Niagara Falls: The Falls

On our way across the state of New York we thought it would be cool to drive along the route of the Erie Canal from Albany to Buffalo as the song says. Since we were going to Buffalo and since we had been told time and again to go see Niagara Falls, we drove north from Buffalo to take a look. We weren't sure if we wanted to cross the boarder into Canada so we thought we would just take a peek and make our decision based on what we could see, and more importantly what we couldn't see.

We arrived at the falls near dusk, and the sky was overcast enough that it seemed like it was getting dark even before the sun had gone down completely. The falls from the American side are intense to experience, the sound, the sudden drop, the size of the falls stretching out at our feet, but it was not that easy to get the full visual impact we wanted.

We decided to cross the boarder to the Canada side and get a hotel room so that we could really spend time near the falls the following day. Going to Canada was totally worth it. The falls are really beautiful and so intense to experience. There are two falls, the Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls. The Horseshoe Falls touch both sides of the river so we could get really close to them on both the American side and the Canadian side of the river. The curve into themselves and the spray from the falling water is so intense that you get very very wet when you get close to them. It's like being in a rain storm. The spray makes it hard to see the entire falls completely.

The spray rises into the sky and merges with the clouds above.

When you look down into the center of the spray near the water's surface the clouds of spray move around into all sorts of beautiful shapes. I could watch it for hours.

The water pressure from the falls is so powerful it is hard to take an image that does it justice. There is huge amounts of water falling every second.

The river below the falls churns and flows into great spiral patterns.

Horseshoe Falls is really long, even though they rerouted part of it and made it something like four hundred feet shorter than it used to be.

It's so wet that people wear garbage bag ponchos to keep dry.

After the Horseshoe Falls the American Falls look almost small... Almost... they are still so huge compared to most falls I have ever seen in my life. Too bad that you can't ever escape the view of casinos towering on all sides.

Later in the day we went up in a high tower to the observation deck and saw the falls from farther above.

It was easier to get a view of the whole river system and the two falls together.