Slowly I Turned...

Niagara Falls. Much to my surprise, they turned out to be less than five hours from my home. They look so much farther on a map. And pretty small when you're looking at them from about 770 feet. Which is where I was when I snapped this photo; on the observation deck of the Skylon Tower, which is as high as you can legally go in Niagara Falls without actually sitting in an aircraft. More than 34 million gallons of water rush over the lip of that cliff every single minute until the river starts to freeze in winter.

As I write this, we are at the end of Day 2 on "The Road to Nova Scotia" and I'm sitting in a TraveLodge somewhere east of Rochester, New York. We arrived in Niagara Falls early in the afternoon on Saturday, drove around for quite a bit while Dad related to me how much the area had changed since he was there 20+ years ago. And, indeed, it obviously had. Big high-rise hotel chains are now littered throughout the city. At least two casinos, several additional miniature golf sites - each with its own novelty approach - a Sea World knock off called "Marineland," some kind of "Safari" experience, and several additional museums. There's a section on Clifton Hill that would rival Chicago's "Magnificent Mile," if not nearly that long.

Dad and I are two of 14 million people who come to this city every year. Four of the five Great Lakes drain through the Niagara River and out into the Atlantic Ocean. Lake Ontario is the only one that doesn't, if you were curious. I've posted a mess of additional photos, as I promised, over at my Facebook Fan Page. You can find it here.

Tomorrow we head on up into the Adirondack Mountains, through the Olympic Village at Lake Placid, and then ferry across to Vermont.

I'll keep you posted.

P.S. - The title of this post comes from an old vaudeville act that was most popularly exploited by the Three Stooges. Whenever someone would say, "Niagara Falls," they would turn as one, and say "Slowly I turned, step-by-step, inch-by-inch...and proceed to pummel the person who had uttered the offending phrase." Find an old You Tube clip or Google it for the full story.