Niagara Trip

Hello All,

As I said last time, we had long trip to Niagara, New York and Washington DC. I will be uploading photos of each one separately. Here are the photos of Niagara Falls.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bharat7480/NiagaraFalls#

This was a long long drive which I was going to do alone. (Total trip miles approx 3000+) So I prayed lord and my Sadguru to bless us with trouble free, safe and enjoyable trip and left Ottumwa on Friday afternoon (3^rd September). My John Deere friends from Moline, Illinois were also going to Niagara Falls that weekend so we planned to meet at Toledo, Ohio where we had booked our night stay motel.

We resumed our journey to Niagara Falls next day morning, and drove down to Buffalo, NY, where I had booked a motel for our one day stay near Niagara. It was late afternoon the time we reached Buffalo. We had lunch and took some rest. Then we went to see the great, so called world famous Niagara Falls. Actually there are two falls - American falls and Canadian Horse shoe falls on same Niagara river.

The weather was not so good. Little rain, cold breeze, cloudy. That evening we took the “maid of the mist” boat tour. This is a tour wherein they give you blue raincoats (as you will see in photos) and boat goes so close to the falls that you can actually feel the mist, drizzles of the water falling in front of you from the great height. That evening we roamed around in the state park and then we waited till it got dark. In the night, they illuminate the falls with many colorful lights. It was awesome experience to see that. We enjoyed the dinner at Indian Dhaba and went back to our motels.

Next day morning, weather was good. Fresh, sunlight, cool, ideal for outing. We went to the “cave of the winds”. It’s a tourist attraction wherein you are taken to the base of American falls. (See the photos with Yellow raincoats) The wooden deck arrangements are made so as to help tourists reach below the falls and experience some portion of water crashing directly on them. They say, there were caves in 19^th century formed by high speed wind and tourist were actually going behind the falls in those caves, but in early 20^th century caves were destroyed by rockfall. I got fully drenched at the “hurricane deck” there. Mom and Dad did not dare to come to that spot but they enjoyed the other portion of cave of the winds decks.

After that thrilling experience, we took the ride in Niagara scenic trolley. We saw many beautiful rainbows at American falls. We also visited the horse shoe falls which actually is a gigantic falls as compared to American falls, but the geographical location is not so suitable for tourist seeing it from the American borders. You won’t get a good view of the falls from America. There I understood why people say you got to watch Niagara Falls from Canada side. It was afternoon now and we were tired and hungry by then. We went back to same Indian dhaba to fill our stomachs with delicious Punjabi food.

We started our journey to New Jersey, which was our next destination close to New York. Mom’s school friend, Uma is at Plainsboro, NJ. Mom and Uma were eagerly waiting to see each other after a long time and that too in USA. The detail description of this friends meeting, how we enjoyed the company of these gem of people and our NY trip will follow in next blog. Oh. Yah, one more thing, from now on, I will be uploading this descriptions on my blog. My friend, Snehal (yes, the Chicago girl, if you remember my last trip description) helped me compile this blog.

Hope you enjoyed the details. Here are some fun facts of Niagara Falls.

American falls – volume of flow – 10% of the total

Horse shoe falls – volume of flow – 90% of the total

Total flow – 100,000 cubic feet per second.

Largest hydropower plant in the world.

Tourists are mainly Indians and Chinese (this is my observation)

Enjoy the photos…. Chao….

http://picasaweb.google.com/bharat7480/NiagaraFalls#

Regards,

Bharat