Kirtland to Niagara

Today was a nice easy 200 miles.

We got to sleep in until a little after 8 as we knew that today would be a short day of driving. As we wandered over to our complimentary breakfast we saw a missionary and his parents eating. They were from Spain if I heard correctly and they were touring the Church history sites before they went back to Spain. I think that the hotel we were staying in was probably a popular one with LDS peoples since it is so close to the Kirtland sites.

We drove down the road a mere mile and were at the Church's visitors center were we toured the Newel K Whitney home and store on a tour with a family of 10 and the sister missionary. It was a nice tour, but took a bit longer than we thought that it would because of the kids.

We then headed up to the Temple site and just walked around the grounds, the Community of Christ, which runs the temple site, wants $2 for the tour and we were needing to get on the road.

It took us a little over 3 hours to make the drive up here to Buffalo, it was slow at times with construction but otherwise uneventful. We got here and were able to get off of the freeway just as traffic was really getting bad.

We checked into the hotel and headed back out to see Niagara Falls, which we were very excited about. With only moderate resistence from traffic we arrived in Niagara Falls, New York, and as we crossed one of the bridges we could already see the mist rising up from the Falls.

Deciding to go on the Maid of the Mist boat tour we headed down to the dock were we received out blue poncho and boarded the boat. In my experience ponchos are less than effective so I wondered how much good it would do as we neared the great falls especially with the wind. But somehow they held up much better than I thought and kept us dry with the exception of the exposed legs.

Niagara Falls is quite the impressive site. Amazing, beautiful, powerful, awe inspiring, the list could go on and on. I guess that now that I have been there I can check another thing off my list of things to do before I die. We are very happy with the choice to go on the boat tour, it was spectacular and you get to see an amazing up close view and experience with both sections of the Falls. I took video so that the sounds and wind could be fully appreciated, but for now I do not know how to post that to the site. I will make attempts at learning how, and if I fail I will email the video to all who would like me to do so. I hope that you can enjoy the pictures though they fail to capture the beauty and wonder of the place.