travel dates: June, 2024
We spent a couple of days in Niagara Falls in 2021, but that was back when Canada was still closed, so we were restricted to gazing longingly across the water from the US at the bright lights of the considerably more touristy Canadian side of things. So we were excited that our Canadian cities route this past summer would take us to the Niagara Falls area again, making a short stop to see the falls from the other side of the border a no-brainer. We were there for just two nights, staying at the Niagara Falls KOA (which I’ll talk about in another post), but this was a good amount of time to get a taste of what the Canadian side has to offer. Spoiler alert: it’s rainbow falls! (among other things) (I assume this was for Pride month; don’t count on rainbow falls all summer long)
We arrived to the campground in the afternoon without any particular plans for the evening and set about trying to find somewhere for dinner out. Which was harder than we felt like it should have been. I guess we were trying to avoid super touristy and/or super expensive options, which left out most places very close to the Falls. Somehow we settled on Taps Brewhouse, based largely on a misunderstanding of geography…which is to say we thought it was a lot closer to all the tourist stuff than it really was. It’s in the “historic district” or the old school downtown area, a substantial hike from the falls. It would have been fine if we’d driven, but, instead, we took the bus from the campground, and ended up with two bus rides each way, a lot of walking, and a big time crunch as the bus that went out toward the restaurant stopped running much earlier than the one serving the Falls area. ANYWAY. We managed to eat and have some beer and make it back to the Falls.
And maybe now is a good time to say a little about transportation. One of the selling points of the KOA is that it’s right on the bus route that takes you to the falls area. We opted to use the bus for everything, because parking sounded both expensive and complicated. So this worked well enough, but do note that it’s not super cheap…we bought passes at the campground, but realized once we were on the bus that we probably could have saved money by buying individual rides once on board–but the website doesn’t tell you about this option at all, as far as I could tell–I think they really want to sell tourists the passes and keep the cheaper option as a secret only locals know about.
Also, it’s a pretty long bus ride from the KOA to the falls, and, as noted, it gets even longer if you add in trying to get to any other parts of town. Oh, and ALSO getting to the bus stop from the KOA required darting across a very busy four lane highway with no crosswalk anywhere in sight. Probably I’ll talk more about all that in the KOA post.
Anyway, when we made it back to the falls, we realized there are fireworks every night (in summer) just like Disney World! We had been planning to stay in the area just long enough to gawk at the falls and maybe see them lit up, but we decided to stay for the fireworks and staked out a good spot. We found space right along the water about 40 minutes in advance, and the time passed pretty quickly since there were lit up falls to look at and all that while we waited.
The show only lasted about five minutes, but it was a very cool thing to see (it turns out massive waterfalls make as good a fireworks backdrop as Cinderella’s Castle!)
I was a little worried that navigating crowds after the fireworks would be hellish, but it turned out that most people were heading a different direction from us when we started walking back to the bus stop, and we ended up walking right on to a not very crowded bus for the ride back to the campground.
We had a lot of potential plans for our one full day (like driving to Niagara-on-the-Lake for the afternoon), but ultimately settled on a fairly laid back day–we got a later start and went to see the Niagara Parks Power Station, and then spent some time hanging out at the campground later on.
The Power Station was in operation, converting the water from the falls into electric power, until 2005. Today there are exhibits about the building and hydroelectric power and you can walk the 2200 foot tunnel out to the base of the falls and pretend like you’re the water being returned the river!
So we had very high hopes for this place because we love the remains of industry(!) and because we really enjoyed seeing the similar-in-concept Niagara Power Vista on the New York side a few years ago. But then we ended up having mixed feelings about the actual experience. The Power Vista in NY has tons of fun hands-on exhibits (and is free!)…the Power Station, on the other hand, has a really wordy, dry audio tour and interpretive signs, and we only saw two exhibits that were interactive at all…one of them was a sort of boring game about power consumption that wasn’t working correctly; the other was a machine of some sort (you were supposed to put your hand in a glove to…learn about electricity) that was shoved into a corner and unplugged. And this place is far from free, at $32/person.
There were a few places where signs encouraged us to take pictures, which we dutifully did:
So the (giant!) exhibit space was a little…underwhelming and kind of a wasted opportunity (to make the Remains of Industry fascinating). BUT going through the tunnel is a really cool experience, and, I gather, the main reason people pay the rather steep admission price.
First you wait in what can be a fairly long line for the elevator:
The elevator ride itself offers some cool views of the the underground parts of the power station, and then you’re let out to walk the tunnel.
There are more exhibits and more audio tour down here, and we found these parts more engaging than what was up top, so it’s too bad in retrospect, that we spent so much time up there. Also, the tunnel is chilly, which is nice on hot days. Then, after a long walk, you see the end of the tunnel and the falls in front of you!
There are ponchos available here. We didn’t use them because we’re so tough, but it turns out that makes for a fairly chilly walk back. The view here is great and, of course, very different from what you see from the top of the falls. It’s a similar view to taking the Maid of the Mist boat ride, although less…immersive (read: less wet). 
And then back down the tunnel! While you’re waiting for the return elevator they play a pretty cool time lapse video of the construction of the platform.
And then we got back on the bus and headed back to the campground, which I’ll talk about in another post!
Maybe you would like to pin this?
Leave a Reply