A friend of mine is heading to Niagara Falls with his son today. In five or six hours they’ll land in an international zone, teeming with tourists from almost every continent.
The mesmerizing intensity of the water flow paired with the fascination of hearing “wow” in a dozen different languages from the streams of passing strangers make the Canadian railing an invigorating vantage point even without the constant cooling spray.
Last August, when my daughter and I brain-stormed destinations for a quick week-end get-away, Niagara landed solidly atop her list. A friend of hers had just returned from the area, and the prospect of a border-crossing paired with the spectacle of the Falls themselves appealed to my adventurous pre-teen. While motoring beneath a “Welcome to (insert US state’s name here)” sign elicits a cheer from my group, traveling anywhere that requires birth certificates or passports is a revered event.
A week later, with reservations secured at the Embassy Suites in Ontario, we were on our way. Well; almost. The truck wouldn’t start. “Ignoring the ‘door left open’ warning, means a dead battery in the morning” (This is a much more practical maxim than “red ring around the moon at night…” for us highway sailors).
The kids have learned to call such setbacks “adventures”; an early part of their training meant to minimize (my) whining and encourage problem solving, and it works! Attitude is everything, and it is almost always contagious. Our two-hour delay simply encouraged some healthy peer pressure against unnecessary stops; we may have actually come out ahead on that one. And it didn’t matter that we got drenched for a whole day of that weekend, even blocks away from the misting Falls, due to some persistent rainstorms. As the trip was a last-minute idea, we hadn’t had time to build undue expectations and were just able to enjoy the moments we found together.
I’m not sure where our last family fling of the summer will be this year. As expected, my daughter has some good ideas… The “where” of it doesn’t matter so much as that free feeling of taking off on a whim to see what’s at the end of the road and along the way…
P.S. (Photographic credit goes to my daughter, Hannah)
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