Niagara the great

One cannot take a trip to Buffalo without going to visit the falls!  Being only 30 minutes away, it's an absolute must.  My mother though was not too happy about us taking Whirlwind, being that he's, well, a whirlwind.  But one of the many good things about this child is that he has a healthy sense of fear. Especially when it comes to heights.  Thank goodness something slows him down!  Even though I knew he wouldn't go running off a cliff intentionally, he was under the most severe hand holding policy, EVER.  That poor child was not let go of the entire time we were there.....

 

The 2 older stooges were under strict orders to hold on tight for this brief photo op.  The baton was passed to an adult just as soon as the picture was snapped.

 

 

These two were given more of a free range to explore -

 



 

Waiting for the obligatory Maid of the Mist tour.

 

 

Funny thing is that during our 4 years in Buffalo and the many many trips we made out to the falls, we never took the boat tour!  I had done it years ago as a child with my parents and S had done it as well when he was 13.  But never together.  So not only did we have the joy of watching our kids experience it, but it was our first time together too.

 

Heading into the mist....

 

 

I included both these rainbow shots since in the first you can actually see the falls in the background but the second is a better shot of the rainbows themselves.

 

 

 

On the tour you go right by the American falls and then into the horseshoe itself of the Horseshoe falls on the Canadian side.  Taking pictures while being engulfed in mist and what seems like pouring rain is not very productive nor good for the camera obviously.  So, as much as I tried, there are no photos of us or the falls while we were up close and personal with them.  But there are shots of the aftermath -

 

 

Pretty wet is what we were despite rolling up our pants and attempting to keep covered with the ponchos. It was a sunny yet *very* windy day which made it difficult to keep the ponchos in place and made us all the more uncomfortable after the fact.

 

Once off the boat S and the older two decided to walk up the staircases alongside the American falls and returned even wetter....

 

 

I BTW was busy tending to Whirlwind and his very painful stomach by that point.  He gave me a real scare the way he was gripping himself and being so stoical about it.  Usually he shrieks and hollers when he's hurt, so his relative silence but obvious pain alarmed me.  Once he took care of things in the bathroom his pain began to subside but not disappear entirely.  Thinking about it we realized he'd had a lot more dairy than he's used to these past couple days and it's not the first time he's had gastro issues thanks to that food group.  Once we got home we loaded him up with a good dose of probiotics, cut out the dairy once more and he was good to go again.

 

Back to our explorations here, our original plan was to head over to the Canadian side after the tour.  In fact, we were so determined to do so that we didn't leave the house until late morning waiting just as long as possible for S's passport delivery...that didn't come.  Giving up, we finally left, only to get a phone call 30 minutes later that it had arrived.  Of course it had!  Luckily we got sidetracked in town by an errand so we weren't too far and quickly headed back to the house to pick up the passport.  Paperwork in hand we headed to the Falls, for real this time, planning to go across into Canada as well.

 

As awe inspiring as the falls were, by the time we had finished our boat tour we were soaking wet, cold, exhausted from the winds blowing and ready to call it a day.....So much for Canada.  It'll just have to wait for us.