Camping Trip to Niagara Falls

Since we've been here, we've heard a lot about how cool Niagara Falls was, and I've been dying to see it. So we finally decided to pack our stuff and take a vacation to see the Falls. This was kind of a special trip for us because I'm pretty sure it's the first real vacation we've planned all by ourselves, without extended family or friends. Hopefully the first of many in the future!

Our first day was basically just traveling and setting up camp. We found a nice little campsite just ten minutes away from the Falls. The kids thought it was pretty cool getting to sleep in tents and eat outside on the table. Skyler had a tough time sleeping through the night, he wiggles so much at night that I think he had a hard time getting comfortable in his little air mattress. We all survived though!



Yeah, my daughter camps in her dress, snort.



We got up the next morning, had breakfast and made our way to the Falls. Niagara Falls is surrounded by really pretty gardens and all sort of visitors centers, tours and gift shops. The one thing that we'd heard about that we really wanted to do was take the Maid of the Mist ride into the Falls. It was really cool, but very loud and kind of intimidating to the kids. You literally ride right up to the falls, I loved it! Fortunately they give you ponchos because you really do get soaked. We came out of the Falls to discover that it was raining, so we continued to get wet.

Afterwards we went to a little ice cream shop called Twist of the Mist, with like a thousand different ice cream flavors, and it was great ice cream! It probably wasn't the best thing to be eating in the cold rain, but worth it.

Later that afternoon, we went back to camp for a while for a rest and naps for the kids. We also went in hopes that after naptime the rain would subside and we could get outside again. It did not. In fact, it was making it tough to do much and we considered packing it up and heading home early. But at the last minute we decided to just get in the car and see what we could find. We ended up going back to the falls and walking around. It turned out being my favorite part of the day. The rain stopped and the Falls and gardens were so pretty. We let the kids run around well after their bed time and had a lot of fun. The Falls were also SO pretty late at night. The Canadian side shone colorful lights on the water that completely lit the falls up. I wish I could have gotten a good picture of them.



The next day we got up and made our way to Palmyra. We had just missed the pageant by two days, which made it nice for us because it was empty as a ghost town. We checked out the visitors center and a little of of Joseph's Smith old farm. We didn't get to see all of it because the kids just aren't as interested in guided tours as we are, but there's always time for that when they're older. The stuff we got to see was really cool though, and I also got to meet my best friend's husband's grandparents (did you get all that?) who were serving their mission in Palmyra. I actually recognized them from pictures that she'd had up on her blog! Pretty cool. Overall I would highly recommend taking the trip to do both, we had a wonderful time, and the Falls are well worth it!