Right off the bat we found out our flight was delayed. We had a plane and pilots, but no flight crew. Because of the delay we were most likely going to miss our connection in Detroit. They automatically rebooked us for another set of flights through JFK that would get us to Buffalo after midnight. They said they would try to hold the connecting flight and we finally boarded, hoping for the best.
When we got to Detroit, our connecting flight had already left 10-15 minutes before. We had several hours before our rescheduled flight, so we haggled with the help desk for a while to no avail. They gave Amber a number to call, which was for employees, then another number, which was busy. There were 8 of us that missed the flight, and when we decided it might be best if we just rented a car and drove to Buffalo, two older sisters from Canada wanted to share the rental.
I thought I'd be able to transfer my rental from Buffalo to Detroit, but Enterprise had no cars available. The sisters ended up finding a car, so they rented it and I drove it. It was quicker to drive through Canada, so we crossed the border, which took a while because it was rush hour, then it was smooth driving (with one Burger King stop) to reach the border crossing back into the US at around 10pm where they dropped us off at our hotel in Niagara Falls and drove back to their house right across the border in Canada.
We got into Niagara Falls several hours before we would have even landed in Buffalo, and we were able to at least stay in our hotel, which wouldn't have been possible had we flown, since all the car rental places would have been closed.
After that craziness, we decided to at least walk over to see the falls, which they light up at night. It was very impressive.
The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel, then headed out to explore Niagara Falls State Park.
After wandering all over the park and checking out the views from all the points on the mainland and Goat Island, we decided it had warmed up enough to go on Maid of the Mist. We bought tickets, had a ride down the giant elevator tower, got our ponchos, then got on the next boat. We made our way to the front on the top level and got some great views.
At the base of Horseshoe Falls, the boat stops and lets you enjoy the view as you get pummeled by the mist. It was very cool.
We went back up the elevator and took a few minutes to enjoy the spectacular views from the observation deck of Rainbow Bridge downstream and the falls upstream.
Amber thought she'd regret it if we didn't do Cave of the Winds, so we decided to do it while we were still wet and I'm glad we did. We bought tickets and had to wait about a half hour until our tour started. We started off in a little room about the history of the area, then sat through a short video before they took us down another elevator to the base of Bridal Veil falls, where we got to climb wooden platforms right up next to the falls.
It was really cool to be so close, and our shoes got soaked.
We squished back to the hotel to change into another pair of shoes, then we decided to walk to Canada to find something to eat. We crossed over the Rainbow Bridge and got some good views as we did.
We ate at a really good Indian place, then went back to the waterfront and walked all along the length of it.
Canada has better views of the falls, and we were treated to some lovely rainbows to go along with them.
The next morning, Saturday, we checked out of our hotel and Vishal, our Punjabi-speaking taxi driver drove us to the car rental shop, where we were informed that our reservation was a mistake, they had no cars, and could not help us, and there were no rental cars in the city. Thankfully, we found out before Vishal drove away and stranded us there, so we had him wait while we frantically tried to figure out what to do.
In the end, we decided we had to get to Buffalo one way or another, since that's where we were flying out of on Monday. Vishal agreed to take us and off we went. We considered trying to find a car in Buffalo, but by then we'd had enough, so Amber called the airline. She was finally able to get someone at Delta who could help us, so we got dropped off at the airport and after a long time on the phone she was able to change our tickets to that same day.
We took a quick flight to La Guardia in New York City, where we had time to get the worst $12 hamburgers I've ever had, before catching our flight to Houston.
We got in Saturday evening, and the Manions told us to at least go do something here, so we went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse and they kept our kids until Sunday. It was definitely not the trip we had in mind, but we had a good day at Niagara Falls.