Niagara
After leaving Toronto last Friday we headed straight to the most American place in Canada—Niagara Falls. Despite the fact that there is an American side to Niagara Falls, the best view is on the Canadian side, so this is where the casinos, the Planet Hollywoods, and the behemoth resort hotels have set up shop, climbing all over each other to get the best view and the most vertical acreage. It looks like they might end up craning themselves right into the vortex of the falls. In spite of the spectacle, the falls managed to be impressive in their own right, most especially if you stood just over the water shooting through the rapids toward the edge where you could really sense how massive and iron-fisted the force of water is. The tourists were a surprising accessory to the afternoon—we expected the Japanese, but the mess of Europeans and the Amish family buying Coke from a vending machine (they use money?) were the sugar on top.
We stopped in at the IMAX theatre, whose sole purpose was to show a movie about the Falls that I saw when I was eight (timeless classic, though) 12 times a day. They advertised a “Daredevil Gallery” as well, which sounded free so we went it. Best spectacle in Niagara Falls, without a doubt. It was an exhibit of the various cobbled-together seacraft that lunatics have used over the years to plummet themselves over the falls. Included was a replica of the first: a modest wooden barrel, lined with a mattress. It was piloted by a destitute 63-year-old woman named Annie Taylor, who was trying to make a buck. Everyone is quick to point out that she failed and died poor anyway, but that didn’t happen until years after she survived the 155-foot fall in what looked like a slightly oversized potato bucket.
We left Niagara after using our $37 tax rebate to buy a bottle of so-so scotch at the Duty Free, and headed toward Lake Erie State Park on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie in New York. The wind off the lake proved not to be mythic, and helped ensure that cooking dinner on the propane stove would be as inefficient as possible. But sausage and green beans (with a healthy dose of Vermont maple syrup) are sturdy foods, and we’re pretty efficient eaters. A storm that morning had turned the shore waters into a grayish sludge, but some trick of science recycled the mess into the most perfectly pastel sunset either of us had ever seen.
(More to come)
We stopped in at the IMAX theatre, whose sole purpose was to show a movie about the Falls that I saw when I was eight (timeless classic, though) 12 times a day. They advertised a “Daredevil Gallery” as well, which sounded free so we went it. Best spectacle in Niagara Falls, without a doubt. It was an exhibit of the various cobbled-together seacraft that lunatics have used over the years to plummet themselves over the falls. Included was a replica of the first: a modest wooden barrel, lined with a mattress. It was piloted by a destitute 63-year-old woman named Annie Taylor, who was trying to make a buck. Everyone is quick to point out that she failed and died poor anyway, but that didn’t happen until years after she survived the 155-foot fall in what looked like a slightly oversized potato bucket.
We left Niagara after using our $37 tax rebate to buy a bottle of so-so scotch at the Duty Free, and headed toward Lake Erie State Park on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie in New York. The wind off the lake proved not to be mythic, and helped ensure that cooking dinner on the propane stove would be as inefficient as possible. But sausage and green beans (with a healthy dose of Vermont maple syrup) are sturdy foods, and we’re pretty efficient eaters. A storm that morning had turned the shore waters into a grayish sludge, but some trick of science recycled the mess into the most perfectly pastel sunset either of us had ever seen.
(More to come)
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