Niagara Falls - NY Day 2

The family consensus was to attend the Hill Cumorah pageant Saturday night.  That left Saturday morning and afternoon open.  And that gave me an idea: Niagara Falls! 

I have wanted to see the NF for a while - we always drive by them on our way to the cottage in Canada, but it is always in the evening or in the middle of the night when we get to that area, so we've never been.  But here we were with time to kill and NF only a couple of hours away!  My Google research showed that NF was part of Niagara Falls State Park and there were several different activities (mostly $$) that we could do.  After looking around the park website and watching some YouTube videos, Jason and I settled on the Cave of the Winds.  And not just because when you go to the Cave of the Winds you get these really snazzy sandals.

Because you also get these really styling ponchos too!

We talked the Lattins into coming with us; no one else seemed to be as excited as we were at the prospect of having the Falls (Bridal Veil Falls in this case) come slamming down on top of them.  We were pretty sure that would be awesome.  So we crammed into an elevator and headed down to the bottom of the waterfall.  It was pretty cool to be down at the bottom at get the perspective of looking up at the falls.

And it is always fun to get wet.  After stopping at the platform pictured below, we headed up to the Hurricane Deck which was where you could get right under the Bridal Veil Falls.  No pictures because it was so wet and I didn't want to get either my camera or my phone drenched, but it was awesome.  The power of the water pummeling your body was crazy strong and the boys wanted to go under it again and again and again.  At which point, I questioned the purpose of the ponchos because we were all pretty wet underneath them.  It was so much fun.

When we were sufficiently drenched, we headed up top to see the falls from above.  Jason and the boys at the top of American Falls:

Looking down at the Hurricane Deck.

Pretty rainbow in the falls.

More falls. Another rainbow.

American Falls and the Observation Tower (where we had planned to go, but once we discovered what a zoo this place was, we settled for the Cave of the Winds and walking around to see the falls at the top).

At this point we were in need of food and water (okay, maybe the pregnant lady was in need of food and water) and the boys were busy digging in the dirt and wrestling, so Jason walked over to the Horseshoe Falls while Megan, Diane and I made arrangements to go eat someplace where Josh and I could find something safe to eat.

Another fun NY adventure.

On another note: this is the day I became converted to Google Maps navigation on a smartphone.  I had printed up maps avoiding toll roads for every leg of the trip.  Thus it was that we got to places just fine while driving through the extremely scenic New York countryside.  Until Saturday when we got horribly lost (roads not always marked very well in the extremely scenic New York countryside).  So, we got out Jason's cell and it led us easily to the park, even though at one point it led us over a bridge that looked an awful lot like the one that takes you into Canada and I was concerned that it was trying to take us out of the country even though we didn't have our passports.  I didn't need to worry - we stayed stateside and got there just fine.