road trip recap: niagara falls!

Well, here we are!  Niagara Falls was our last stop on the trip, because we wanted a big finish!  It was definitely an appropriate way to end such an epic adventure, though it felt a little bittersweet because both of us were in a weird place where we were feeling ready to be home but not ready for the trip to end.  We decided to cross into Canada (because why not??) to see the falls from that side (I'd heard it was less touristy, but I don't see how that's possible).  What a disaster!  The border crossing took forever, and then when we explained our road trip to the crossing guard, he was totally skeptical and we ended up being held and searched!  That's never happened to me before! We were like, "seriously, Canada?" It was a major setback, and we wound up driving several hours in the dark and rain in a foreign land (I know Canada is hardly "foreign" to us, especially Vermonters, but they just do things a bit differently and the signs are confusing... oh yeah, and we neglected to change our money so we didn't have any of that, and my debit card was turned off after my first purchase--a map--so that was a bit of a disaster).  I had planned every detail of the trip for so long and suddenly at our last stop everything was unraveling.  We ended up having to buy donuts and coffee at Tim Horton's to use their wifi for directions to our hotel...

Anyway, we finally arrived, safe and relatively sound, and settled in for the night. The next morning we went into historic Niagara-on-the-Lake to explore, had breakfast al fresco, and spent a few hours wandering around the quaint little town.  Then it was time for the falls!  We drove into town and parked a little bit out of the way so that we didn't have to deal with the crush of crowds, then walked back to view the falls.  They really are spectacular.  We were going to go on the Maid of the Mist or walk behind the falls but the lines were totally out of control so we decided to skip it and just go to dinner instead (eating is our style).  I also kind of wanted to take the elevator to the top of the tower (above), but it was way too expensive.  Soooo anyway, we just walked around for a while, had some dinner, looked at the falls as much as we could stand, and then went back to our hotel to regroup before the long drive back to Vermont.  Crossing back into the U.S. was a lot easier--we were just waved on through.  We stopped in Brattleboro for dinner at the Indian restaurant there that we'd been to once before, and then started the long trip back up I-89 to my parents' house, where we would stay for the next week or so while we searched for an apartment.