My oldest daughter & I celebrated her 11 years of Girl Scouting with a trip to Niagra Falls. What started as a Daisy troop of 12 girls ended up with 2 who stayed committed to the program until their senior year. The trip was paid out of their funds from all the years of dues and cookie booths.
The picture above is the Niagra River upstream. It's a river that flows north from Lake Erie and into Lake Ontario, Canada. The elevation drops considerably as it flows, so there are lots of rapids.
From the US side, you get a close up and personal look at the mighty falls. You can feel the mist, hear the roar, and sense it's power. The river is the international border with Canada.
After the falls, the river goes into a small lake where it swirls. This is called the whirlpools, since it's made up of several circulating pools as the water tries to flow through the small outlet on the other side.
One of the tours available is Cave of the Wind. On this tour, you walk through a cave in the rock bed that brings you right up to the base of the American Falls. These yellow ponchos helped somewhat, but we really got drenched.
Our next tour was Maid of the Mist. This tour is a river boat that sails right by each of the falls. The first one we passed was the American Falls, and makes for the prettiest pictures. It has large boulders at the bottom which keeps the mist down.
The other one is called Horseshoe Falls, and is mostly on the Canadian side. Since there aren't any rocks below to break the splash, there is a huge plume of mist that rises above the ground. This is the side where people have attempted to go over the waterfall for their 15 min of fame. The first successful plunge was a 63 yr-old woman in a wooden barrel back in 1901.
My favorite picture from day 1. Absolutely amazing!
