Niagara Carney on steroids!

 After spending the last two days enjoying Toronto, it's time to make the short journey to Niagara Falls just in time to enjoy Canada Day. We leave muggy Toronto early in the morning and once again tackle the 401, not too far outside of Toronto we run into construction and slow to a crawl, after a couple of hours of very little movement we decide to lunch at Port Colborne the site of Lock 8 the last lock in the network joining Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, this lock is one of the world's longest.





After finishing our lunch we see activity at the lock and find out a 225-meter ship is due to transit the lock so we stick around to watch the show. It was amazing to watch this huge vessel slowly cruise thru the lock once the bridge was raised, it took mere minutes from the time the first lock was closed to get the level raised so they could open the other lock very Impressive.









Before heading to our campsite we stop at the Fort Erie horse racing track hoping to check out some of the horses but what we find is an off-site betting facility filled with people and monitors we do get a chance to check out the Grand Stands, nice but seeing the horses would have been better.





Up early to catch the bus into Niagara Falls, our first glimpse of the falls is thru a sea of people. We waste no time and purchase our Hornblower's Tour tickets before things get any busier. The tour was fantastic, but a little hard on my camera and Cell phone. First, we go by the American falls very beautiful cascading over the rocks at the bottom. Then onto the Horseshoe falls, thunderous and so much mist we were instantly soaked, but it felt so good an awesome time.









After getting back from our tour we head over to "Journey behind the Falls", on our way we stop to watch the people zip lining down the falls. After doing the Hornblower tour Journey felt a little underwhelming, two portals look out to the water thundering by, as well you get access to a viewing platform that is very close to the falls, it was nice but I'd give it a miss if I came back this way.










We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Niagara looking at all the attractions, of which there were many of all kinds like a Carnival on steroids.









We had planned on returning to our campsite for dinner but as the afternoon progressed the crowds became larger and traffic was barely able to move so we elected to stay in town. The fireworks started at 10 and by 9, people were lined up 20 deep so we took a spot a little ways away and sat down to wait for them to start.
Twenty minutes before the fireworks were due to start, we could see fireworks going off over a casino on the US side they put on an amazing show that went on till just before the Canadian ones started which also were amazing, then it was time to make our way thru the crowds and find our bus ride back. The 30 minute journey ends up taking over 1 1/2 hours, but it was a great day.