Canada: Niagara Falls, Plus Our Road Trip to Detroit

---

Crossing into Canada yesterday went smoothly. There was a $5 toll for the bridge, and they only needed to see our passports (I had packed things like the kids' birth certificates just in case, but we didn't need them). Then, we finished crossing the border, and the kids became international travelers! Immediately, Andrew's phone switched to giving us directions in meters. I'd turned off my phone before the bridge, and we'd set Andrew's up for a $5/day international plan that Verizon offered.

Our plan was to stay the night at the Sheraton, but we decided to check out the falls first. Remember how parking at the falls in New York had cost us $20 for less than an hour? Well, parking in the falls in Canada was $35 Canadian (about $26 US). Niagara Falls has definitely been the most expensive part of this trip! There were port-a-potties (or so I thought) outside of the parking area. I went to use one and discovered it was actually a flushing toilet. It was pretty nice, all things considered.

The Canadian side of the falls is very well manicured, and there is a better view of the falls. It was also more crowded, so we had to wait a few minutes to get a turn at the wall for viewing. We went inside to get some ice cream (Oliver tried maple walnut and liked it a lot! The rest of us did chocolate or vanilla), and we enjoyed that on the outdoor patio. We were probably at the falls for about an hour, so, again, the parking fees seemed excessive. However, with so many people coming to see the falls, I guess they can get away with charging it!

We hopped back in our car to drive to our hotel (1.2km drive). Oh man, we weren't prepared for what we saw next! Apparently, this part of Niagara Falls, ON is a big, touristy area. I mean, it's on par with some of the biggest touristy areas I've ever seen in my life! OK, maybe it wasn't comparable to Vegas, but it reminded me of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. There are huge, light-up billboards, a Hershey's store, a few Hard Rock Cafe locations, race car tracks, mini golf courses with exploding volcanos, just total sensory overload and so many opportunities for tourists to spend money! Our hotel was right in the thick of it. Waiting to turn in was such a nightmare, we didn't want to leave the hotel by car again and paid $60 Canadian for valet parking. There were so many people! The line for the Starbucks in our building went outside and wrapped around the building. We weren't getting Starbucks, but the wait for the elevators weren't much better. We finally got to our room, and it was worth the stress from down below. We'd used points to book our room and used extra for a falls view. When we checked in, we were told that we were bumped up to a premium falls view. Wow! It was breathtaking. We had the best view of the falls from the entire trip! There was also a door that led to a little juliet balcony to see the falls without the obstruction of the window. The railing was very high, pretty much to my neck. So, it was safe enough, but it's still disorienting to look down from 15 floors up! I took in the view from the balcony for a minute but then retreated to the safety of the windows to see more.

Once we recuperated from the stress of driving through the tourist-packed streets, we decided to go check them out and maybe find some dinner. There was so much to see! We ended up paying $15/person to go through a haunted house. Don't ask me why, but that's what the kids were most interested in. If it was my choice, we would have done the mini golf with the exploding volcano! The haunted house was pretty fun, though, and we had a few scares and laughs. We went into a couple shops and bought some maple lollipops at one. Andrew was interested in Indian food for dinner, so we picked up Subway for the kids and Indian food for us and took it back to the hotel. Once we ate, the kids wanted to swim. It was 8:30pm at that time, and one of the hotel pools were closed. Andrew took the kids to the other one for about an hour. Apparently, it was a tiny pool and packed full of children like sardines. The kids had a good time, but I guess it was just more crowded madness! We certainly didn't expect all these crowds when we came, but it's kind of funny and is certainly an experience.

We got ready for bed and heard explosions of fireworks outside. Apparently, Canada lights off fireworks at the falls every night from mid-May to mid-October! The fireworks show wasn't super long, but it was good and obviously had a beautiful setting to boot! Yes, we could still see the falls because they're lit up in different colors at night.

I woke up around 4:30am and started to check our route for the day. We had our longest drive of the trip ahead of us: 7 hours. That's not bad, but I was feeling a little nervous about driving through Canada. I noticed there were also a lot of warnings for strong storms in Michigan. At the time, it looked like strong storms were supposed to start hitting Detroit at 1pm. Later, that timeline got pushed back a bit, but I started planning our drive to make sure we'd get on the U.S. side of the border before the storms hit. We'd put a thing on our door for breakfast to be delivered to our room from 7:45-8:15. I wished we'd picked an earlier time, but decided I'd get the family up to be ready to go at 7:45. We'd eat our breakfast and hit the road! Unfortunately, breakfast still hadn't arrived at 8:15. We called, and they were behind due to short staffing. That's OK, but I wish it had been communicated to us because we would have gotten on the road sooner! We canceled our order, called for the car, and set out on the Ontario roads.

