Day 112- Niagara Falls!

Friday July 9, 2021.
Temp: 73 /66, Humidity: 72/99%, Top Wind: W11 mph, Precip: rain off & on all day, Miles Traveled: a few in Joe’s car

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Today’s purpose was to go see Niagara Falls… and we did! Our new local area friend Joe has claimed himself to be an unofficial harbor host for the area. He showed us great kindness by offering to take us to the Falls today! Woo-Hooooo! He and his doggies came and picked us up at about 9:30, and away we went.
Niagara Falls State Park is the oldest state park in the country, and it was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the same landscape architect that designed Central Park in New York City. The Niagara Reservation was set aside in 1885 due to a 15 year movement by people who believed that the natural beauty of the land surrounding the Falls should be protected from commercial interests and exploitation, and remain free to the public. And it is still free to visit the park! (But you do have to pay for the boat ride.)

It is a very large park area, and we only explored a small part of it. Joe dropped us off at the Maid of the Mist boat ride ticket area, and then he went and waited for us in another area. We didn’t want to keep him waiting a long time, so we stayed on task and didn’t dillydally around.

We arrived at the ticket area along with several tour groups. Everything was organized and went very smoothly and quick. This is from the observation deck which is at the elevation of the top of the falls. Today there was just one boat running on our side, and one nearly empty boat running on the Canadian side. As you can see, there really wasn’t a ton of people. There are chained out waiting area lines down there that could have had people zig zagging and filling up the whole gray waiting area. You see the white tent? That’s where they hand out the blue plastic ponchos and transform us from normal clothed people to plastic blue passengers. You don’t have to wear one, but you’ll regret that decision unless you’re on the bottom floor in the middle of the boat and shielded by other people.

We were getting closer! The bridge in the distance goes across the Niagara River to Canada. Needless to say, with the border closed, the bridge has been deserted for about a year and a half.

There goes the Maid of the Mist! I’m really glad we had several loopers and Joe say we HAD to do the boat ride! Generally, getting wet while wearing shoes is not something that Kenny enjoys. But we were going! (We wore our water shoes.)

And he wasn’t even too macho to wear his plastic poncho.

When we got on the boat, we hightailed it upstairs so that we’d have a great big view. And we could see a portion of the American Falls. That just looks superimposed on the picture, doesn’t it?

Here is an overview of the park and the falls. Starting from the top of the picture is the bridge that goes to Canada. The land on the left of the river is Canada. The land on the right is the U.S. The falls closest to that bridge are the American Falls, and the very bottom section of that piece is Bridal Veil Falls. Then there is Goat Island, and below that where the big white area is, is Horseshoe Falls, also known as the Canadian Falls. A piece of it is actually on the U.S. side of the border.

As our boat started up the river, we went past the American Falls first. The separate piece on the right in this picture is Bridal Veil Falls. I don’t think any of these falls are the ones that you’d want to go over in a barrel – there are a lot of BIG rocks at the bottom!

Turning around and looking toward Canada, there was a Canadian tour boat and some kind of big something all along the stone wall.

This is as we approached the Horseshoe Falls. It was amazing!

And as we got closer, the sheer volume of water thundering down created wind and rain, so everybody’s hoods went up real quick! While taking a video, I had to hold my hood down almost to my eyes with one hand, and hold my camera with the other. It was like a crazy wind and rain storm!

The boat took us right into the middle of the horseshoe! The engine was revved up and we were sitting still in the current, not moving against the powerful force of the water. There was wind and water blowing everywhere! The colors of the water were so pretty, and so amazing to experience the power of the falls and water like this!

Here’s a closer shot of what it looks like from a bird’s eye view.

We stayed there, in the middle of the torrential wetness, for a few minutes. Then we turned and went back past the American Falls.

After disembarking, we rode the elevator back up to the top elevation level, and walked out onto the observation deck. You can see it on the left in the picture above. The view was spectacular. Too bad it was a cloudy and almost rainy day, because the colors in the water would have been amazing the sunlight.

