A Spring of Joy

After mesmerizing views, gorgeous rainbows, thick mists, boat rides, hurricane decks and a bit of almost passing out (we do like to keep life exciting), finding ourselves sitting outside at the Top of the Falls restaurant was a highly anticipated break. I decided to go for it and be “Barreled Over” and eat the 1300 calorie hamburger. Oh, but I jest. Seriously, y’all, listen to this burger–angus beef hand-stuffed with fancy buffalo wing cheddar, candied bacon, apples, lettuce, tomato, onion all served on a brioche roll. Who can eat something that size?! We pulled out our inner geek (not a hard thing to do) and played the Trivial Pursuit game on the Heinz ketchup bottle. Yes, we are the people who actually do that. And we got 29 out of 30 right! It was a nice middle of the day break and much needed rest for me. After lunch we did a bit more sight-seeing, but found the heat pretty intense.

We hopped on the trolley for a lovely drive past the falls back to the visitor’s center where we avoided the heat of the afternoon to watch their Niagara Falls movie. Tightrope walkers and barrels over the falls and the story of the first person to survive the falls in just a life jacket kept us on the edge of our seats and had the kids chattering away breathlessly when it was over. We hopped the trolley again to the Discovery Museum all about the falls and then Bear’s favorite part… the Niagara Falls Aquarium. While not very large, it had lots of sights for them and they loved watching the sea lions swim. We were surprised to find we had made it just in time for the Sea Lion show involving lots of jumps and flips and hoops and barking. The kids loved it!

At this point we had planned to walk across the Rainbow Bridge to Canada, see the Canadian side and watch the illumination of the falls from that side. Brian took one look at me and knew it was impossible. I love that man! We decided to go easy for the rest of the evening, so we found a little pizza place (Brooklyn-style pizza y’all) nearby and crashed for a bit. After pizza, we grabbed some ice cream cones and sat outside watching all the people around us. Bella and Bri found little patio chairs and had a date while I sat on the curb with my boys, and we talked about our favorite parts of the day. As the night waned, we casually walked back to the Falls and watched them illuminate. It was beautiful!

We walked down by the river where they light up the rapids, and it was fantastic. We enjoyed quite the light show on the falls, arms linked, even a few hand holds that warmed my heart. We meandered back to our car, drove the short distance back to Gimli with the windows down, moonroof open and almost full moon blazing away above us. It didn’t take long for us to fall asleep that night… we were weary, but so very happy.