Niagara at last!

Hi

So I promised some photos of Niagara, even though the postcards I sent have probably already arrived by now...

We went to visit Niagara Falls a few weeks ago. It's about 100km East of where we are, near the border with America (sorry USA). We hired a car for the weekend (as detailed in another post...) and spent the Sunday making our way out to the city of Niagara Falls. There are actually two such cities, one on the Canada side and one on the American side of the Niagara River. The Falls have two parts: American Falls which is totally on the American side (but we get the good views of it) and Horseshoe Falls which wraps around the top end of the valley and you get a good angle from either side.


Here's the approach shot. You can see the river water moving away from us and then it just stops. There's a cloud of spray where the major falls are.


The Canada side has half a dozen highrise hotels and seems to be a major tourist destination. The American side didn't seem to have this much development, presumably as the views aren't as good.


We're just passing the top of Horseshoe Falls here and you can see we get pretty close. The closest point is just a few metres from the water rushing over the edge. It's quite a sight. It's also relatively quiet because you don't have direct line of sight to the bottom so the sound is muffled.


Looking downstream through the spray, we can see the valley with American Falls on the right in the distance, and a bridge which connects the two countries. The sun was out today so there's a nice rainbow.


We're walking downriver all the time, and now we're looking back on Horseshoe Falls. The water falls a lot longer than is clear from this photo, and that's why there's such a big cloud of spray kicked up. You get a little wet as you walk through the area which is downwind of the spray. Once again, you can see that the railing goes right along the edge of the cliff and river.


On the American side, they've built a viewing platform that goes out beside American Falls.


Forgi and Horseshoe Falls.


A good shot of American Falls. It's the same distance from the top of the cliff to the bottom, but there's a lot of rubble piled up beneath these falls which breaks the fall of the water as it goes down, so there isn't quite the same amount of obscuring spray as with Horseshoe Falls.


Here's a perspective shot. The road here is just the access road to the carpark. The building in the distance is an old hydro power plant - not sure if it's still in use.


Just for fun, I caught a second-order rainbow on film. I used my polaroid sunglasses in front of the camera to improve the contrast a little. The first-order rainbow is clear enough but you might need to adjust your screen to see the second-order rainbow - it passes through the upper middle part of the photographer and ends near the squatting guy. You might notice that the colours are backwards: from left to right it goes red yellow green, which is the opposite of the first-order rainbow. Now as a physicist I should know why this is but I don't. There must be some reason I don't know about, unless it's just that my geometry is wrong. Can anyone shed any light on the matter? (pardon the pun ;-)

Okay, that's heaps.
Bye!