Niagara Falls

We left Palmyra on that same evening and drove a couple hours over to East Aurora, NY to use our Hilton points there.  It's a cute, charming little town.  We got up Sunday morning to do Niagara Falls.  Here's what the rapids look like shortly before the Falls.  They do have a sign way up river telling you not to swim or boat past a certain point...you'd never make it out of this:

 This is a picture of the river after the Falls.  Right after.  It's amazing how calm it suddenly is.

 The first thing that we did was head straight for these boats, The Maiden of the Mist.  That's a pretty good name to indicate what you are in store for.  It's a good thing that they include those blue ponchos as part of the price, too!  There are actually two Falls and the river separates the U.S. from Canada.

 This is the view from the Observation Tower:

Jeremy and I have passports, and for the kids to cross into Canada, we could bring their birth certificates with us and our passports.

 This is the view from the Canadian side:

Over there, we paid to do "Behind the Falls", which is impressive to see the volume of the water that close, but also to hear it.

 We returned to the U.S., where we actually had to pay a toll to come back into.  Really?!

 This is the view from further in the state park on the U.S. side.  The big green "building" is the Observation Tower and where you descend and board the boats.  Behind that is the bridge that we crossed into Canada on.

 A unique perspective on the shape of the Falls:

We had a great time.  We went back to the hotel, bathed everyone off, and went to bed.  The next day we got up and went home...