jumpingfish

As it happened, thanks to the labor of the Fair and Industrious Trudy, our full day at Niagara Falls included three things for which we needed rain slickers.

1. Under the Falls

On the Canadian side, they have tunnels that lead into the rock to several places behind the falls.

They give you yellow rain slickers, and you walk down the long, sloping tunnel with damp walls and floors toward the rumbling sound in the distance. As you descend, others returning from the far end have smiles on their faces and wet hair (for those who didn’t pull up their hoods).

At the end of the tunnels are holes seven feet tall that evidently emerge from the rock face of the cliff directly into the heart of the falling water. It falls in swirling sheets, and there is of course too much water there to see beyond. And the rumbling is now a crashing splashing sound, and the ground below you and the rock above and beside you is shacking and pounding. And the air is pulsing.

And your face is all wet.

2. Maid of the Mist

They tell you not to worry where you stand, that they will spin the boats so everyone will see everything. Well let me tell you it’s categorically not true. Pay attention to where you stand!

“Let’s stand over here!” I said to Trudy, and we stood on the starboard side. But when we approached the base of the American falls, the captain didn’t turn the boat.

“So let’s stand over there!” I shouted, and we shuffled in our blue slickers over to the port side where the mist from the American Falls and the afternoon sun coming down from the Canadian direction lit up a rainbow that must have been 270 degrees. We screamed in glee with all the other kids.

“Now let’s go over here!” I shouted to Trudy, and she laughed at me.

“And now let’s go over there!”

And so it went. We screamed in glee with all the other kids as the boat surged so far into the mist of Horseshoe Falls that it was hard to hear anything other than the pounding water and hard to see for the spray of water in your eyes.

The boat stayed there, pointed bow-first into the falling water for what seemed like a very long time. And we stood here and there and here and there and got wetter and laughed and screamed in glee with all the kids.

And our faces got very wet.

3. Niagara’s Fury

When the animated feature was over, the far wall opened into a huge, black, round room with water dripping from the ceiling and wet floors made of metal grating with water somewhere beneath. Covered in our blue rain slickers, we shuffled in.

The lights went dark. An ice-cold breeze started blowing. And then bright white lights came on above us and snow was falling. Real snow! Blowing in the cold breeze, falling from somewhere up above.

Then a screen lit up with a video of snow and ice and white mountains. And all around us was the sound of howling wind. And real snow! And then the ground started rumbling and the snow and ice on the screen started falling and the ground shook.

Now the sound of melting snow. Drops of water all around us. On the screen. Falling from above. It came faster and then the sound of crashing thunder and falling rain and water streamed onto us from above and the lights flashed white and the ground shook and more water rained down on us.

Trudy and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t stand up straight. And we would duck our heads as the falling sheets of water fell from above soaking the row of people in front of us to the bone.

Then the water stopped falling and the screen around us showed the Niagara River and the rapids. We were flying down the course of the river in big sweeping arcs from one wall of the canyon to the other, leaning to one side and then another. And then we came to the edge of the falls, to the very edge where the pastel bluegreen water drops into the abyss and white mist rises up from the floor of the gorge. And the crowd screamed as we went over the edge with the water.

And our faces got very wet.

We had dinner on the terrace overlooking the falls and got a seat right at the edge—something that only comes to those who are so ready to eat that they show up before the rush. And frankly, we were very ready to eat.

From our perch, we were able to watch the rainbows come and go depending on the whims of the mist

and watch the people milling around and generally marvel at what a good time we’d had that day.

We were dog-tired. At some point, we figured we’d been on our feet for nigh on 12 hours, and there was more yet to come. But we had smiles on our faces.

“I’m having a real good time,” I told Trudy.

Her eyes sparkled.

Our plan for the evening was to hang out at the falls until after dark, after the colored lights on the falls, after the Wednesday fireworks. But the flaw in that plan was that we would have to take a hotel shuttle back instead of the People Mover.

because the last People Mover leaves just as the fireworks start. (How could they do that, we wondered to ourselves.)

