White Water Walk

The best discovery of my visit to Niagara Falls was the White Water Walk.  I don't remember ever being aware of this before, but it was the highlight of our visit for me.  You got so close to the water, the power (and noise) of it was unbelievable!  We were mesmerized.

You had to go down an elevator through the rock about 10 floors, and then out through this tunnel to the side of the river.  There you found a viewpoint and a boardwalk along the water.  It was awesome!

The boardwalk provides a chance to walk beside the river, and experience that power.  It extends further than I expected, and ends almost at water level.

All the way you have this churning, thundering river beside you.  It's about 40 or 50 feet deep at this point - that's a lot of water!

You can see on this map how the river narrows at the rapids in the gorge.  On the right are the two huge falls, and then the relatively wide river flowing downstream (left on the map) toward the whirlpool.  The narrow stretch before than elbow in the river is where the whirlpool rapids and the white water walk are found.

It starts just downstream from the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge,

And it flows downstream towards the whirlpool, just out of sight on the left.
 

There are two spots where the boardwalk allows access to viewpoint right down at water level.  Try and picture yourself here with the river roaring by!

I could have stayed there all day just listening and watching the water roll by, with its constantly changed pattern of waves.

Perhaps these photos of standing waves right out in front of me give you some small sense of being there.  I have to give credit to Debbie of It's All About Purple, she said it so well in her comment on my blog yesterday:  "... the only way to really feel the force of the water is to be there, it cannot be described with words!!!".

Debbie, a resident of New Jersey, visited Niagara Falls (on the Canadian side), just a few weeks ago, and I remember thinking, here one of the bloggers I read has visited the falls, and I haven't even been there yet.  It was time to organize this visit!