Day 20: Thursday, October 19th 2017.
Toast and peanut butter for breakfast, make sure Marie is safely locked in, then off to Niagara Falls. It may have been our setting on the satnav again but it was curiously difficult to find. We seemed to drive along suburban roads for miles with no sense that one of the country’s, if not the world’s, most iconic (I think I’ve managed to avoid that word up to now?) landmarks was in the vicinity. I imagined there would be countless road signs announcing that the falls were only so many miles to go, probably some sort of road filtering system to channel tourist traffic and at least one roadside vendor by the traffic lights selling bottles of Niagara Falls water or fridge magnets. I also imagined that the landscape would become mountainous as we approached, surely a huge waterfall needs some mountains in order to generate some kind of drop? But no, we almost stumbled across the Falls, not in a plummet over the edge to certain death kind of way, but in a, “Oh, here’s the Niagara Falls car park” kind of way. The car park looked like some kind of entrepreneurial venture run by a local with an eye for a dollar or two, much as you’d find on the outskirts of any major attraction. Part of the ‘sharing economy’ I think it’s called now? ‘Sharing’ sounds so much more altruistic than ‘making a few quid out of renting my driveway out to punters during Wimbledon fortnight’. Just another euphemism fed into the public psyche by marketing teams desperate to make the grubby world of selling us stuff more palatable. Like ‘pre-owned’ and ‘pre-loved’; both sounding like someone in a failed relationship pleading for your sympathy, so much more desirable than ‘used’.
We pay our 5 dollars and I rather sheepishly ask the attendant where the Falls actually are. (Or is?) He just points to the large building looming over the car park, which looks like a rather tacky, low-budget department store. Which is exactly what it is.
Inside there are umpteen, Niagara Falls-themed gift items as well as garishly lit food outlets (another ill-thought out euphemism, sounding a bit too much like a bodily orifice?) Should you not know what fries or hotdogs look like there are pictures suspended from the ceiling helpfully illustrating the meal deals on offer – garish seems the only appropriate adjective again. It all feels a bit 1970’s and ripe for a makover. But as we leave the emporium the thunderous sound of the falls can be heard somewhere in the distance, like an airliner taking off down the runway on full throttle. Even so, the park area we walk through still doesn’t feel as if we’re in the vicinity of a massive waterfall, we haven’t climbed any mountains or taken any lifts. But then, suddenly, the falls reveal themselves in all their magnificent, thunderous glory. The gorge they plummet into is like a massive crevasse torn into the earth by giant hands and the tourist boats that constantly chug back and forth look like toys as they disappear into the secret world hidden behind the foaming spray, which today, in a high wind, is particularly impressive.
So the surrounding land is actually very flat, no mountains; Niagara Falls is just a big ‘drain’, a breach in the plumbing where Lake Eerie endlessly spills her American water into The Niagara River at six million cubic feet a minute, and then goes on to become Canadian water in Lake Ontario a few miles downstream. Wow! It’s pretty impressive to say the least. We toured the American side of the falls and took a lift up to the observation tower where we felt the full full force of the wind.
Then we decided to travel to Canada, not as far as you might think, just a short walk across the Rainbow Bridge. A few administrative bits to do, checking of passports at border control and off we go, to the land of Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Ron Sexsmith, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, K D Lang etc etc. (It must be something in all that oxygenated water?)
I imagined getting back into the US wouldn’t be quite as straightforward. The views from the Canadian side are much more impressive, you can stand back and see the three falls: Bridal Veil, American and Canadian Falls in one amazing vista. I imagine the Americans are pretty envious of the Canadian view?
I only take about 300 photos today – lots of stock photography potential – but I guess they’ve all been taken a million times before. When you’ve tired of looking at water the tourists are a great alternative.
So that’s Canada ticked off, and it was surprisingly easy to get back into the US. Having foregone the delights of a boat trip in the ‘Maid in the Mist’ we can now dine out again on what seems, in some ways, like the last night of our road trip proper. Tomorrow we head for Vermont, the last leg of our journey and the home of my dear, dear friend and relative Elisa. That seems like another, special holiday to come.
But for tonight it’s noodles at Sato Ramen, a cool Japanese restaurant on main street Buffalo, buzzing with lots of bright, young hipster-ish folk all looking far too healthy and far too…well, young. How dare they. Back to base and a bottle of wine with Marie, who, at 15 is very young too, but sadly is probably about our age in cat years.
Jane Conner