Niagara Falls, part 2

When we last left our intrepid heroes, we were heading inside and then to get some lunch after a successful morning stalking the elusive huge waterfall. We emerged from Outback Steakhouse after lunch to find that the sun had come out and it was warmer than the predicted 30°. We headed back down to the falls area to explore some more.

With the sun out, we found the very elusive waterfall rainbows playing in the spray. The American Falls rainbow was easily spotted right out in the open.

 

The rainbow on Horseshoe Falls was a bit more shy, however, but we would locate it (and a surprise) before the afternoon was over.

The river itself was an interesting green color in the sunlight.

Before long, however, we were able to find the Canadian rainbow--and a friend! (That's the aforementioned surprise.)

We moved upstream to investigate some things we'd seen from the hotel, but we kept an eye on the frolicking rainbows, too.

The rainbows liked us. They even followed us above the falls. You can see in the shot below that the brighter rainbow is definitely standing in the river above the falls.

The plants were coated with ice, even upstream from the falls.

Below, I tried to take a really artsy shot through the ice plant. It didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, but it's not bad.

 

 One more rainbow shot, then we'll move to the next part of our tour.

When we were taking a break before getting lunch, we discovered that an attraction called "Behind the Falls" was open. We hadn't really thought it would be. Remember that viewing platform at the base of the falls that I mentioned in part 1? We got to go down there.

Our friend the rainbow came down there with us. It sure looks like it's having fun frolicking in the spray.

The view downstream from down there was pretty spectacular, too.

For some reason, they made us stay in the covered upper viewing area. We couldn't even go down and read the signs in the lower area.

While we were taking pictures, I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye and heard a strange sound down on the lower platform. Looking over the rail, I found that someone was probably on the cliff above squinting in the sun.

Now, this attraction was called "Behind the Falls" for a reason. There are tunnels leading to two viewports out of the rock behind the falls. Here's the view from the first one.

I guess the ice on the rocks behind the falls kind of filled it in. Ever optimistic, we headed off to the second viewport.

Oh, well. I guess it wasn't really surprising that these were completely blocked. I'll have to get back there some day when it isn't all frozen up. We were told by some locals that September is a great time to go because tourist season is over, but things haven't started freezing yet. Something to keep in mind.

At least we got to find out where we would have been looking out.

It was getting to be dinner time and the sun was setting, so we headed back up to the top of the cliff and said one last goodbye to the falls.

The trip home started out waaayyy too early (the train left at 7:20). We also got stuck at Penn Station for an extra hour and a half, as there were track problems in Virginia that delayed our train back home. Luckily, we were able to swap our tickets for another train and we managed to get home by 8:30 or so that night.