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  • atravelerslog
    • Aug 20
    • 1 min read

8/21/2024, Wednesday - drove to Niagara Falls then biked from there

We had biked from Buffalo to Niagara Falls 5 times before. We have blog posts to prove it :) It is a long ride though and we never had the time to explore the section downstream from Niagara Falls. This trip we decided to drive to Niagara Falls and spend the night and check out the part that is downstream of the falls.

After the Niagara river flows over the falls, it goes into a gorge and forms giant rapids. Then it takes a 90 degree right hand turn and forms a huge whirlpool. We focused on checking all of that out on this trip.


This is an art installation in front of the Seneca Hotel and Casino. It seemed like it was Seneca Indian Nation Territory there. We parked there that night and they had electricity to charge our bikes back up.

The building was really cool and well landscaped.

This is a view of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

There were a bunch of overlooks along the bike trail

This is a view of the rapids and on the left you will see where the river takes a sharp right hand turn. This picture doesn't accurately reflect what our eyes saw. It is a long way down to the water and the river was boiling. This is considered a class 6 rapid....which means you will likely die if you tried to kayak it.

The trail largely hugged the rim of the Niagara Gorge. There were lots of little side paths to good lookout spots.

a view from one of the lookout points

This is the whirlpool caused by that right hand turn in the river. The boat is a jet boat that gives tours of the whirlpool and rapids

Take a smile leave a smile....seems like good advice

another view from one of the lookout points along the trail

This is the outflow of the US powerplant. They take in the water well before the falls then pipe it down to this plant and extract the energy out of the moving water.

There is a cable car that takes people over the Whirlpool and rapids

The building on the left is the original powerplant remnants. Most of it fell off into the river. There is an elevator that takes you down to the bottom where they store the Maid of the Mist boat that goes up to the falls itself.

See that bush in the middle growing out of the circular thing? That is a thick metal pipe that used to carry the water to the power plant. This is the remnants of the very first big AC power source in the world.

The picture above was taken at the base of what once looked like this!



This big blue contraption picks the maid of the mist up out of the water in the winter time and stores it here

This whole area was once full of factories that were harnessing the power to make stuff. Niagara Falls was the first place in the world that harnessed large amounts of AC power. The factories used that power to make stuff. They all fell into the river and this board tells all about it.

The maid of the mist was chilling that day

After that we went to the Aquarium. We didn't feel like paying 30 bucks each to go in, but there were some seals to look at for free






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