A very quiet day for me today. Both my sister and brother-in-law had to work, so I spent much of the day just hanging out, paying bills and working on some pictures. Still a lot of them that I still haven't even down loaded yet, let alone sort through and post, but I did get a couple of batches finished up today. Enough to post a few of them tonight at least.

    I did get to see everyone a couple of times during the day today, one of the nice things about living in a small town. Mark and I had a mid morning cinnamon roll together around 10:00 and then there was lunch with them both at noon. We had a simple version of fish taco's today in order to use up the left over fish we had from the other nights dinner. Once again.... yum!  They stayed around for a little bit after lunch and we discussed this weekend up in Chadron. Turns out that Mark can get Saturday off so they are both coming up on Friday evening so we can go see their son, my nephew Brian, play music at a local watering hole in Chadron. Then I got tickets for us all for the play out at the Post Playhouse at Fort Robinson State Park on Saturday evening. The play that night will be 'Always Patsy Cline', one of my favorites. We will have dinner before hand at a good local restaurant and then head on over for some good old fashioned entertainment.

    Both of them were home around 5:00 this evening and after dinner Mark and I went back down to the Co-op to put all the stuff back on the rear bumper of my trailer. First up was the platform for the generator that Mark had welded together for me a couple of years ago. It slipped right back on and with a couple new bolts and nuts it was soon secure enough that we could jump up and down on it with out seeing any movement. The bike rack fitting was next and Mark improved on his original design by welding on a tensioning nut and bolt that would take up the slack inside of the hitch hole. It really stiffened the whole unit up once I added an adjustable ratcheting strap to it. The whole thing became almost rigid. We hung my chairs and bike back onto it and then remounted the generator to it's platform after first giving it a much needed oil change. Everything now looks well ordered and neat and secure. I'll be watching it all like a hawk for a few weeks of course, but I don't anticipate any real problems with it just because the last one worked for so long, and it wasn't very well built at all.

   Taking off for Chadron in the morning so I'll be up fairly early. It's a 4-5 hour drive if you don't dawdle, but of course I do, so it will take me pretty much all day I suppose. Looking forward to being up in that area again and exploring some of my old haunts. I should probably think about getting some sleep tonight though if I plan to be up early.

Niagara Falls New York - May 30, 2013

A view from the Canadian side looking at one of the two major falls. This one has a nice horseshoe shape to it and falls away with out a lot of stone at the bottom of it. At least not that you can see anyway.



My friend Rima who joined me on my excursion to Canada. She is from Virginia and came up to New York to go to the Great Bear Groove dance weekend in Oswego, same as me.

 

 

Looking below the falls at one of at least 6, 'Maid of the Mist' passenger boats that take people up river for a close up of the falls.



A closer view of the Maid of the Mist as well as the rainbow that shows up in the mist from the falls.



A nice shot showing both falls a well as the boat down below and the rainbow in the mist.

I like the colors in this one. The water is so clear that you can see many feet down into it.

It really is that color. I think the green comes from the algae that is on the rocks.

Pretty spectacular!
 

Now this one I did tweak just to see what I could do. I kind of like it. Looks kind of alien.

The American falls looking towards the U.S.

Looking at one of the Maid of the Mist boats as it is making it's way up towards the falls.

If you look close you can see the boat in all of the mist right at the base of the falls.

We of course had to take our own boat ride up to the base of the falls. Here we are, still dry, making our way up river from the boat dock.

They give everyone a cheap rain poncho to wear while on the boat. It works sorta, but I wouldn't count on staying dry with it on. It also makes everyone look like they belong to the 'Blue Man Group'. Check out the top of the falls above everyone.

Another view.

I took my camera with me of course, keeping it some what protected under the front of my rain coat. When the mist wasn't to bad I would whip it out, point, and take a picture. Notice all of the flying spray in the photo.

Now you can see some of the water drops on the front of the lens. The camera did get a bit wet, but I had a bandana to dry it off with once we got back to shore, and I'm glad I got a few pictures with it.

As we were coming back to the dock after our excursion another boat was already heading out to get wet.

A last view of the falls as we return to the dock

As you can see, the rain coats really didn't work all that well. Thankfully it was a nice warm sunny day while we were there.