I went to
check us in at the campsite office and also to get information about the
best options for heading into town. There is normally a shuttle bus
running every thirty minutes all day from 9:30. As its off season the
service only runs on Fridays and Saturdays and it does not start
until 2:30 this afternoon. It was not quite what we had hoped for
but it meant that we could use the morning to catch up on some other
bits and pieces.
Water power
We mainly focused on Morty, filling up with petrol and propane and
then taking him to a car wash. Although we have had a lot of rain off
and on we have still not washed Morty since getting off the ferry to
Havre St Pierre. We found another one of the DIY high powered jet
washes and gave him a good wash, rinse and wax and even went so far
as vacuuming the inside. The jet washes are pretty hard work,
especially to reach up to the roof. It was very tempting to "accidentally"
soak Stef but I resisted knowing that he would get his revenge
bigger and better at some future date.
When we got back to the campsite a car was parked in our space. It
belonged to the daughter and son-in-law of the couple next door to
us. Their granddaughter is getting married tomorrow in St Catherines
and is having her reception in Niagara Falls so they have come here
for a few extra days for a bit of a break. They seem to live out of
their motor-home and until recently also had one in Florida. The
daughter, having grown up with campsite based holidays, is trying to
convince her husband that they ought to get a pop up trailer (one
that all folds down into a big box) but he is so far not keen. Stef
chatted to the men as I chatted to the ladies. After Stef gave the
chaps a "tour" of Morty the son-in-law seemed to be starting to
shift his views.
A bit after two we left Morty behind and headed into town. The bus
is a shuttle that runs through to the early hours, good for us as we
planned to spend the night out in downtown Niagara Falls. It only took a few minutes
to get into the centre but it then seemed to go a very long winded
way around town before reaching the river. I think its route must
take it around many of the hotels. The big chains all have their own
shuttle buses to take their guests around town. It is not really
that big a place and you can easily walk around the centre but there
are a lot of Americans here and from what we have seen of them so
far they do not like walking.
The bus dropped us at the bottom of Clifton Hill and we walked down
to the river for our first glimpse of the falls. There are two
waterfalls. The horseshoe shaped one that most people picture when
you talk about Niagara is on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. There is
another straight edged
falls that is over the border in the US (or the "evil empire" as
Stef has taken to calling it). Having been to Iguazú falls on the
Argentinian/Brasilian border our first reaction to Niagara Falls was
that they were not very awe inspiring. They are certainly a lot
smaller and I do not think that the water drops as far. That said,
our initial views started to change as we readjusted to the scale of
the falls.
Aerial view of the
Horseshoe falls
It was a pretty cloudy day but the sun was trying to break through
as we bought our tickets for tourist attraction number one, the Maid
of the Mist boat trip to the falls. You go through a concrete switch
back of corridors down to some lifts that take you to the river. As
it is off season there were no big queues but you could tell from
the way the area was laid out that the queues would be very long in
the summer. At the bottom we were given our souvenir blue recyclable
ponchos to wear on the boat and joined the queue to board. They
leave every fifteen minutes so it was not long before we were under
way.
At first, I thought they were a bit overly cautious giving us the
ponchos but I soon became glad that they had. We initially went past
the American falls. In, I think, the 1950's they had a big
rock slide at the edge of the falls so the height of the drop of the
water is now only about twenty five metres compared to the previous
sixty metres.
They have built a viewing platform that enables people on the US
side to look across at their fall. It reminded me of a big diving
platform and I wondered if anyone had tried to pretend they were in
Acapulco and had gone off the edge.
As the Maid carried on past the US falls I started to be very glad
of my poncho and also that I have a waterproof case for my camera.
As the gusts of wind blew by they caught the edge of the falls
bringing curtains of water across and onto the boat. The power of
the water from the falls stirred up the river into a mass of white
water. Although you could not feel it on board, watching other boats
you could see how they struggled to maintain their position at the
foot of the falls. We were there for quite a while, long enough for
everyone to get photos if they wanted to and certainly long enough
to get very wet as well.
With the sun breaking through the clouds we were treated to many
rainbows sparkling through the mist. The mist created by the falls
rises up in a column, as if the water was on fire, and away up into
the air. As it was quite a windy day, the mist from the falls and
the clouds seemed to merge into one. From the front of the Maid we
were simply looking at a vast white wall.
In terms of its size, the water on the Canadian side falls about
eighty metres. In a single second, enough water goes over the top to
fill one million bathtubs. The power of the water is enough to crush
an entire city within minutes. It is certainly not something to be
messed with and we both thought that the people who have got their
kicks by going over the top were a bit nuts.
Once off the Maid we walked along the top of the valley and around
to where the water crashes down. The water runs at about forty miles
an hour and it looks fierce, swirling around with strong currents
and eddies. You can walk to the point where you can see the water go
over the edge. A dark blue seething mass turns into an opaque greeny
blue colour with white crests of foam on the outside. It is
beautiful to see and almost hypnotic.
From here we went to the Skylon tower which gives you 360 degree
views across Niagara. The views were pretty good as you could see up
the river and follow the water down to the falls. The falls are
eroding the rock and geologists estimate that they used to be seven kilometres
further downstream. Looking back over
Niagara itself, it is now just a mass of hotels and parking lots and
has little character in its own right apart from the stretch just
along side the river.
