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06/21/2004 Archived Entry: "Niagara Falls Tour"

I spent last Wednesday in New York City again, and Thursday was a short easy trip to a conference in Philadelphia. But the highlight of the week was a three-day tour to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, over the weekend. It was one of our company's public tours, so it was very well planned and organized, making my job relatively easy even though I had a lot more responsibility than I would have had on a private charter where usually all I have to do is drive. I had a great group of people, diverse in many ways -- an age range from 8 to 93 years old -- and several nationalities. More than half of the group had never been to Niagara Falls, so it was interesting to see their reactions as they enjoyed it for the first time. The weekend went really well; traffic was reasonably light, the Falls weren't very crowded, the passengers got along well with each other, and other than taking an hour and a half longer to get out of Canada than I had expected, really had no problems the whole weekend. My wife went with me for the weekend and was a big help, too -- plus the passengers enjoyed having her along. Today is our 29th anniversary, so we celebrated with our trip over the weekend -- if you can call it celebrating when one of us worked the whole weekend! But at least we were together and had a great time.

In addition to the Falls, there were two other highlights for me over the weekend. One of my very favorite spots to visit at Niagara Falls is the Butterfly Conservatory. I took a lot of great butterfly photos this time, my favorite of which is the photo above right. The other highlight was watching a huge ship carrying iron ore pass through Lock 7 of the Welland Canal, which connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, just a short ways from Niagara Falls. I had a basic understanding of how locks work to lift ships from one body of water to another, but seeing it in action makes it much clearer. It's really an interesting and awesome process.

If you'd like to see more of my photos from the weekend, I've put some of them online here. The photos are a brief overview of the weekend, with special emphasis on the butterflies, and the ship going through Lock 7 of the Welland Canal.