When we reconnoitered the Casino where the shuttle stops, our hearts dropped.

We had left the world of the falls behind and entered the world of the mall. It felt like a science fiction movie, where only you realize that you’re in some artificial world and everyone else is wandering around in zombie-like bliss making you wonder if it is you that is messed up. From the sunset rainbows and people walking on sidewalks and kids running around on the grass, we entered a world of piped-in music and bright lights and shiny floors and store-front facades and fake luxury and meaninglessness and …

Oh my, we hadn’t come here for this. We were desperate to escape.

In the end, we gave up on the hotel shuttle bus and returned to the falls as fast as we could. Except the promenade outside the casino led nowhere but around the casino, back to entrances on the other side. There was no way to return—or rather no way without great walking distances, unless we took the tram up the bluff, which we thought we’d avoid and just do on foot. But the sidewalks went in circles and there we no obvious way back down the hill.

But of course, there was a way; it was just … out of the way, but in the end we found it: a mostly-empty sidewalk crossing over a busy street going by some deserted parking lots at the edge of the casino landscaping, where well-fertilized grass gave way to bare dirt berms and parked cars.

By the time we got back down, we were dog tired and plopped ourselves down at a People Mover stop and told ourselves that we didn’t really have to watch the fireworks, after all.

But you know, this isn’t what I sat down to tell you about. I wanted to tell you about the fireworks, because in the end we did see them, but I see that I have written too much, and so I’ll continue my story later. Tune in then.

After the sun goes down and the sky turns black, they turn on great spotlights from the Canadian side.

And they shine them on the falls.

1. Border Crossing

When we pulled up to the guard booth, a young, stern-faced woman reached out for our passports. She told Trudy to take off her sunglasses and asked a few questions about our trip and when we planned to return. And then she handed our passports back to us.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” she said.

And with that, the vacation was begun in earnest.

2. Elevator To The Bottom of the Niagara River Gorge

Trudy looked up at the ceiling of the elevator.

“It’s a bat!” she said.

All of us followed her eyes to the top of the elevator where a small brown stuffed animal stuck to the exhaust fan.

“Actually,” the nice young man operating the elevator said, “it’s a moose.”

Of course. A moose.

“We have one attached to the inside of the elevator for each time the elevator has broken down this week.”

We looked around the elevator and noticed dozens. And with that, we arrived at the bottom of the 75 meter shaft, and he opened the door to let us out.

3. Last Bus of the Night

To our great relief, the People Mover bus finally came.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“White… Whitewater… The Hampton Hotel across from…”

“Whitewater Walk” the driver said with a chuckle.

It was the last bus of the night, and she was in a good mood.

“We’ve heard it all,” she said.

The woman sitting in front agreed, and they started naming places using the words that we tourists use when we can’t remember where we’re trying to go.

“And then there’s The Lady of the Lake,” the driver said, which made the two of them laugh very hard. She was, of course, referring to The Maid of the Mist.

Up before the dawn. Barely caught our plane. Changed in Baltimore. Rented a smokey-smelling car a mile from the Buffalo airport. And drove across to Canada.

By the time we got to our hotel, the afternoon was fleeting, and (vacationing being hard work even on day-one) we were hungry again.

“Queen Street,” the woman behind the counter said. “There are cafes and clubs on Queen Street.”

It was just a few blocks away, and we found the perfect place where we could sit outside in the shade. (Upon seeing That’s Amore Pizzaria, Trudy declared, “I’m really hungry for pizza.”)

We sat down and asked for two iced teas and were puzzled when the waitress brought to plastic bottles of Lipton sweetened with tons of corn syrup.

“You two must be from America,” she said. “This is the only kind of iced tea we have up here.” We confessed to being from Texas, and the three of us agreed that that explained it.

While we waited for our pizza, Trudy pulled out her map of Niagara Falls and got down to business plotting out our post-dinner strategy.

And happily, as you can see, the lack of real iced tea was no impediment whatsoever.