So, one thing about me is that I have IBS-D, and I get nervous about not having access to restrooms on some drives. For example, Utah and Wyoming have huge stretches of road where there are no services. I wasn't sure what to expect for Canada. My stomach has been doing really well this trip so far (knock on wood!), but I kept imagining my issues flaring up in the middle of Nowhere, Canada. I worried for nothing. There were plenty of services on our drive. In the States, many towns offer services right off the highway exits where you can pull off for gas and probably find a stand alone McDonald's or Subway or something. When there are long stretches between towns, many states will offer "rest areas" where you can pull over to use a bathroom, check weather, get maps, stretch, etc. Canada (well, at least Ontario) offers "OnRoutes." OnRoutes are right off the highway, and they're sort of like rest areas. They're a big building you walk into to use the restroom, but then there's a large eatery inside like a mall. Different OnRoutes will have different restaurants inside. We stopped at two, and both had a Tim Horton's! The first one we stopped at also had a Popeye's Chicken and a couple other restaurants that hadn't opened yet. We got breakfast at Tim Horton's. Oliver got a maple donut and really liked it. He mentioned he might want to live in Canada one day. Joanna chose a croissant, and Andrew and I got egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches that were decent. Later, before reaching the Ambassador Bridge to cross back into the U.S., we decided to stop to use the restroom in case the customs line was long. We also wanted to use our Canadian dollars, saving $9.25 Canadian for the bridge toll. The Tim Horton's line was extremely long, so we went to the convenience store and picked out a few snacks. I originally grabbed a Bubly sparkling water but put it back to try some sort of Canadian water called "Sap Sucker" that was made with maple water that ended up being pretty good.

Crossing back into the U.S. was pretty uneventful. We saw lots of people who were getting their cars searched. Clearly, crossing will take longer if you end up getting your things searched. I kept thinking about our bags of dirty laundry in the back and was glad we didn't get selected to be searched! We then paid our toll and set out for our drive through Michigan. The time was about 1:15pm. We needed to cut across the state to get to our hotel in New Buffalo, but there were signs all over the place warning of severe weather. As Andrew drove, I checked hourly forecasts. Strong storms weren't expected to hit Detroit until 3pm now, so I told Andrew we should keep going. When we got to Ann Arbor, they were still about half an hour away. I looked at the next town, Jackson, which was pretty close. We decided to drive while we could and stop in Jackson. I selected a Subway for lunch, and we told the kids we might be holed up in Subway for about an hour. We were close to our exit when the sky turned very dark. I told Andrew that he could exit early if he wanted to, as there was a side road we could take to Subway. He opted to get off the highway, and I'm so glad he did. As we were exiting, the skies opened up, and just dumped on us. The rain came so hard and fast, and the wipers couldn't keep up. We couldn't see more than 15-20 feet in front of us. Andrew took us on a slow and scary drive to the Subway. We had our flashers going in case anyone else was out on the road. We made it and texted our families that we were OK and stopped at Subway. We each got a sandwich, and when we were done eating, we browsed the convenience store and got a MegaMillions ticket. Maybe we'll win, and it'll pay for all of those Niagara Falls parking fees!

Of course, stopping where we were would have been the smartest choice. We had done a special deal on our hotel, though, where we got a discounted rate if we prepaid the whole thing. So, if we didn't make it to our hotel that was two hours away, we'd eat that cost and would need to pay for a new place to stay. According to the hourly forecast we were looking at, things were supposed to get better in Jackson at 4pm for about an hour. We wanted to leave during that window. The forecast in New Buffalo, our destination, was looking pretty good until 8pm, so we were mostly worried about the first part of our drive. At 3:30, it was looking clearer. We filled up the car, and Andrew decided to swing by an auto parts store to get a replacement wiper for one of our wipers that was messed up. Then, we set out on the road. We had two more hours of drive time left. We got hit twice more by short bursts of storms, but neither were as bad or as heavy as the first. The highway slowed to about 30-40mph for the storms, and people drove with their flashers on. Everything finally cleared for the last 30 minutes of our drive. Poor Andrew had been white knuckling it for hours. It felt good to get to our hotel and get out of the car! Our poor hotel had some sort of leak from the rain, and there are people working on the ceiling in places, but we were so happy to be here that it seemed perfect.

---

Photos

Niagara Falls - Canada Side
The Canadians get rainbows on their side of the falls! ;-)

The Kids at Niagara Falls
They're international travelers now!

Falls View Room
Our falls view room delivered! Gorgeous!