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Early start today as we had a long trip ahead of us. Seven hours of travel to get to Niagara Falls. Wess headed out while we had breakfast to pick up a hire car. After walking around New York for the past 4 days I still can't believe he is going to drive here!! Anyway we pack the car when he returns and head out into the crazy traffic. It takes forever to get out of Manhattan but then the driving eases up as the trip is almost all on multi lane highways. We don't have a GPS as the hire place didn't have any so we are using maps on the ipad. This is fine except that without internet it has trouble keeping up with where we are so my job is to keep track of the roads and towns to make sure we are on target. At one point we veer off course for a few Kms but otherwise all goes to plan.
We planned to break up the trip with a stop at Corning Glass Museum to participate in a glass making workshop and thanks to our small detour we make it just in time. Cutting it much finer than scheduled!! Sienna and Talari each take a glass blowing course and I head off to make a glass flower. We have to wear safety gear and select our styles and colours before beginning. The girls had to blow through a long metal pipe which had their chosen glass on the end and create a sphere ornament. Their instructor told them when to blow and how hard to blow. Their ornaments looked great as they were placed into the oven for curing. I had to roll the iron bar around to help shape my glass and use special tongs to pull it into the correct shape to create the flower. It was then also placed into the oven. We had to leave them overnight to cure and would pick them up the following day.
Back into the car we hopped for the last part of the journey. Arriving in Niagara, the customs line wasn't too long and we settled into our accommodation easily. My first glimpse of the waterfall was amazing until I realised that I was looking at the smaller one and then it was super amazing!!! lol. The falls really are huge and the spray from them was well and truly blowing up onto the footpath. We wandered along the path, right up to the falls and booked our tickets for the various visits we would do. As we had to head out again the next day we decided to walk behind the falls tonight. We weren't sure whether this was a good idea as it was quite dark now but went anyway. Luckily, as we headed down the steps to the viewing platform and tunnels the lights were switched on and we were able to view the falls with coloured lights on them which turned out to be pretty cool.
The sound from the falls is so loud and you can really get the feel for how much pressure must be caused by that water. The girls were fascinated, as was I, by the story of Robert Woodward who survived the falls at age 7 when his family were involved in a boating accident somewhere above the falls. It is quite hard to imagine the terror he must have felt as he neared the edge of the falls and knew he was going over. Incredible. I can't wait for the boat trip tomorrow. Just to get that little bit closer....
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