Spring Break: Niagara Falls

It's spring break! We've been looking forward to this week for a while now, and we managed to plan a little getaway during the first half of the week.

On Monday afternoon, we drove up to Niagara Falls again, retracing the route we took this summer (basically a big loop around Lake Erie). Since our first visit back in July, we thought it would be cool to go back and see the falls in a different season. It turns out that March was a perfect time to go: there were still lots of interesting ice formations at the falls, but the weather was decent and we had no trouble on the roads. Also, the crowds were minimal. The biggest plus: we spent about 1/3 of the cost per night on the hotel! The downside was that a lot of things were closed or had limited hours, and many of our favorite areas on the US side weren't accessible due to the snow. Still, it was great to go back!

We arrived around dinner time, got checked in, and headed down for our first views of the falls, just before sunset.

View from our hotel room.

Then, it was a bit of a wild goose chase to find dinner, but we ended up at Rainforrest Cafe (something like our third choice after finding our other options had already closed).

After dinner, we walked along the falls to see them illuminated.

In the morning, we were off for a full day's adventure. We grabbed breakfast at the Tim Horton's in the casino near our hotel, then went down to the Table Rock Welcome Centre. We started at the Journey Behind the Falls, part of an attraction pass we'd bought online. This took us down into some tunnels and let us see the falls from below. (During the summer, more tunnels are open; now, the ice gets in the way).

Weird statue at the casino.

A cool panoramic pic from Mark's fancy phone.

Next, we walked across the Rainbow Bridge to explore the US side. There was a ton of snow over here, and a lot of areas weren't open. But it was still cool to see the falls from this perspective.

Back on the Canadian side, we had lunch at the sit-down restaurant at the Welcome Centre, with a beautiful view of the falls. We also did a bit of shopping, then took the bus a few miles north to the Butterfly Conservatory. On the way up, our driver stopped to let us take some quick pics of the whirlpool. On the way back, we stopped at Souvenir City for a snack (fudge), some window shopping, and a few cheesy pictures.

That night, we had pizza for dinner on Cliffton Hill and rode the SkyWheel, a giant Ferris wheel. The pictures don't do it justice, but it was awesome to see the falls and the city from this vantage point!

On Wednesday morning, we woke up to some pretty dense fog. After breakfast at a different Tim Horton's, we walked down to the Bird Kingdom, where we'd arranged to meet up with Judy, a friend of Mark's from ABQ who now lives in Canada. We hadn't seen her for something like 10 years, so it was great that she was willing to drive down to Niagara, with her 4 kids, and spend the morning with us. The Bird Kingdom is a multi-story place that is home to all kinds of beautiful exotic birds as well as reptiles and snakes and assorted other small animals. Though the birds made me a bit nervous, I could certainly appreciate the experience, and it was a good place to hang out and catch up a bit while Judy's kids had something to do. Unfortunately, toward the end of our time there, my camera died, so I don't have any pictures from the rest of our trip!

After parting ways with Judy and family, Mark and I walked back up to Table Rock for lunch. By this time, the fog had cleared and left in its wake a beautiful, sunny day. In the full sunlight, the falls and all the ice were absolutely stunning! I was kicking myself for not charging that camera the night before! We ended up back at the same fallsview restaurant for lunch, and eventually made our way back to our car to begin the journey home. We crossed the border in record time (unlike during the summer, when we left early in the morning and still had quite a long wait), had dinner at a travel stop somewhere in Ohio, and made it home in time to get the laundry done before bed.

While we don't know if we'll make it back to the falls again or not, we sure are glad we decided to take this trip!

Gymnastics!

Today's sports adventure: a women's gymnastics meet at BGSU. Yes, that's now two weekends in a row that we've attended a sporting event! Along with hockey, we've been meaning to check one of these out, and our schedule for today unexpectedly opened up to allow us to go. We weren't sure what to expect, but we had a great time! Plus, they don't charge for admission, so it was free, which is always a plus for me.

There are four events: uneven bars, balance beam, vault, and floor. It's organized so that the two teams alternate on two separate events: for example, we started on vault, and the other team on bars. One of our people went on vault, then one of theirs on bars, until each team had 5 people compete. Each person received an average score (out of 10) from two judges. Does that make sense? Each set is called a "rotation" (there was an announcer explaining things, so we were able to figure out a lot more about the system than we did at the hockey game, which had much more limited announcing). There were big screens up front posting the scores as they came in. The two teams were pretty close all the way through, but the other team won by eight-tenths of a point.

After the main competition, there was a little exhibition by a group of 4 male gymnasts called the "High Flyers" who did a cool tumbling set, including some stunts where they jumped and flipped over one or more people (at the end, they set up a mini-trampoline, and one guy bounced on that and flipped over 8-10 people--pretty impressive!). Also, between rotations, they tossed out t-shirts, and in the last round of those, one basically landed right in my lap! (Better than smacking me in head! :-) To close the event, there was a brief awards ceremony where they announced the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place individuals for each apparatus (I think that's the term...), then the all-around, then the team (which we already knew from the screens).

We decided that we'd probably like to go back to another one of these, though this year's season is almost over. If we're someplace with gymnastics next year, I think we'll check it out again!

We only took a few pics, just to document being there, so here they are. (Obviously, we're still figuring out how to use the camera well--all the action shots are blurry!)

Hockey Game

Last weekend, Mark and I went to our first hockey game. We've been talking about going all season, and finally we went--it was a great time! I didn't always understand what was going on, but there sure was a lot of excitement (and noise!). There are 3 twenty-minute periods in the game, with a 15 minute break between them. Our hockey team, which is quite good, looked like they were going to cream the other team after the first period, leading 3-0, if I remember right. I don't know what happened, but the other team started scoring, and they managed to win! It was quite an upset, after feeling so certain at first that we had it in the bag. In any case, we were glad we finally made it to a game. Here are a few pics Mark took with his snazzy new smart phone:

Big Snowstorm!

On Sunday, we had the biggest snowstorm of the winter so far! In BG, we had about 9 inches of snow; around the area, totals ranged from 8-15 inches. It started snowing late Saturday night, and kept right on snowing until after midnight on Sunday. After that, the wind really kicked in, and the roads were bad enough that schools, universities, and many businesses closed on Monday. Although they didn't announce it until 5:30 Monday morning, BGSU even closed for the morning and cancelled classes until 5pm. After a somewhat restless night wondering about how that would turn out, Mark and I thoroughly enjoyed a bonus day at home. Though I worked most of the day, we did take a break in the afternoon to brush off our car and play around a bit in the snow. It was a beautiful, sunny day!

The parking lot in front of our building. Our apartment
complex does a really good job with snow removal.

In front of our building. You can see how high the snow is here
if you look on the left--compare the top and bottom railings.
The snow is deep because of blowing/drifting. 

Cool tire tracks in the snow. 

This is the biggest pile of snow we've ever seen at our apartments.
(If you look closely, you can see that my eyes are closed--bummer!)

I couldn't resist making a snow angel, but it would have
been better if I'd had some snow pants!

Another drift, this one behind our apartment building.

Today, the main roads and our apartment parking lot are in pretty good shape, but we're supposed to have two more small storms moving through--one tonight, one tomorrow afternoon--bringing us another 2-4 inches. I guess winter is in full swing now!