#19 Road To The Falls

Although our trips primary goal was to show Hubby where I grew up (or as I like to call it…Operation Hubby Wants To Move To Canada) I made a secondary goal to take him to see the awesome natural wonder of Niagara Falls.

Since the Falls aren’t super close to Ottawa, it involved us taking a short little trip within our trip.

So on Thursday, we rented a car and took a little road trip out west of Toronto.

The drive was awesome.  It was the first, yes FIRST time I have ever driven in a foreign country.  We moved to the States before I was old enough to drive, and I’ve never driven when visiting up there.  Maybe it’s not the most “different” driving experience, but it was fun nonetheless to speed down the ON-401 at 130 Klicks – my Dad’s verbage for Kilometers per hour.

What made the drive even better was our rental car – a Ford Fusion – which I requested specifically because I loved the hybrid version so much after test driving it a few weeks ago.  Yes, you heard it…I’m considering breaking off my marriage to Toyota…  The Fusion is amazing though, I liked the hybrid better, but the regular version still packed a lot of punch (if you don’t include the headrests that are so big you need assistance to back out of a parking spot).  The Sirius radio came in awesome use as we were barreling through the open tundra (read:forests) of Ontario with only one working FM radio station.

Once we arrived in Niagara, and found our hotel, we were absolutely floored to see what our Fallsview Suite actually gave us…

Quite the view from our bed, or from the jacuzzi tub that was strategically placed in front of the wall of windows.  Yes, we did use it, and it was fabulous.

Even though it was blistering hot outside, we ventured down to the one requirement of a trip to the Falls – The Maid Of The Mist.

As if I wasn’t wet enough from the pools of sweat dripping down my legs, the Falls did well with splashing us to the point of soaking.  But it was fabulous.

I braved the constant sprays of water to get some shots from the boat.

Then we ran (okay walked briskly, but not so brisk that we sweat more than necessary) back to the hotel to strip off the sweat and Falls drenched clothes for something more comfortable.  There we hung, in our air conditioned paradise, while watching the Falls from bed (there may or may not have been HGTV Canada viewing during this time).  We considered going out for dinner, and then decided it was way too touristy out there, and settled on some room service and jacuzzi time.

At around 9oclock it was started to get dark, which meant cooler temperatures.  So we packed up the camera and headed back out to catch the light show.

It was beautiful.

That night we had a peaceful sleep, with the curtains pulled open so that we could sneak peeks all night just to make sure the Falls didn’t stop.

In the morning I woke up half expecting the faucet to have been turned off.  Alas, it was not, and the Falls were still going, as I hope they will be for a very, very, very long time.

Unfortunately, it was raining on Friday, so we packed up to head back to Ottawa instead of hanging around to get some more photos.

Our 6 hour trip back turned into over 8 hours.  The down pouring never let up and I had to take a few breaks from focusing on the foot of road in front of my car (that was literally all I could see!).  Then we hit an hour of completely stopped traffic, for absolutely no reason.  No accident, no construction, no rush hour, maybe everyone was just taking a snooze on the road?

Even with the sucky drive back, it was a great road trip to take!  I’m so happy we were able to see the Falls while up this time!