Friday, October 29, 2010

The falls

Our first icon and maybe wonder-of-the-world has been visited and it was 70% Blackpool style tack, but in a fun way.

Niagara falls is obviously a massive, massive waterfall and is as spectacular as you think. Somehow it’s not as big looking from the top as you’d imagine, but if you had down to the bottom of it, it’s huge and the volume of water pouring off the precipice is immense.

Looking at the map it seems that it’s the point at which a chunk of water from lake Ontario runs into lake Erie. Both lakes are crazy-big, especially when viewed with English eyes; Ontario, when measured with a straight line across it’s widest point, is 200miles! superimposed on the UK that would pretty much be from London to Blackpool, and Ontario isn’t even the big one! Superior gets that honour at about 350miles. These are big lakes…

NY - Lake Ontario

Here’s a nice arty shot of the lake and its beach. You can see that the thing goes all the way to the horizon and a few miles further, I’d guess.

 

 

 

At the falls, I got chatting to a birdwatcher guy who’d been standing staring at what looked like gulls through an expensive monocular for ages. He said that’s where thousands of them come for the winter as it’s the only place in the region that almost never freezes. It’s cold up here, too.

NY - Niagara falls

Here’s the famous Horseshoe Falls looking towards Canada. A huge group of Korean tourists heard that we were there so they showed up too.

 

 

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Here’s us. Steff should be obvious, but my part was played by a hobo we’d found nearby. I lent him my Kagool.

 

 

 

One of the biggest highlights of the place was the solar powered flashing name keyrings we got in the gift shop, they’re solar powered! See here:

Later on we bailed and headed to the campsite which was about 2 hours away. This was a nice campsite and the temperature was starting to drop: 40F in and out of the car, cloudy.

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Here’s our camp breakfast. All the things you need: toast, coffee and rice milk. Rice milk is great. It’s pleasing to the taste buds, it doesn’t go off quickly and it doesn’t require refrigeration. Perfect for camping!

 

 

Even though it was getting a bit on the chilly side, the 2 down duvets we brought along are lovely and toasty. They allow t-shirt sleeping, but the real test will be when we get to a properly cold place. 40F is nothing for this part of the world.

1 comment:

  1. I'm loving the regular blog posts mate. The first thing I do when I awake in the morning is check to see if you've written anything new. Very impressed with the cooking imagination too... beats the old fried rice I kept coughing up in NZ!

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