Saturday September 30th
I left the campground just after sunrise, and started up to highway 401. It was a rather misty start to the morning, with the sun trying to shine through it.
On the way I stopped to take some photos of the wildflowers along the road, with a misty farmhouse in the background, and some wind turbines. It took about four hours to get to Niagara, along a flat, straight, beautifully maintained four-lane highway at the monotonous speed of 100km/h. A lot of people were ignoring the speed limit, which was not unusual. There were a few touches of autumn colour along the way. A lot of Ontario is very flat.
The highway ran along the side of Lake Ontario for a while, but there wasn’t a lot of it to be seen from the road. I turned off and went straight to the RV park to start with, bypassing Niagara Falls. I was staying about 20 minutes drive south of the falls in a lovely little spot by the Niagara River called Riverside Park. I was surprised that only a short drive from Niagara Falls there was just countryside and farmland. It seems there are a lot of things concentrated around the falls, but only in a relatively small radius.
The place was only sparsely populated. They took only cash, and I had little or no Canadian money, so they said it was ok if I got cash that day in Niagara, then paid the next day. This saved a lot of trouble, as going in and out of Niagara and parking would have taken a fair amount of time. The RV park was fairly open, with trees here and there, and a peek of a view of the river. The road to Niagara went along the river, which was very wide, and flowing fast. It was clear that a large volume of water went down it. Across the other side was the US, Upstate New York. My phone would sometimes not have reception, despite the fact there must have been a lot of towers around. I think it was probably getting confused with getting signal from towers in two different countries at once!
I stopped to have a look at the river, then drove to Niagara proper. Parking, I knew, could be an issue. There was a parking lot I had earmarked, which I thought would work. I found one parking lot with quite a bit of space in it, but it said no RVs. I was never quite sure if I was classed as an RV or not. But I went on to a parking lot a bit nearer the falls which allowed anything in, and had a look there. By the Lord’s grace I found one spot, I didn’t see any others. Trying to find parking in many places was hard if you didn’t get there early in the morning, which wasn’t really an option for me! It cost $35 for the day, but you could stay till midnight if you wanted. I was happy to pay it to get a spot.
The parking turned out to be pretty close to the action, which was great. I crossed the road (most lights in Canada and the US didn’t make a noise when you could cross, which I had to keep remembering in case I didn’t notice that the little man was saying you could go now!), and found myself in an area with an information centre and bus terminal, and some lovely gardens with plenty of flowers blooming. There were a lot of people around, and some food carts, and I got something to eat at one of them. It wasn’t far from there to the falls. As I approached it I could see the fast flowing water, and the cloud of mist ascending from the falls. The Niagara River flows from Lake Eerie into Lake Ontario, and the falls are about in the middle between them.
It was possible to get quite close to the Horseshoe Falls, the Canadian side of the falls, which were amazing to look at. Even being there, it was hard to get a feel for just how vast they were. There were a lot of people lining the lookout area, and you had to wait until someone left and get in to have a look. I walked north a bit and got a good look at them, and the Rainbow Bridge over the river, then went on to the Hornblower Cruise which, like the Maid of the Mist on the US side, went quite close to the falls. Apparently they both did much the same thing, one handed out red ponchos and one blue!
Though there were a lot of people around, clearly it’s often far more crowded. The cruises left regularly, and I was able to get onto the next one, in only about 15 minutes or so. From the boat you could see the US side of the falls, which were somewhat scorned as not being as good as the Canadian side, though they were very impressive indeed, and beautiful. One of the guides said that they didn’t have the prestige of the Canadian falls – nobody had gone over the US falls in a barrel! The side of the boat I was on was facing away from the falls but I still got a good look.
The cruise lasted about 20 minutes or so. There were a lot of people piling onto the double-decker boat. I was on the top, and found a spot by the railings on one side.
After looking at the American Falls, they went over and got closer and closer to the Horseshoe Falls – so close that almost all you could see at one point was mist. I took a lot of photos with the phone, which was waterproof. It was amazing being so close. Then they went back by the American falls, and gave those of us on the other side a good look at it before returning. There was commentary throughout.
I went back up to the river bank – the bank was quite high above the river – and went searching for an ATM. There was one marked on Google Maps in Clifton Hill, a district just a block or so away from the river. There was a large amusement hall with a lot of video games and things, and the ATM was supposed to be in there. I had a job to find it, but did eventually track one down. They wanted an exhorbitant fee to withdraw money internationally, something like $11, the most I paid anywhere. But at least I had got cash for the RV park.
After that I walked over to the well-named Rainbow bridge, which crossed over the river into the US. I had to work out how to get onto the bridge, which was above the riverbank. I found the entrance, up through a plaza with more beautiful flowers. Once I was there, I found out that they charged pedestrians $1 to go over to the US side, but coming back was free! Only cash was accepted in the turnstile to get onto the bridge, in the form of four Canadian quarters.
