Water, Water Everywhere

A couple weekends ago, I drove down to Corning, as Ken and I were planning to head south and tour a Civil War battlefield. Alas, I had to go to Chicago the following Monday for Graph Expo (curse this vile "working" nonsense!) so we only had time to do something closer to home. So what did we decide? Niagara Falls, which I have vague recollections of having visited when I was a kid.

The drawback to this being a spur-of-the-moment trip is that we made hotel reservations on the Canadian side the day we left--but I had neglected to bring my passport with me. How strict would they be? We stopped at the visitor's center on the American side and "Dotty" was, true to her name, fairly clueless (odd that that question had never come up before). We checked with the hotel, and they said that a passport wasn't necessary, and, in fact, we picked up one of those guidebooks which explicitly stated that a passport was not necessary--my question, of course, was, "Is this a legally-binding instrument?"

As it turned out, the guy at Customs gave me grief and an attempted guilt trip, but it was essentially no problem. Odd thing about the Canadian side--Ken christened it "Nutsville" as it was more reminiscent of the Vegas strip, with casinos, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, The Guinness Book of World records Museum, lots of flashing lights and loud noises and generally psychotic behavior. The American side was a beacon of quiet dignity in comparison.

After a weekend there, we pretty much had enough of falling water. We did the Maid of the Mist (hmm...that sounds odd), the Cave of the Winds, and the Journey Behind the Falls. We stood on the American side, we stood on the Canadian side, and we pretty much saw the Falls from every conceiveable angle. I think it's safe to say, I don't need to see Niagara Falls again for a very long time.

Getting back into the U.S. was a lot easier than getting into Canada (oddly), and I suppose it's fortunate that I decided against trying to use the souvenir Maid of the Mist photo as a photo ID (I would probably end up in Gitmo).