Help! Travel to US

[Robert]

You suave devil!

[Stewart P Evans]

Actually...

Actually I think I'm digging a bit of a hole here.

[Ally]

The main attraction for me to travel into the United States would be to see Ally again.

[Scott Nelson]

Yeah, me too.

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Scott

I'm sure Stewart's very flattered but I think he's straight...

All the best

Dave

[Mayerling]

[QUOTE=Stewart P Evans;270403]Worse still I'm an old smoothie...

QUOTE]

And I bet you're a big softee. And just like putty in the hands....

[RivkahChaya]

Yes of course, not that much. Glacier National Park, Big Sky... YELLOWSTONE, why who in the world would ever want to spend a few hours hiking/viewing some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. Montana, piffle. Hardly worth being a state.

Hey, have you ever tried to go shopping in an national park? Or get a bear to serve you a mixed drink?

[Errata]

Hey, have you ever tried to go shopping in an national park? Or get a bear to serve you a mixed drink?

Yeah I'm with you. Vacation is room service, shopping, maybe some massages. Hiking is what I do to get to my mailbox.

[Robert]

Surely you can have a nice picnic in a national park? Yogi Bear was always stealing goodies from the tourists.

[Ginger]

There's Niagara Falls, but I don't know that you can see anything on the US side you can't see on the Canadian side. I haven't actually been there, though, so I don't know.

Before you die, go and see Niagara Falls. Seriously. I have never seen anything so overwhelming in all my life. The stuff on the Canadian side is generally better - the US side is kind of stodgy, and educational, plus the Canadian side has much better vistas.

The one exception, and it's a huge one, is an attraction called 'The Cave of the Winds', on the American side. Nothing in my life could have prepared me for this. You ride an elevator with a tour group, down into a dressing room in the heart of the cliff, where you put on hurricane gear. You're then led out along a trail to a series of ascending wooden walkways that lead you closer and closer to Bridal Veil Falls, the (relatively) tiny falls that come off one side of American Falls. The group pauses several times to let you get acclimated, and to allow people who don't want to get any closer to wait. There were some in my group who decided not to go any closer, and no-one reproved them.

Words cannot describe the violence of the falls closeup. You're right up against the base, in what they euphemistically term the 'spray zone'. The thunder and the shaking fill the world. There is an entrained wind that comes blasting down the face of the falls, and is deflected in unpredictable turbulence from the rocks at the base. The fall has a pulse - you don't notice it until you're right up on it, but it ebbs and flows at about a 40 second interval. When it's in full spate, you're up to your knees in water splashing upward from the rocks below. You don't dare move without holding the handrail.

I did this last, after spending two days on the Canadian side, so I'd kind of gotten used (so I thought) to the sheer scale of the falls. This really reset all my calibration marks. I've never before or since felt that insignificant by comparison with something.

[Robert]

I've never been there, Ginger, but now I feel as though I have. What a fine description!

[Magpie]

The Falls are beautiful at night when they are lit up.

[Barnaby]

The, uh...'coffee's' look pretty good. Wish I could join you!

I got back from New Orleans a few days ago. The French Quarter was packed for a charity event called the Red Dress Run in which both guys and girls don red dresses and heels (well, the daring wear heels but everyone, even the guys who most definitely should not show leg, do so) for a run through the Quarter preceded and followed by copious alcohol ingestion.

My mind was swimming with Jill the Ripper scenarios. Undoubtedly, the result of too many Pat O'Brien hurricanes. I learned this trip that there are FOUR shots of rum in one hurricane. Explains a lot.