I had no Canadian change at all, but there were change machines which took US or Canadian $5 notes. Thankfully I had a US $5 note, and I put it in – several times until it worked – and got a mix of US and Canadian currency back. It took a while to identify what were quarters and what else I had. At least I knew which was Canadian currency by their having the Queen on the back. But what denomination they were was less easy to decipher, quarters had “Quarter Dollar” written on them in tiny writing.
So I fed the turnstile and walked over the bridge, which had beautiful views. Coming into the US side, I had to go through customs. There was a line-up of people queued up to go through, and I waited, quite a while of it in the hot sun without any shade, for about 40 minutes until it was my turn. It seems a bus had arrived at the same time, and we were competing with them. Eventually I got through, and set out towards Goat Island, which sticks into the Niagara River.
There was a bridge over some of the Niagara River, which was flowing fast around smaller, fairly heavily treed islands, with some autumn foliage showing. I found a little stall selling ice-cream. They didn’t have a lot left, but I got something to keep me going.
Goat Island has a great outlook over the American Falls, where you can get quite close up, and I enjoyed that, with some beautiful rainbows from the mist, then took a walk around most of the island, which wasn’t very large.
Further around the island the path went along the far edge of the Horseshoe Falls, with another great close-up view. I saw the entrance to the Cave of the Winds, where you could walk down right next to the American Falls, and even stand in one of the smaller falls. But it looked like you would get very wet, and a change of clothes was a long walk back on the other side, so I gave it a miss.
After the two falls lookouts it was less spectacular, but still very pretty, with little islands in amongst the river, and a view over the whole wide river going fast over rapids. I was used to seeing rapids in narrow parts of a river, so seeing it over a huge wide expanse was pretty amazing.
I visited the Niagara Falls Observation Tower, which looks like a bridge that started off but never got very far, jutting a little way into space over the river. About half past four I got going back to the bridge, with no turnstile going the other way, and only about 15 minutes wait to get back through customs again. They asked me how long I had been away. About two or three hours! Did I bring anything back? Only what I’d eaten, inside me.
I admired the plaza at the Canadian end of the bridge again, then went back towards the van, enjoying the views of the falls, and all the rainbows coming from the mist.
My phone was getting pretty flat from all the photos and videos, so I went back to the van to recharge it a bit. I was thankful to have been able to park so close. Around 6pm I went to the Journey Behind the Falls. This, and the boat trip next to the falls, were two things Dad had spoken about doing when he was there, and it felt nice doing the same things as he had done. Again, it was pretty quick to get in. A lift went down to tunnels that went behind the falls.
These were pretty underwhelming I have to say. There were a couple of different tunnels that came out underneath the falls, with the water going by them, but there were line-ups to get to the end, and there were just small openings, and you couldn’t get very close to them. The water was clearly pouring down in front of them, but there was no sense of where it was, or of the scale of it, it was just a hole with lots of water going by in front.
It was an interesting experience though. And further along the tunnels came out at the base of the waterfall, and that was really nice. You could look up and see the falls from quite close. They'd handed out ponchos so you wouldn’t get too wet – there was a lot of spray. I took a photo of one or two groups, and someone took a photo of me.
I spent about 45 minutes down there. I had heard that the falls were lit up at night, and I thought I would see what it looked like from the bottom, before I went back up. It was a pretty sight.
After heading making my way up to the top again, it was time for dinner. I went to a cafe near the falls, and had poutine, a Canadian specialty, which consists of chips, gravy and some kind of curd cheese. It was quite nice, though nothing spectacular. I had a burger too, so a quite satisfying meal. In the US and Canada, soft drinks are called “soda” or “pop”. It was dark once I’d finished, and the falls were amazingly lit up. There were powerful lights on top of one or two buildings, and they kept changing the colours of the falls. It was an incredible sight.
I wanted to see the fireworks that were on each night at 10pm, but I was flagging a bit after all that walking. Handy having a van with a bed! I went back to the van about 8.30, which was close by, and lay down for nearly an hour. I'm not sure if I slept or not, but it was nice to lie down and recharge myself and the phone.
After that, at about 9.30, I went back to find a good spot to watch the fireworks, enjoying more views of the lit-up falls. There were still quite a lot of people around, presumably also wanting to see the fireworks. I headed to a spot that was recommended as a good place to see them.
They were nice, though they lasted only a few minutes, but the falls were still lit up during the proceedings, so it was an impressive sight.
Once they were done I got back to the van fairly quickly, in case there was a mass exodus of people from the car park. I got out without much delay, dropping my credit card in the van while trying to pay at the gate, but managing to find it again quickly! I’d checked beforehand that there was no problem getting back to the RV park late – there was a code (which I had this time!) to get in the gate, which I’d tried during the day to make sure it worked, so I got back without incident and went to bed.
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