Niagara Falls Day 2 Part 2 - Maid of the Mist, and Golden Hour at the Falls

A few more pictures from Niagara Falls. Fewer than I remembered, in fact - our next activity, since we were hitting all the standard Niagara Falls tourist fun on the US side, was a ride on the Maid of the Mist, and while there may not have been any cave at the Cave of the Winds, there was definitely mist on the Maid of the Mist, the boat takes a pretty close pass by the American Falls and then snuggles right uo to the thundering Horseshoe Falls. That's the one people shoot for when they get it into their heads to go over the falls in a barrel or a kayak or an inner tube or whatever, the American Falls have this barricade of boulders at the bottom so there's just no way, but the Horseshoe Falls fall straight down into the roiling pool at the bottom so there's a marginally better chance of living to tell the tale. Odds are still lousy though. Much better to just go into the mist and the roaring at the bottom, on a nice solid passenger boat with a good strong engine. Anyways, the reason there are not many pictures is because the mist starts at the American Falls, and I kept trying to take pictures for a little too long before I wrapped up the camera in the plastic bag I'd brought, and when I took it out and tried to take a picture afterwards, it just said "Nope".

That was  too bad because we stumbled across the very lovely Niagara Gorge trail afterwards, we were walking in the park downstream from the Falls and as we were approaching a building perched on the cliff's edge, we saw people coming out. We investigated and discovered that it was the elevator down to the service area for vessels in the area and also the public access to the trail. We had a great short hike down there, continuing downstream until we got to a switchback trail that led back up to the top of the cliff, getting back to the falls just as the sun was getting that late afternoon gold color to it, illuminating the falls in a way that I thought was far more breathtaking than the colored floodlights at night. I took a chance and turned the camera back on and was very happy when it worked - must've given it just enough time to dry out. So glad since my hands-down favorite pictures from Niagara Falls ended up being that set.

It's funny, I ended up really kind of glad I hadn't brought my passport - if I had, there were 2 more tourist attractions on the Canadian side that we would've tried to hit (Journey Behind the Falls, which is actually tunnels that take you to look out from behind Horseshoe Falls, and then the cable car over the Whirlpool, which TQ remembered as being pretty neat from visiting there in the past), and we would've missed the hike, which I enjoyed so much. Funny how things work out sometime. As it was, I felt like it was just about a perfect first visit to Niagara Falls.

And here are those last pictures.