We had a bit less driving to do today, from Rochester to Cortland, via Niagara Falls. We had planned to spend a few hours in Niagara Falls, including a short walk over to the Canadian side.

Approximate time on road/out caching: 16 hours
Total miles driven: 275.4 mi / 443,2 km
Total cahes found: 21
Total DNF: 2
States visited: New York, Ontario (Canada)
Famous places visited: Niagara Falls
Most memorable cache: GCH774 Power Vista
Biggest surprise: No waiting time anywhere in Niagara Falls
Weather: Mostly sunny
Highest temperature: 90°F / 32°C
Lowest temperature: 68°F / 20°C
Roadwork: Yes

An early start

We had a lot we wanted to see in Niagara Falls, and one and a half hour to drive to get there. So we just had to get up early.

We left the hotel before 7am, stopping only at one cache along the road, and parked in a nearly empty parking lot in Niagara Falls. Our plan worked out perfectly this far!

The Maid of the Mist was the first we had on our plan, and we intended to be there early enough to get on the first departure of the day. We, and all the other smurfs, made it!

Soak zone

We got onboard, the weather was beautiful, and this was really one of those times when you just can’t help but think, life is good!

Everyone on the boat had front row seats to awesome, and we were all in the soak zone! Niagara Falls is one of those places you just have to experience yourself. The pictures really don’t do this place justice.

This really was a great way to start the day! And a perfect start on our visit to Niagara Falls!

Canada, here we come!

After the Maid of the Mist a visit to the gift shop, and some photo taking, we continued towards the border. On foot.

We had done a lot of homework in preparation for this trip, so we knew that the border crossing could be busy. So we wanted to get over as early as possible.

When we eventually made it over the bridge, there was only 2-3 persons waiting at the border crossing. So crossing the border didn’t take more than a few minutes. Awesome!

Canadian caches

It seems like most of the caches in this area, are all on the Canadian side. So we had to grab as many as we could of them while there. We didn’t wander of too far, just far enough 😉

We spent a few minutes at the arcade, which we like to do when we can. We don’t have anything like this in Norway…

Nice view!

Several of the caches were located along the river, and they all had amazing views. It was a good thing that we had digital cameras, otherwise we would probably have to carry a separate bag just for the film…

It was also a bit fun to see the smurfs on the other side, and the people in red on this side. Clever use of color!

Time to head back

It was eventually time to get back towards the US side, so we went back across the bridge. And now we got the first acknowledgement that our home work had paid off. The queue to get into Canada was huge now compared to earlier.

The queue to get back into the US however, was a lot shorter. And when we got back to the parking lot, which was full by now, we realized how much we got out of getting up early today

An interesting webcam

After finding a cache near the parking lot, we continued north towards the Niagara Power Vista. We intended to just go inside and “find” the webcam cache. But ended up spending about an hour at the interactive visitor center.

This might be a visitor center aimed mainly at kids, but as they said themselves, kids of all ages! We had fun 😛

And this is the only webcam where we have left with a sticker version of the webcam image!

Back where we came from

After the webcam, it was time to head back where we came from. We had a few stops planned along the thruway, mainly at rest areas.

Since we’re geocachers, we can’t just drive the shortest way. We had to do some detours along the way to Cortland. Some virtual caches needed to be visited…

We had to be very selective when planning this part of the route, so we had some very specific stops planned. As usual, we very often end up finding more anyway. And so we did this day.

It’s a wonderful life

Finding the first virtuals on the plan, was easy. Daylight, not much muggles around and plenty of parking.

One of caches was named It’s a wonderful life, and today we really had to agree!

But as the clock started to approach the higher numbers, the difficulty increased a bit. Still easy to find parking, and not much muggles around, but a bit harder to find the easiest way to get to the caches. So we ended up doing quite a detour on one of the last virtual caches (we went out the wrong pier).

A long day

Even though it got pitch black by the time we were finished with the last virtual, we managed to find all on our list 😀 And we even found the Cortland GeoTour-cache we had planned as the last find of the day.

It was a long and eventful day, which have given us everlasting memories to enjoy over and over again.

Pictures