We are back from an excellent fall break trip to Niagara. I'm actually not quite sure why, but both of the kids were asking if we could go see Niagara Falls over break, and Beth and I just decided, why not? Of course, about a week before the trip, the heater in the van died, so during the week I took it in to the dealer and pleaded with them to squeeze it in within the next couple days. It was starting to get chilly and a long trip to Niagara with no heat was not going to be fun. But fortunately, unbeknownst to me, a woman that I know from church works at the dealer service center and she pulled some strings to get the van in right then. They got it fixed within an hour or so. So the trip cost $276.32 right off the bat. We left town just after getting gas and an oil change on Wednesday last week, and drove as far as the Cleveland area (after a stop in Fort Wayne to get a copy of Missy's birth certificate and the Allen County vital records department, which we heard we needed to enter Canada. We also found a new stretch of US-24 between Fort Wayne and the Cleveland area, too new to be on our GPS, which thought we were driving through cornfields for miles and miles) to visit with Beth's cousin Cathy and her husband. She's one of the last cousins Beth has left. We had dinner together and met to talk about some genealogy (Cathy's done a lot of work on family history, and I've been working on Beth's family too). We stayed overnight in a motel and got moving again the next morning. For the rest of the trip, the weather was perfect. It was a gorgeous fall day driving along the lakeshore all through Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York, and by the time we got to the Niagara area we decided to head straight for the falls instead of Old Fort Niagara which had been our plan, to take advantage of the bright sunny day. I must say it is even more stunning and impressive up close and personal than one realizes. We did some walking along the trails on the US side and then went to ride the Maid of the Mist. Beth and I would have just ridden it again and again after that, I most highly recommend it. I can't even adequately describe the ride. The amazing vistas from the bottom of the falls, rainbows everywhere, the boat pitching and yawing, the driving spray, the roar of falling water, everything was amazing. And such a perfect day for it. We then crossed over into Ontario (nobody asked us for the birth certificates) and found the hotel, checked in, and went to dinner at the ABSOLUTE WORST Ruby Tuesday on the planet. We went there for the salad bar, which was barely stocked and not very fresh, and it was hugely expensive. But it was in the tourist trap part of the town. After dinner we walked to the falls, which was farther than I thought, trying to get there before the Journey Behind the Falls experience was closed, but we didn't make it. We then just hung around after it got dark to see the falls lit up, which was cool, and headed back (wound up catching a cab to get back to the hotel). We rescheduled the Journey Behind the Falls experience for the next morning, at which point we learned that the Journey Behind the Falls experience is not nearly as impressive as it's made out to be. And pricey for what you get. Seriously, skip it. It's just a tunnel going maybe a couple hundred feet through the rock behind the falls, with a couple of side tunnels off the main one opening up to a solid curtain of rushing water. We thought it was worth never doing again. But anyway, the rest of the day was great. We went to an IMAX movie about Niagara Falls, did a bunch of souvenir shopping, ate lunch at the Skylon Tower (which rotates once an hour or so and offers the best vistas of the falls and the whole Niagara area), treated the kids to a couple touristy things in the town (both kids chose Wizard Golf (black light mini-golf) and Alex and I did a maze which was actually pretty cool). We had a limit so we didn't do the upside-down house or Ripley's or the hundred other kitschy things. Dinner at Planet Hollywood, which was better than the Ruby Tuesday. Then we happened across an old-timey photo studio and had portraits of ourselves dressed up as an old west gang of outlaws. I went for a run along the gorge past the falls the next morning, then we headed out after breakfast. Crossing back into the US was much slower than into Canada, I gotta say. And after the long wait, when we got to the entry gate, they did ask us for the kids' birth certificates. And kept them for several minutes, so it's a good thing we had them. After re-entry we headed up to Old Fort Niagara, which I loved. It is restored beautifully and has a lot of space and buildings to explore. And a beautiful, commanding view of Lake Ontario. It wasn't clear enough to see to Toronto, but it was still bright and sunny, if windy and chilly. I could have spent a lot longer than we did there, but we had to get moving after a couple hours. We stopped by Cathy and Ken's house on the way back to visit for a little while, then hit the road back home. Overall we couldn't have asked for better weather on a fall trip to Niagara and we all had a fantastic time. We caught a rock in the windshield somewhere in western Ohio that put a nasty crack in it but except for that everything went just great.