hamburgers at the Niagara Falls Hard Rock Cafe. We were soaking wet below our knees where the ponchos hadn't covered, but nobody even seemed to notice. I think they were used to it...

Jet Boat!

When we picked up brochures of the area while we were waiting for our Erie Canal tour, Forry immediately noticed one for jet boat tours of the Niagara River gorge. I checked their website out on the Internet and the next thing you know we were scheduled for a boat ride this afternoon.

This is the picture of Forry and I that they snapped as we were getting on the boat.

And this is a picture of our whole group once we were on the purple boat.  Forry and I are in the fifth row back on the right side. If we were to do this again, we'd be a bit more assertive and get to the front of the line so that we could sit closer to the front!

This is a shot from the DVD we bought of the trip. They had a camera on the front of the boat. We took a look at a rapids rated a 6, but only went through the ones rated 4s and 5s. We did get really wet. They had warned us to bring a complete change of clothes and we needed it. We ended up completely soaked! The boats are also designed to allow water to drain out the back. There were several times that water in the bottom of the boat was almost up to my knees. Surprisingly, the water wasn't that cold! You could tell it wasn't from our mountain glacier fed Western rivers...

The jet boats are extremely maneuverable.  We did some 360 degree spins (Hamilton turns). This shot is from the camera at the back of the boat. Forry and I are on the left alone in the fourth row of people.

This is one of Whirlpool jet boat tours' stock shots of the purple boat. When it's colder, most people opt to wear parkas to keep them a bit warmer (children are required to wear them along with the life jackets.). There were two more of the company's boats out playing in the rapids. It was fun to watch the pink and yellow green boats as they made their runs through the white water.

This was another fun day. It was raining this morning on our way to Lewiston to catch the boat, but the sun was hot by the time we got out on the river.