July 6, 2013

We woke up this morning in this nice, clean, yet crowded with bikes, motel room. I worried when I went to sleep last night that Chuck would step on me in the night in his venture to the WASHroom because I was sleeping at the foot of his bed, the only open floor space. But no, Chuck was courteous, Christopher kicked me. Other than that, excellent night of sleep.

Breakfast this morning was at McDonald's, Dee ate in the room. Then we were off to Niagara Falls! Twenty miles sure goes by fast when your driving. When we got to Niagara, the sights were remarkable. On our way to find parking the road was soaked from the mist of the falls. We eventually found parking.......for TWENTY dollars! The park was free for us to just walk around and take pictures of the falls. Simply beautiful.

We decided while we were viewing the falls to do something extra. When we saw people below us, right next to the falls getting soaked in rain jackets. I decided that it was worth figuring out how those people got down there, and how much they paid to get down there as well. Finding out it was 15 dollars a person, we said, "WORTH IT!"

It was cold and wet, but awesome. It's not exactly easy to take pictures when your being soaked by the intense power of those falls, but we got a few. They also had two tunnels that we could go to that were directly behind the falls. Today we also learned of the only person that ever UNINTENTIONALLY fell off the falls, and lived. A seven year old boy, a tour ship found him and saved his life and he was unharmed. I was astounded by that story.

After the falls, I was hoping we would find somewhere good to eat. But, we swung back to McDonald's. Awesome. Sure, it's cheap, but I'm not sure that it's worth it.

Hey Al, how do you open Canadian Ice Pops? Why are they so complicated?

When we got back to the room, we got Chuck all packed up in the van to go back home. It's weird without Chuckles here. I have to admit, he was very nice to me. I have a tiny wash cloth as a towel and he lent me his. He lent me some of his fancy spancy titanium silverware for the trip, he was always giving me snacks and making sure I was eating. And he makes us laugh. I'll miss Chuckles on the second half of this adventure. Thanks for everything Chuck!! I hope you and Dee have a safe drive home! We walked down to the river to wave goodbye to you on the bridge.

After they left, we went for a walk to the actual Fort Erie. Chris said it was two blocks away, so I wore my flip-flops. Three blisters later, we arrived. It was very neat, from what we could see, but it was already closed for the day. We were able to walk all around it but not inside. When we got in and were surrounded by the walls, we realized we had a long walk back. Chris and I decided we were going to find a way out, we weren't going to walk back that whole way. Chris found a way, that included climbing a wall, sliding down a cement slab, jumping over a wall of wooden spikes then jumping on a cannon and down onto the grass. Seems dangerous. My way included walking up a grassy slope. Needless to say, we chose my way. Roger and Laura were convinced we were crazy and walked the whole way back. They're the crazy ones.

On our walk back we searched for dinner and picked Subway, the only place other than McDonald's that has free refills.

Tomorrow we will be back in to the states!
Sorry for the lack of pictures lately.