Second Stop-Niagara Falls

This was a really great way to spend Mother's Day with my mom.  We drove up to Niagara in the morning after breakfast at the hotel, where we presented Mom with her gift and cards.  We had taken all the grand kids to Ward Meade Park where my mom and dad were married almost 34 years ago and took their pictures, then I put them all in a photo album that I created on-line.  It came out so well, and she LOVED it!

Arriving in Niagara we were stunned to see so many boarded up buildings and homes.  Everything looked so run-down.  The Visitor's Center was just gross.  We had planned to enter Canada, but my sister couldn't find her passport, so we ended up staying on the US side, which once we started our tour, was just fine with all of us.  We had a really great tour guide from Cataract Tours, Larry.  Larry had lots of cool stories, he is an ex-cop, ex-military, and was the original Goofy at Disney World!  All true, or just for our amusement, he was really fun!

 The falls were so incredibly amazing, seriously one of the coolest things we had ever seen.  At the Cave of the Winds, they give you a poncho and some sandals that make quite the fashion statement, this should clue you in to how wet you are gonna get when they give you and poncho and tell you to trade in your own shoes for a pair of theirs. 

While it was very wet, on the lower levels.  We went all the way up to the hurricane level and were blasted with the ice cold water from the falls.  What a RUSH!

We had another really beautiful day to enjoy our Mother's Day.  The temperature was really perfect a little overcast, but most of the day the sun was shining through.  I was hoping to see a rainbow, but no luck. 

We ended our trip to Niagara with a buffet at the Seneca Niagara Casino, which was actually probably the only really nice place to eat there, it was good food.  While we waited for our reservation we played a few slots, each of us put in $5 and played the nickle slots, and we agreed ahead of time to pool our winnings.  Well, only because of my Mom's good luck, we each pretty much ended up breaking even.  But it was a fun way to pass the time.

We ended the day by driving to Syracuse to stay the night and be close to the airport, ready for our flight the next day to NYC.