Niagara Falls is a great argument in favor of a national parks system. If Yosemite were on the east coast, there would be a Planet Hollywood in the middle of Yosemite Valley, right next to a Hard Rock Cafe, a Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not, and countless tee-shirt shops. The falls themselves were spectacular, and the friends who encouraged us to see them from the Canadian side had been exactly right.
We stood and watched some of the tourist boats putter around at the bottom of the falls. It was amusing to watch the crowd of people rush from one side of the boat to the other as the boat turned about, all of them clad in plastic ponchos to give them some small shelter form the massive clouds of mist from the falls. Watching those boats struggle against the rush of current at the base of the falls was impressive.
But the crushing hordes of people and the overall tourist-trap ambience didn’t encourage us to linger overlong. We stayed just long enough to get really hot, then really damp from the spray of the falls, then really hot again as we returned to the bus.