A big day today even though not picked up till 1pm as we were 3 hours ahead of LA time so didn’t get up till about 10.00am.

Took approx 2 hours by the time we finally arrived in Niagara after a gorgeous drive along the Niagara River on the way there. The Autumn colours are in full bloom (if you can call it that) and the palce is absolutely gorgeous looking. The drive along the river was apparently classed by Alfred hitchcock as one of the prettiest drives on the planet. It was certainly worth the comment but I guess there’d be lots of pretty drives nowadays.

Our first stop was to the cable car area where the river comes down from the falls and swirls into a whirlpool before heading further down the river. The amount of water running down the river is amazing and at speed as well. There’s a hugge hydro station in amongst the river of course to harness the power.

The opposite side of the river is the United States and as one might expect the vehicular bridge taking cars into and out of the US is long and slow. It’s a real pain crossing the border here – the US border people are fanatical about security and quese are long.

I always imagined the Niagara Falls area to be just Falls and a few shops – wrong – it’s a ginormous city in itself. Casinos, hotels, you name it! The Niagara Falls in themselves are certainly spectacular.

Our first stop was to have a short ride up into the mist of the falls – all were distributed flimsly single-use raincoats – the force of the wind created by the falls and the mist basically meant no photos – way to wet to get the camera out for too long! But to feel the force of what the falls can create is spectacular.

After that it was a drive along the road further upto where the river leads into the falls itself. The river is actually running at 65km/hr and if one were to fall in there’s no way you could swim back against the current – you’d be on the way over! We were then dropped off to meet later and although Kemm stayed up top, I ventured down into the tunnels under the falls. The noise was staggering – almost as though it was continuous thunder and a little scary knowing what’s going on above you! No such thing as a gentle stroll behind the waterfall as you might do on a bushwalk ocaisionally!

The walk back to the hotel for dinner took about 30 minutes or so but the lights cam on the Falls whilst we were walking – very spectacular of course.

It was another 2 hr drive back to Toronto after dinner, arriving back about 11pm and knowing we had to be up at 3am in the morning!!