Our next stop was the Imax cinema which runs a forty five minute
film about the falls and those who have gone over them. Originally a
site populated by Indian Tribes, Niagara is an Indian word meaning
"thundering water". Local Indian legend tells the story of a young
girl who was extremely beautiful. As she was so beautiful, the Chief
of her village said she was to be married to the oldest man in the
village, an honour and a privilege. Not surprisingly she did not
want to marry this old man and ran away during the ceremony. To
ensure that the Chief and her family did not lose face within the
village she had no option but to leave it and go it alone.
She walked down to the river and jumped into her canoe and started
paddling away. The currents caught her and ended up taking her over
the falls where she perished. The legend says that she was whisked
away by the gods. It is thought to be her spirit that sometimes, not
always, looks after others who end up going over the falls.
As European settlers headed this way Niagara became busier. In the
winter, blocks of ice coming down from Lake Eerie gather at the
bottom of the falls, eventually piling up into an ice bridge across
the river. People used to freely walk across this and vendors even
set up stalls on the ice bridge. Unfortunately, in 1912 it melted
quickly carrying three people to their deaths so people are no
longer allowed access to the ice bridge if one forms. On two
occasions, ice further up stream has stopped water coming down so
that the falls ran dry. In the 1950's the American Army
purposely stemmed the water on their side so that they could survey
the river bed by the falls.
Perhaps it best claim to fame though are the people who have gone
over the edge. Sadly, some of these cases were specifically planned
as suicides but others have been daredevils, or mad people, doing it
to make a name for themselves. The first was a sixty five year old
school teacher, Annie Taylor, who hoped that the associated fame
would generate enough money for a comfortable retirement. She, and
her kitten, were wedged into a barrel that was padded with a
mattress and a pillow and they were set adrift in the river. They
survived the ordeal but Annie's hoped for fame and fortune did not
materialise.
The Imax cinema has a display of some of the crafts used for
attempts over the falls. They are all variations on the theme of a
barrel and are mostly very basic. Many successful attempts have been
made but equally several people have lost their lives trying. The
attempts on a jet ski and a kayak were perhaps not surprisingly
unsuccessful. Some people who survived the fall subsequently died
because their "craft" had become stuck either under the curtain of
water at the falls or in the whirlpool further down river. For these
people, lack of oxygen led them to suffocate. The most amazing
survival story was that of a small boy, John Woodward, who was out
on the river with his parents. The engine on their small boat cut
out and they got dragged towards the falls. The mother was pulled to
safety before she went over the falls. John did go over the falls
but survived with no broken bones. The father did not make it.
The other people who are famously linked to the falls are those who
have walked across it on a tight rope. Blondini was the first and
the only one I had heard about before coming here but many others
have also gone across. I was left with the feeling that a bit of an
unofficial competition has been created by these people in terms of
who can do it fastest or in the most unusual way. One chap walked
across sixteen times in one summer. I personally think they are all
barking mad adrenalin junkies.
Ness breaks the bank..... almost!!
With evening approaching we headed for our last stop of the day, the
casino. We went to the new one in town slap bang in the middle of
where all the big hotel chains are based. There was a full set of
Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Radisson and a few others too. One of
the sad things about Niagara Falls is that they have allowed these
chains to build big high rise hotels. The Imax film was made in the
1970's and at that time the only tall building was the Skylon Tower
and the old casino.
The new casino was very glitzy and full of light. It again made me
wonder what Las Vegas must be like. We set ourselves a limit of what
we were prepared to lose and walked in to the maze of slot machines,
noise and lights. It was probably about 7:00pm when we got there and
it was already quite busy. A band was playing in a bar at the end of
the casino and it felt like they had been there for hours. With no
natural daylight anywhere in sight people must lose themselves in
here for hours. We had thought the casino at Malbaie was large but
compared to this it was tiny.
We walked around for a few minutes until we found some tables where
they were mainly playing cards. There was the usual mix including
black jack, poker, roulette and craps. A separate area had been ring
fenced for serious poker players where all players played each other
as well as the bank. Stef went to have a look with me hanging back
with a "don't you dare" look on my face. He would have been eaten
alive in there as he is not good enough at concealing his thoughts
on his hand.
Not sure what we wanted to play we tried to follow the game of
craps. You roll two dice. If you roll seven or eleven you win. If
you roll two, three or twelve you lose. Anything else, you have to
roll that number again before rolling a seven for you to win. Sounds
easy enough until you start to factor in the gambling. We picked up
a leaflet with the rules but it still does not make sense to me. It
is one of those games you need to play to learn but a casino is
definitely not the place to learn in!!
We decided to have a go at roulette. Stef opted for the black or red
strategy he had taken in Charlevoix but this time it did not pay
off. I went for individual numbers and came up a winner on the
second go on number 24, my sister Caroline's birthday. We played for
about half an hour. My winnings cancelled out Stef's losses and also
covered the cost of the drinks we had along the way so we walked out
of the casino with the same amount of money we had when we walked
in. I had hoped that would be the case before we walked in and have
taken a little bit of pleasure in teasing Stef that I won and he did
not!!
