NIAGARA FALLS!

We made it here ... to the oldest state park in the country ... Niagara Falls State Park .

We have learned that to best appreciate a popular tourist attraction, we should do some preplanning before arriving.  With the information we received at the campground the night before and our research for parking the RV and truck, we knew where we'd have to go and what we wanted to see.  We decided it best to take the trolley from the RV parking lot to travel around the park to be able to see all the sights, and it was certainly a great idea because we were able to visit all the falls more quickly than if we had walked to all of them as originally planned!

I am sure all who have been to this park will agree when I state how this is definitely a spectacular sight to behold!   I was like a little kid when I first saw the falls ... full of excitement and awe upon absorbing the view -- almost jumping up and down when I first saw this:

Then I saw TWO RAINBOWS!!

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!!!!!! :)

After taking tons of pictures from our initial site, we entered the observation tower and took more pictures of the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls from a higher perspective!

We watched other tourists pack onto the Maid of the Mist boats like sardines to ride out and view the falls from below and to experience them in a more tactile way.

(The red jackets are Canadians who are doing the same thing from the Canadian border while the blue-jacketed people are from the American side.)



We noticed Canada right away on the other side of the Niagara River, but we were very close to it while jutting out across the Niagara River at the observation tower .  (Last year we "saw" Mexico across the border fence when traveling through El Paso, TX.)

 Next, we walked down the trail that heads towards a staircase path that leads closer to the falls and took MORE pictures because no matter which way we looked at them, the view was  incredible!

 

We then boarded the trolley and rode to where we could walk down a wooded trail along the river to another area to see the Bridal Veil Falls.  However, to our surprise, we were at an observation area ABOVE the falls!   (You can see a bunch of people in the first scenic picture that I took above in the upper-left corner ... that's where we were.)

This was a spectacular view ... it amazed me how the park was built to allow for such a close-up view ... at the TOP of the falls!

 When the wind blew a certain way, we felt the mist while at the top of the falls!   

Lastly, we boarded back on the trolley to head over to Horseshoe Falls; but to our disappointment, most of that area was under construction so we couldn't get any scenic pictures there.   That will have to wait until next time when we view them from Canada!

So far, this has been the highlight of our trip!   The experience of awesomeness I felt here is close to the awesomeness I felt when first seeing the Grand Canyon!

On the way back to the parking lot, I told Mechanic Man that we will have to return there when the kids are all grown up and it's just the two of us.  We could spend an entire day at that park, sitting and enjoying the scenery and the amazing weather in June, reading books by the Niagara River in the park, having lunch, and simply being there.   There's much more to Niagara State Park than just the falls.  God willing, that will be part of our retirement plans!

After having our lunch in the RV, we hit the road towards our next destination ... the West!  We found a campground in PA to spend the evening before rising early to make up some time.  It was the last night of sleeping with the windows open since we saw the forecast of mid-90s to lower-100s across the entire middle of the US for the weekend.  Goodbye, Northeast, and its pleasant weather!