Home again

We made it home from Niagara Falls last night at about 10:30 p.m. It was a long day but a really fun one. When we woke up in the morning the sun was actually shining. We went down to breakfast and then came back to the hotel room and changed into swimsuits. Our usual hotel routine when we travel is Lincoln takes the kids down to the pool while I pack up the room and get us organized. Since I was watching the news while I packed I knew the sun wouldn't last all day and that more rain was coming in that afternoon. I headed down to the pool at about 10 a.m. and told Lincoln we should get ready to head out. We got the kids back up to the room and the three of them showered and dressed before we headed out.

After checking out of the room at about 11:00 a.m. we finally made it down to the waterfall. We had been able to see Niagara Falls pretty much the entire time we were there. Our hotel room and most of the restaurants that we ate at overlooked the Falls but we had never actually gotten down there until yesterday morning. Every time we tried to go down to the Falls we were thwarted. There was a hillside tram right in front of our hotel that would have taken us down to the Falls but every time we walked over to it the tram was closed for the day. We tried walking down there ourselves but realized that in order to get down there it would be a very, very long walk and even if we made it down we'd probably never make it back up without both kids crapping out on us. We then tried to drive down there on Monday afternoon but the only parking lot that was open was WAY down the road and we'd have to pay $14 and still walk quite a distance in the rain. After we checked out of the hotel on Tuesday morning we finally found a conveniently located parking lot that only charged $13 (it would have cost us $12 to ride the tram round trip) so we finally were able to get out and walk around down by the Falls. Niagara Falls is absolutely beautiful from any view but when you're actually standing at the top of it and watching the water as it goes over the edge and listening to the roar it's really amazing to feel the power of the Falls.

After going to the Falls we headed over to the Rain Forest Cafe for lunch. The Rain Forest Cafe is a pretty cool restaurant but it can be kind of scary for kids. Jake was quite freaked out at the beginning because the gorilla that was very near our table kept moving his head at random times. Jake thought it was alive and was watching him. In addition to the moving head the gorillas came to "life" every 12-15 minutes as did the elephants further down the wall. On top of that there was a "thunderstorm" with lightening and thunder that went off every 22 minutes. Eventually he warmed up to the place but it was a little touch and go there for awhile.

When we came out of the Rain Forest Cafe we headed over to the Fun House which was something Hannah had seen in a brochure. I think it may have actually been my favorite thing we did other than seeing the Falls itself. It was a cheesy little set up with about 5 or 6 rooms but you could go through as many times as you wanted. There was a room of fun house mirrors and a room where you could throw giant balls at each other. There was another room built on a steep slope that made you feel like you were on a ship and another with a big net in it where the kids pretended they were spiders. There was a dark hallway where you had to walk through punching bags and you could push them into people and little 1/2 doorways that required you to get down really low to get through to the next room. Like I said, it was a TON of fun and we all had a great time. Lincoln, in particular, was really hamming it up and I have some great pictures of him. The kids were too excited to hold still for me but Lincoln was a total goof ball.

After the fun house we all piled into the car and headed towards home. I have to say, it's a lot harder to get into the U.S., even with U.S. passports, than it is to get into Canada with a U.S. passport. When we entered Canada they pretty much asked us where we were going, where we were staying, how long we'd be there, and did we have any alcohol in the car. To get back into the U.S., however, we had to answer where we were coming from, where had we stayed, how long had we been in the country, did we have any alcohol, citrus, or food in the car, what was in our cooler, what did Lincoln do for a living, what did I do for a living, what company did I work for, what was our license plate number, and whose name the car was registered in. Despite the 50 million questions they ended up letting us back into the country.

The drive home was fairly uneventful. Jake and I napped for a little while. We had movies playing on the DVD player and even when they weren't watching movies or sleeping the kids did pretty good. Jake played by himself and was MUCH better behaved than on the trip out. We stopped for dinner in Albany, NY and then started out on the final stretch. Jake and Hannah both fell asleep but Jake woke up screaming with about 30 minutes left in the trip that "his legs were shaking". I think his muscles were just giving him trouble from having been in the car for so long. We didn't pull over because it was dark and we were on I-90 in the rain and fog but Hannah did a great job of getting him settled down in the back seat by giving him some of her stuffed animals to cuddle with. He eventually fell back to sleep about 5 minutes from our house. We got home about 10:30 p.m. and had the car unloaded and the kids in bed by 11:00 p.m.

All in all it was a great trip and a great warm-up for our drive to Iowa in July. I definitely have some ideas for how we can keep Jake entertained on the long ride there and back. And no, they currently don't involve duct tape.