July, 2008
We started off the month with grilled steaks and fireworks at the Cayuga County Fair on the fourth, then managed a fun, restful, and only a little sunburned day at Sodus Point Beach.
Later on, we headed to Syracuse for Panera lunch with friends and then spent a day at the Oswego, NY Harbor Fest, an annual celebration. We enjoyed samples of a wide and very invteresting variety of wine from about a dozen Finger Lakes wineries with friendly and chatty people. We then enjoyed the midway games and rides and then settled in for a great fireworks show (Central and Western New York's only world-class show) over the harbor.
We took a vacation to Niagara Falls, Canada. We stayed at the Rodeway Inn Fallsview, with very nice and helpful staff and a great diner for breakfast built in, about three blocks from the park. Once we got settled, we headed down to the park via the Incline Rail, which gave us our first view of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. We then walked through the renovated and expanded visitors' center and headed down to Journey Behind the Falls, which let us walk very close to the main falls and look out cave portals from behind the water – and there is a lot of water up that close. After the Journey, we walked down to ride the Maid in the Mist and had our first good view of the American falls. The Maid took us by the base of the American falls pounding on the remains of the old Cave of the Winds and then on for an up-close-and-personal view of the base of the Horseshoe falls. The water was roiling and the mist was flying all around us, not to mention the thunder of the falls just ahead. It was very exciting and made me feel very small. Next, we headed back to watch the new 4-D all-around movie, Niagara's Fury. There was a cute and funny introduction and then the main event had us standing on a grate with water, snow, lightning, and thunder all around as we lived through some of the defining moments in the creation of Niagara Falls (think Disney's Star Tours in a monsoon).
After our adventures for the day, we sat down at Edgewater's Tap and Grill to have dinner and listen to the classic rock concert featuring Slip Agent Five on the stage next door. Luckily for us, we were seated right on the edge of the balcony dining area in the fresh air overlooking the stage. The band was very good and a lot of fun. To top the evening off, we watched a great fireworks show over the falls and walked back to the hotel for some much-needed rest.
On day two, we rode the rides further down the line. We started off with the White Water Walk in the valley, a long a long stretch of extremely wild class 6 (yes six) rapids (they are like class 5 rapids – the highest we had heard of to date – but bigger, badder, constantly-changing, and illegal to go through). Next up was the Whirlpool Aero Car (formerly the Spanish Aero Car), which suspended us over the whirlpool where the Niagara river turns 90°. The views upriver, downriver, and of the whirlpool were spectacular. We also got to see a jet boat on its run through the whirlpool (a nice preview of day 3 for us). Our next stop was the gardens and Butterfly Conservatory at the agriculture school. They were all very beautiful, even though the biggest of the butterflies creeped me out. On the way back, we stopped off at a large souvenir shop and watched some glass blowing in the store, which was very cool and almost looked like magic with how quickly the glass took shape after its initial molding. At this point, we realized we had had no lunch, so we stopped off for some tasty chicken parmesan and meatball subs at Zappi's Italian Restaurant by the hotel. The restaurant was very cute and the food was delicious.
Once we had eaten, we decided to walk back to America via the Rainbow Bridge over the valley, which provides a great view of the whole falls area. Walking across the border is a lot easier than driving (kind of harder to smuggle anything in flip flops than a car) and we were in the American Niagara Falls park in no time. We walked through the trees and grass (the American side is much more a park than the Canadian attractions) all the way to the Cave of the Winds walk. We then donned our super-cool ponchos (we were experts at this point) and sandals and set out on a wooden walkway by the river heading toward the American falls. This walk gave us an amazingly close (about three feet) view of the base of the American falls rushing over the rocky rubble at its base. The climax of this walk was the Hurricane Deck which put us just a couple feet from (and directly in line with) the base of the Bridal Veil Fall, which is about 1% of the total flow of Niagara (that's still a lot of water). The deck is aptly named, as we were very wet, even with our ponchos drawn tight. We walked back to Canada, had a light dinner, a cocktail at the new restaurant Elements, and hit the hay to rest up for our last day.
We got up early on day 3 and drove to take a ride on a Whirlpool Jet Boat, which is a flat-bottomed boat that holds about 40 people and is powered by three 150-horsepower water-jet engines. This ride started off exciting as we rode up river at 55 MPH and learned about the Hamilton turn where the pilot whips the boat through a 360° turn while moving striahgt forward. The excitement only grew as we rode through some class 5 rapids, including one 15-foot swell that took every horse of the engines to get up...then turned around to go down through them, only this time, we plunged the nose of the boat into the swells a few times, sending a huge amount of water over the bow and into our laps (I chose the front "power" row for us). We then moved on to drive around the whirlpool that we had seen from the Aero Car yesterday, where the water looked like it was boiling because there was so much pull going on in and under it.
Our last stop was a walk through the beautiful town of Niagara on the Lake (really, it was voted most beautiful town in Canada and second most beautiful in the world). We strolled through the shops and had some delicious ice cream at Cow's Ice Cream (best ice cream in Canada). Lastly, we took a tour of the Jackson-Triggs Winery, which was very cool and included a tasting at the end where we learned about Ice Wine. To make Ice Wine grapes are picked at the coldest point of the year when they are frozen and each grape produces only one drop of juice, then fermented into a very sweet and strong-tasting wine which Jess loved.
