Just Going Across the Border for some Fries and Gravy, Sir

We finally landed on heading to Niagara Falls this morning and were able to check into our hotel early. We'd been advised not to drive across the border with our car full of stuff becaues they will often just search cars randomly, which would have been not so great. We ended up just walking over the bridge to Canada instead.

The falls were amazing. We decided to take the "Maid of the Mist" boat tour, which takes you right into the center of the bigger fall. When they said mist, we expected to get a little damp. What we found was more like rain. At that point we understood the ponchos.

This is the before picture

This is the after picture. You can see the wet around my hood and my mascara is all messed up

It was a lot of fun, though. And it was really neat to be so close to the falls, even though we couldn't really see much past the water in our eyes. It was cold too. Seriously cold! The guy said 4 of the 5 great lakes run into it.

It was truly beautiful though. So much water moving so fast and from such heights.

When we'd taken all the pictures we wanted to, we made our way back toward the bridge and hoped to find something to eat along the way. What we found was a street completely designed to reel in the Niagara Falls tourist crowd. It was full of restaurants, hotels, arcades, museums, food stands, etc all along this one road that curves up a hill. It was interesting. We just wanted french fries with gravy, so we found a place that served that and got some as well as some deep fried cheddar cheese (we really need to get off this fried food kick!). On the way back down the hill we got "CrunchyCream"...or something like that. It was basically soft serve ice cream mixed with whatever kind of topping you want..kind of like a blizzard from Dairy Queen only in a waffle cone and better tasting. We both got oreo.

When we got back across the bridge and were going through the US Border Crossing, there were three people sitting in the side area and two girls in front of us. We were the only people there who were actually US citizens. The girls were from Germany. The two guys sitting down were Asian. We didn't know what their issue was, but the other person, a lady from Iran, was being searched and questioned like crazy! We made it through without incident. No surprise there. But it was interesting to see Border Control at work. I'd all but lost faith in their abilities. At least they're taking precautions here.

Now we're sitting in our hotel room. Jim is watching MMA stuff and I'm about to fall asleep writing this. Hopefully I can get a little more sleep tonight and better sleep. We're back at a Holiday Inn Express and Jim's seriously excited about having biscuits and gravy tomorrow morning. Let's just hope they have them!