GO! Girls Outdoors

We took advantage of the fact that Niagara Falls is a short drive from Fonthill, home of Uncle Paul and family, and went for a visit one beautiful spring day.  Niagara Falls lies on the Niagara River which is the border between Ontario in Canada and New York in the US.  The falls themselves are 52m high and 792m wide, and an average of 110,000m³ of water flows over them every minute - this means that they roar like a lion and throw up an enormous cloud of mist that coats everything in sight with a coating of ice if it’s winter.

The first person to go over the falls in a barrel was a woman!  Go girls outdoors indeed.  She was a 63 year old school teacher called Annie Edson Taylor and she performed her feat in 1901.  Annie decided that going over the falls in her barrel was the way to fame and fortune.  Most people thought (still think) she was a bit nuts, though having recently survived my first couple of years of teaching, I do kind of sympathise with her.  She emerged from her barrel bleeding but pretty much intact, declaring “no one should ever try that again”.  Maybe she was for real, or maybe she was just protecting her future income - apparently she used to stand with her barrel at the falls and sell autographed photographs to the tourists.  Annie never made her fortune because her manager was a con man who took everything she owned, but fame she has - or maybe infamy is a better word for it.

Despite Annie’s recommendation against going off the falls in a barrel, a number of people have done so since.  One guy even spent $30 000 reinforcing his two person barrel with steel, putting in a harness and windows  and adding a rudder and oxygen tank.  He and his passenger made it with minor injuries but were picked up and fined by the police as soon as they emerged from the bottom.  One guy jumped off a couple of days before we were there, and was plucked out of the river at the bottom more or less unharmed.  It’s illegal to jump off the falls and if you get caught you face a hefty fine - which is probably why the fellow who just jumped off pushed away his rescuers at the bottom (read the story here).

If you haven’t been to Niagara Falls you’ll be surprised to find out that it’s one of the biggest partying/clubbing/gambling/night life places around.  The roads to the falls are lined with huge buildings bearing neon signs advertising everything from strip clubs to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not to wax museums to casinos to honeymoon suites.  If you like nature and the quiet life and want to applaud the wonders of a beautiful waterfall, Niagara Falls is not the best place to go.  Being in and around cities for the last two weeks was doing my head in - I wanted out!

The Niagara River is impressive in itself.  While we were driving down the Niagara Parkway which follows the river downstream, Dave’s keen eye spotted two guys in camouflage clothing holding fishing rods.  Very keen for an outdoor adventure, especially one that involved walking down to the river, we pulled the car to a screeching halt, jumped out and ran up to the place they had disappeared.  There was no sign of the camouflaged fishermen, but as we wandered through the bush we spotted a pad that looked like it went down to the river - and sure enough, as we stood there looking a bit lost, a Canadian popped up out of nowhere to give us directions...

The path wound its way down to the river and ended up at the Whirlpool rapid, an enormous bowl where the river changes direction as the water heads downstream.  We followed a pad alongside the river, around the edge of the Whirlpool and past the rapids that feed and drain the bowl.  As we walked along, saying g’day to the Canadians as we went, we spotted an odd phenomenon.  Why on earth do Canadians chop trees down all the way down here at the river?  How come they chop them down by nipping away at the wood until half the tree is missing?  It’s not that far to the road, why don’t they just bring a chainsaw?  And where do the logs go anyway?  Why bother?  After puzzling this mystery for a while, we finally realised that it wasn’t the lumberjacks chopping down the trees but the beavers - a different sort of Canadian entirely! 

We followed the path by the river for as long as we needed to get our ‘great outdoors’ fix, then made our way back up to the road by following a random looking path that looked like it went in the right direction.  This ended up at the bottom of a reasonably big cliff, but luckily someone had built a 4 storey staircase so we were able to reach the road again.

A worthy adventure, and a much needed ‘great outdoors’ fix.  And the moral of the story is - next time you’re sick of the tourists, just follow the camouflaged fishermen.