Oh look! We really were here! Say cheeeze!

This is the river before it flows over the American Falls. It’s just so much water, it’s hard to fathom that it just keeps running, non stop, all the time!

Here is a quick refresher on your Great Lakes geography lesson. I’ve kind of described this before, but now that we’re at one of the largest confluences of the waters, let me show you something. Remember that I told you that Lake Erie is at about 569’ above sea level? And Lake Ontario is at only 243’ elevation? The biggest compensating difference between them is Niagara Falls!

This graphic kind of shows the flow of waters. Lake Superior is the highest in elevation. Water flows out of it through St Mary’s River into Lakes Michigan & Huron. Water flows from Lake Huron through the St Clair River into Lake St Clair, then down the Detroit River into Lake Erie. From Lake Erie it flows down the Niagara River and Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario. From Lake Ontario it flows out through the St Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean.

So now you know why we had to go up so many locks to get our boat from sea level to Lake Erie, and why we don’t want to go north on the Niagara River!
I found these little blue guys and figured I better get a flower picture for today.

As we walked around, we found a spot overlooking Bridal Veil Falls. There were crazy people at the bottom of it where there is a platform. You can stand really close to the falls and just be nearly blown over by the force of the wind and gushing water! I don’t think a little plastic poncho could even try to keep you dry, but the yellow ponchos were all in line to have their turn in the Niagara shower!

Just another pretty shot looking back toward the observation tower.

This was a big statue of Nikola Tesla. He is really the hero behind electricity as we know it today, even though Edison seems to get all the credit for it.

The story on this plaque was fascinating, so I’m going to write it out so you can read it.
In 1884, Nikola Tesla, a 28-year old Serbian immigrant, came to the United States with a dream of engineering the production of alternating current (AC) electricity. He became a consultant to George Westinghouse who won the contract to harness the power of Niagara Falls to produce AC hydro-electricity. The Westinghouse-Tesla team engineered a water tunnel 2-miles long and 160-feet deep from the Rapids to the Niagara River just past the American Falls. Some 300,000 tons of earth were removed; 20 million bricks were used to line the tunnel. When completed, the Adams Power Houses accommodated ten 5,000-HP Tesla hydro-generators capable of delivering AC electricity. On November 15, 1896, for the first time ever, the long distance transmission of alternating current on the planet was achieved from Niagara Falls to Buffalo New York some 23-miles away. Ultimately, the entire civilization of the planet adopted AC transmission. Thank you Mr. Tesla!!! He really was a genius!

Another pretty flower.

After our little walk about and overlooks for lots of pictures, we met back up with Joe and his cute little dogs, and headed to the car.

On our way back to Island Girl, we stopped at a little po-dunk burger joint for lunch. Mississippi Mudds was a cute little beachy looking place with burgers, dogs, ice cream and shakes.

Not a fancy place but the food was good!

We had a really fun day, and we are so thankful to Joe for taking the time to be our guide. When we got back home, we had some rain and we also had some new loopers on the walls here in Tonawanda. In between rain showers, I went around and called a docktail gathering at 4:30 at some picnic tables nearby. We had several loopers come and we all had a fun time sharing stories and plans. Nobody got any pictures of the group, so we we decided that it must have been a super secret squirrel looper meeting that nobody can prove ever happened. 😉

We plant to leave tomorrow. A few boats tried to leave today, but the fog was too thick and the Coast Guard issued warnings to not go out. So they all came back and spent another day in Tonawanda. Tomorrow looks like good weather, but it’s the weekend. So what that means is that the one remaining lock that we still need to go through doesn’t wake up until 11:30! Sheesh! A sleepy lock! It’s about an hour away from here, so we’re planning to leave here around maybe 9;30, get some fuel, and get there early and wait. Then we’ll have another four hours or so to Dunkirk. We are not planning to stop in Buffalo. So tomorrow is the day that we’ll pop out of the western end of the Erie Canal, do our last lock (until September), and enter the Great Lakes!