7/29 - Niagara Falls

We’re back to sightseeing after five days in Cedar Springs, MI, visiting cousins and doing genealogy research.  Jim patiently put up with my photographing dozens of gravestones in several cemeteries where lots of his relatives are buried. 

Our drive from Cedar Springs to our stopping point in Geneva, Ohio, went better than expected.  I was apprehensive about the traffic around Toledo and Cleveland but we got through both places with relative ease although the temperature hit 94 on Monday.  It wasn’t any cooler when we got to Niagara Falls yesterday and today was in the 90’s again.  It’s supposed to cool off by ten degrees for the next week which will be most welcome.  

Beautiful farmland near the Michigan/Ohio line.  Blurred crops but we didn’t know what they were anyway.  Guessing they may have been soybeans.

Another big river.  Looks like every other river picture I’ve taken.  It’s the Maumee River near Toledo.

What I really wish I could have got a picture of was the miles of vineyards we passed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York along I-90 between north of Cleveland and nearly to Buffalo.  We had no idea there were so many grapes being grown here but it’s a gigantic business.  Ohio has a growing wine industry with 25 wineries around Geneva alone.  But the real biggie is the 60 mile stretch from Erie County, PA, to Silver Creek, NY, which is called the Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt.  It is the oldest and largest Concord grape growing area in the world with 30,000 vineyard acres under cultivation between the two states.  While much of it goes into wine, the bulk is used for juice, jams, jellies and syrup.  There’s a Grape Discovery Center near Westfield, NY, devoted to everything grape.  We’ll have to add it to the list for a future trip.

Since I couldn’t get a picture of the vineyards, here’s one with Lake Erie in the background from the Chautauqua County Visitors Bureau.  Imagine this going on for 60-plus miles.

Today we did Niagara Falls.  The area around the falls is the Niagara Falls State Park, the oldest state park in the country.  The falls themselves are spectacular, of course, but the park is definitely not.  The words that came to mind for both of us were rip-off and tourist-trap.  There’s road and park construction going on everywhere which makes it difficult to get around and prevented us from seeing two things we wanted to see.  The real attraction is the falls but the park has added “attractions” which make it a fourth-rate amusement park without amusement.  It’s dirty, trashy,  and run-down.  The Maid of the Mist boat tour was good……the highlight of the day.  We did it first so didn’t have to wait in line too long.  Second was the Cave of the Winds for which we waited in line in blazing sun for about 45 minutes.  It was not as advertised since the cave is long gone.  They lead you to believe you’re going behind a section of the waterfall when all you’re doing is walking along wooden decks and steps at the base of Bridal Veil Falls where you get drenched (which was refreshingly cool).  The experience of being that close to the falls was neat but we wouldn’t do it again if we had to wait more than 10 minutes.  The remaining things were an aquarium and Discovery Center which were poor and an Imax movie which was very disappointing.  They have trolleys transporting people all over the park which was good, but several of the stops have no shade or seats anywhere near them so people were getting really overheated.  With what we know now, if we could do it over we’d just do the Maid of the Mist tour and skip the rest.  We could have spent a lot more time just viewing the river rushing over the rapids.  The second highlight was lunch which we ate at the Top of the Falls Restaurant.  The food was extremely good and we had a great view of the falls from our table.  

The American Falls on the left and Horseshoe Falls in back.  Horseshoe is divided between the US and Canada.

Rainbow Bridge between the two Niagara Falls cities….NY and Ontario.  The predecessor to this bridge fell into the river in January 1938 when a massive ice jam on the river knocked it off its abutments.  It sat on the ice until the thaw started, then part sank here and another section rode down the river and sank closer to Lake Ontario.  Rainbow Bridge’s abutments were constructed 28 feet higher so ice wouldn’t hit them.

American Falls (center) and Bridal Veil Falls to the right.  The observation tower is at far left.  The people on the right are on the Cave of the Winds decks and stairs.  The spray fills the area in front of all the falls and can be seen from a long way off.

Horseshoe Falls with a tour boat heading for it. 

Tomorrow we’re moving 125 miles over to Prattsburgh, NY, near the south end of Canandaigua Lake to search for more of Jim’s ancestors.