So, Niagara Falls: a true natural wonder and the sort of thing I'm sorry I didn't bring my wide-angle lens for. Actually, I did bring it, but it would have been too hard to get out of the car. We had a bit of trouble getting into the place because the signs for it are abundant enough that we lost track of just where we meant to go. Much as with getting out of the casino parking lot we ended up circling around an island several times over, this time to not park on that island --- I believe --- but rather by some place near a shopping mall sort of place that promised decent food if we hadn't already eaten.
One surprise waiting for us there was that my mother hadn't bought tickets for the Maiden of the Seas III: The Destruction Of Cherokee Jack: Through The Portal Of Time cruise. She had bought tickets to everything else online ahead of time so there was no waiting for anything or, indeed, any evidence that commerce existed outside of gift shop purchases. For this, she didn't, and it turned out the line to buy tickets was an hour long. Then there was the line to go on to the boat. We were not planning to spend so very much time waiting in lines, and so we gave cruising into the falls a pass too.
I certainly considered getting something at the gift shop, although it was fronted with an entirely glass (or plastic, I suppose) front that waved in various directions and left me with no idea of where the entrance actually was. I suppose there had to be one as there was a crowd inside and they seemed to be buying things like blue whale stuffed dolls and excessively wide postcards, but I never figured out where the entrance was. Maybe the customers in there were just those who were trapped when the gift shop was dropped into the place, and the people had been living there ever since, surviving on bottled water and Snickers bars dropped in from above.
There was also the movie exhibition for which the doors opened even though the timer above indicated the movie was nowhere near finished, and which closed on what looked like the pause between performances, which would come in something like fifteen minutes by the clock. I can't explain this either.
Trivia: The Weather Burearu's Washington Daily Weather Map was first issued as tissue chart by the manifold process in January 1871. It was published three times daily, although only the morning copy was released to the public. Source: A History of the United States Weather Bureau, Donald R Whitnah.
Currently Reading: Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into The 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, Neil Shubin.