Day 3: Niagara Falls to Detroit

My Mom and I woke up early this morning so that we could ride the elevator down to the bottom of the American Falls and check them out from there. We had a little bit of time before it opened, so we walked through town a little bit.

This building was right next to our hotel. If you can't tell, it's shaped like a giant turtle. I'm pretty sure that it used to be a science museum or something, but it's currently unoccupied. Turtle-shaped real estate seems like a bit of a niche market to me, so it might be hard to fill. If this were in South Dakota, though, it would be bought up in a second. They love giant replicas out there.

We walked over to try to get out on the observation deck to get a good view of the Falls. It wasn't open yet, but I did manage to take this shot of a rainbow formed from all the mist.

Here are the wood walkways from which you can view the bottom of the Falls on the "Cave of the Winds Trip."
Niagara Falls from the bottom.

There was water running right over this walkway.

The smallest of the three falls. I think it's called Bridal Veil Falls or something like that. You can look it up.

After leaving the Falls we headed over the Niagara River into Canada. It's been a while since I've been to Canada. Right off the bat I was impressed; everything looked very clean and tidy over there. Then we kept driving into the heart of Ontario. I had absolutely no mental image of what Ontario might look like; because Toronto is such a hip city and that bottom part of the province is so peninsular and Canadian, I thought it might be kind of cool. What I discovered while driving through Ontario was that it is just like the Canadian version of Ohio. Not so exciting. We stopped in the small town of Ingersoll where I had a decent steak sandwich and some incredible cookies. I tried to take some pictures there but they didn't come out so well.

We stayed tonight with some family friends, the Doigans, in what I think was called Franklin, Michigan. We managed to avoid Detroit completely--didn't even get a glimpse of it--, which was okay with me. Even suburban Detroit is heavily commercialized, though. It was sort of amazing to go from Twelve Mile Road, bustling with pharmacies and gas stations, and pull into the idyllic cul-de-sac on which the Doigans lived. It was like the Platonic ideal of suburbia. They have only lived in the house for about three weeks. Wendy went to a development meeting recently and was shocked to see the high school kids in the neighborhood volunteering to organize development events. But it turned out they had to do community service for their fancy private school.

I spent the night hanging out with Brian, my oldest, best friend, who moved to Detroit when we were in sixth grade. We haven't seen each other for about four years, but we fell into an old groove pretty quickly. It was a perfectly suburban evening; we went out for ice cream and then drank some beer while playing pool and darts. I was trying to improve my game before I get back to the boonies where there is nothing else to do, but I was getting trounced every time. I also met Brian's girlfriend. Although she's from Connecticut, it turns out a whole side of her family is from Valentine, Nebraska; she knew all about the Bunkhouse, Young's Western Wear, etc. Most of the town is related to her, apparently.