Niagara Falls WOWED...

Steve and I don't have a Bucket List, per se. We work from the "I'd Really Like to Go There Someday, Let's Try to Make It Happen" List.

I've always wanted to visit Niagara Falls. We were both giddy that it actually was happening.

A must was a voyage with the Maid of the Mist which first launched in 1846. For 180 years people have been taking this same trip. It was absolutely all we had hoped it to be.

Niagara Falls tourism began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, turning into a global destination driven by transportation milestones, romantic branding, and daring stunts.

Dry hair is OVERRATED! What an incredible exerience.

After disembarking the boat, we decided to exit via the Cataract Stairs and Overlook which just opened on September 4, 2026. The Climb features 274 total stairs (including 163 newly added steps) with a 180-foot vertical climb up from the lower Niagara Gorge to Prospect Point. What a fantastic decision!

I just had to capture a rainbow. My water jug was the perfect rainbow receptical.

Another must was walking to Canada. The 950-foot Rainbow Bridge's pedestrian walkway afforded us our first direct views of the American Falls, Horseshoe Falls, and the Niagara River Gorge.

The whole thing felt very international to me. Needing a passport, French being spoken, and unique architecture made us feel very somewhere else.

One of the many reasons I wanted to visit the Canada side was this Nikola Tesla Monument within Queen Victoria Park. Tesla designed the first hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls, New York which started producing electrical power in 1895. This was the beginning of the electrification of the United States and the rest of the world. Today, Tesla's AC electricity is lighting and powering the globe. Nikola Tesla is the genius who lit the world. Now, the inventor of alternating current has a permanent tribute overlooking the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara Falls.

As a boy, Tesla saw a picture of Niagara Falls and told his uncle in Lika, Croatia, that he wanted to put a wheel under the falls to harness the power of the moving water. In this rendition of the man that boy became, he is standing atop an AC motor, one of the 700 inventions he patented. A quote from Tesla in 1915 is inscribed on the motor's wheel and reads, “The possibilities of will power and self control appeal tremendously to my vivid imagination…. Until finally my will and wish become identical. They are so today, and in this lies the secret of whatever success I have achieved. My imaginings were equivalent to realities".