Letter From Niagara Falls by Travelogger

Sep|12|2006

Letter From Niagara Falls

Posted by Zahir as Americas, Nature, Reviews

My husband just recieved this letter by email from a friend of his who had just been to Niagara Falls. It was written so wonderfully, so I thought it was worth sharing. Big THANK YOU Jamie!

“..Had a remarkable weekend — the people over at Niagara are absolutely
wonderful and neither words nor pictures can get across the grandeur
of the falls. I have never seen or felt anything like it. Even my
sons, jaded by anything that doesn’t play on a video screen, were
absolutely blown away.

The falls are in three pieces — Horseshoe Falls is shaped more or
less like a horseshoe, which means that when the Maid of the Mist, the
boats that cruise down at the bottom of the falls, motors over to
them, you are completely surrounded by falling water if you’re in the
front of the boat — which we were. Imagine being in the worst storm
of your life, but with the sun still shining, while you’re on the deck
of a ship in turbulent water, and you kind of have the idea. You
couldn’t hear one another for the falling water! My husband took a
little film of it while we were there, and I’ll send you that later
today or tomorrow. It was beyond incredible.

Horseshoe Falls is split by the border between the US and Canada, so
the Canadians have a tour behind the waterfall which, alas, we could
not get to with only two days to stay. On the American side are two
other falls, American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. Horseshoe carries
about 90% of the water in the whole falls complex. American Falls
carries about 9%, and is the other section of the falls that looks
impressive when seen from a distance.

Now Bridal Veil Falls looks tiny between the other two falls. But we
took another tour called the Cave of the Winds — half a misnomer, as
the cave it used to go through collapsed decades ago. The wind is
still there. Basically, they have a wooden walkway set up that takes
you from the base of Bridal Veil to around halfway up, 100 feet or so.
It meanders around, traveling over top of several of the little
cascades and streams that split off at the bottom of Bridal Veil. We
went at the exact perfect time of day, when the sun was just rising
over the head of the falls, and if you turned to look away from the
water, there was a perfect rainbow that followed all the way through
the walk. Beautiful, especially when Maid of the Mist sailed through
it!

But at the top of the Cave of the Winds walkway, they have a wide area
called the Hurricane Deck. You don’t have to go up to it; it stretches
to within about 15 feet of the falls. At least in theory. In reality,
you go up there and you’re in the middle of the water. When the wind
blows — which believe me it does!! — you are completely drenched,
even with their raincoats and footgear. My middle son and I went all
the way back on the deck. You can’t hear anything, you can’t see
anything, and you can barely breathe — there is a very good reason
they call it the Hurricane Deck.

Now think about this. We were only at the edge — not even in the
falls — of the tiniest 1% of this whole complex. By itself, Bridal
Veil Falls would have been an amazing sight. The power of the
Hurricane Deck water just about blew me away, and I’m pretty solid. I
can’t imagine why people want to go over the damn thing in a barrel –
and that’s not a myth, they have!…”