Thursday Vacation Adventures

On Thursday we headed to Niagara Falls. We got a special Discovery Pass, which included Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist, the Aquarium of Niagara, and a movie about Niagara Falls.

Our first adventure was Cave of the Winds. We put on the yellow ponchos they gave us, but it was SOOO hot out that they were literally sticking to us. We basically kept them on long enough to take a picture of how ridiculous we looked, and then took them off again. The mist from the waterfall felt so good on such a hot day!

Alayna went up to the "Hurricane Deck" to get soaked... :-)

Because it was later in the day, our next stop was to be the Aquarium of Niagara as that was the attraction that closed earlier than the rest. So we got out our handy-dandy tourist guide, and let's just say that the map should have had an FYI that said "Locations on map are farther than they appear." None of us had ever been to the aquarium so we had no clue where we are going. We started heading off in the general direction that it told us to go. We walked, and walked, and walked. We finally stopped at this welcome center near the border of Canada to ask for directions. Well, let's just say, the guy gave us the longest route possible to get to this aquarium. So we walked, and walked, and walked some more. Eventually Elizabeth got on the phone with her Mom so she could mapquest our location from her laptop at home. She gave us the street name where the aquarium was on, and we were very close. In fact, if we had just walked straight at one point we would have been there 15 minutes sooner! We were literally dripping in sweat by the time we got to the aquarium. The air conditioning never felt so good! So we walked around for a bit, went to the gift shop, took some pictures, and then went to our 2nd sea lion show of the week.

We took pictures with the scary fake shark...this was shortly after we arrived, and we were still slightly deranged from the heat. :-)

Once the sea lion show was over, we headed back to the Falls. Thankfully, we caught a trolley this time, and saved ourselves from the long walk. Our next adventure was going on the Maid of the Mist - by far, the best part of the day!!!!

Feeling stylish in our ponchos...

It was so neat to be so close to the falls!

We were on the boat as the sun was setting and shining directly on the falls. So pretty! There were rainbows everywhere! At one point, there was a full rainbow over the falls. Unfortunately, just something you can't quite capture on camera!

On the Observation Tower...

We then went to the Visitor Center, where we watched "Niagara Legends of Adventure" in the theater. It was quite an amazing movie about all the legends and history associated with Niagara Falls. I particularly liked the story of a teacher who went over the falls in a barrel filled with pillows and her little kitten. She wanted to be remembered by her students for doing something daring, I guess!! Nope, sorry...I don't have to be remembered THAT much by my students. :-)

After the movie was over, we went back to the Observation Tower to watch the colored lights shine on the falls at night. The show started later than it was supposed to, so we didn't stay too long. On the way home, we picked up 2 movies at a redbox and some Code Red Mountain Dew for the all-nighter we were planning. We ended up staying up till 5:30 watching chick flicks, playing games on the Wii and just being completely immature. It was a blast :P