Following some breakfast and coffee in the bus, we headed out towards Niagara Falls. We parked in the RV parking at Goat Island, situated between the Canadian and American Falls. We walked the perimeter of Goat Island, stopping at the various viewpoints of the rapids approaching the river and of the falls themselves. The Canadian Horseshoe Falls are dramatic. In the summer months, 675,000 gallons of water fall per second. The crest of the falls is a brilliant, almost electric green before the water crashes into its furious mist below. It is one thing to read the numbers, but quite another to stand at the railing and feel the ground faintly tremble beneath your shoes.
You only get part of the picture from the American side. To fully view the breadth and height of the falls, you must cross over to Canada. We considered crossing the bridge, but the thought of potential delays, uncertainty with the process with the bus, and the long day of driving still ahead of us persuaded us that the American side would be enough. We admired what we could see. The river churned violently below and was coated in fractured sheets of ice floating like mini-icebergs that had broken loose in the spring thaw.
I had stood here before, about two and a half years ago in October, but it was warmer then and the river ran free. Now, in early spring, the ice gave everything a different kind of beauty. It was quieter somehow. Birds, undeterred by the cold, were perched on the floating ice floes. Tiny specks against the great gray and white expanse. It felt like the world was still half asleep, shaking off winter’s last hold.
We stood above the American Falls, watching from the platforms as the river flung itself over the edge. The roar was constant, a deep bass that you felt in your chest. Even standing right over it, it didn’t feel real. It was dizzying. Something too big for the human mind to entirely wrap itself around.
After soaking in the falls, we went in search of two things: a postcard for my growing collection and a sticker for the wall of the bus. Our little gallery of memories was slowly taking shape, a sticker for every meaningful stop. The hunt took us through the town of Niagara Falls, which I remembered being a little odd but now seemed almost dystopian.
Niagara Falls, New York, is a strange place. Around the natural wonder, the town has sprung up like an awkward afterthought: casinos, gray hotels, abandoned gift shops, neon signs flickering in the daytime. Gray on gray on gray. It feels like a city that wanted to be more than a rest stop for tourists but never quite made it. There’s always something bittersweet about these places. Towns that had a blank slate and so much potential and somehow ended up mostly asphalt and chain restaurants. You can almost hear the dreams echoing faintly off the empty parking garages. People do live here, and that feels even stranger somehow. They go to work and walk their dogs and buy groceries with all that neon blinking above them. Their daily backdrop is a city built for visitors, a city that forgets its own residents. Niagara Falls itself, though with it’s water, mist, and endless noise– that is still beautiful. Untouchable by whatever we’ve built around it. No matter how many parking lots and gift shops we pave over the world, there are still places too powerful to be swallowed. We finally found a sticker and a postcard in a cluttered little gift shop near the state park entrance. The kind of place where snowglobes, ashtrays, and cheap t-shirts jostle for space on crowded shelves.
We drove south after that, the bus humming along. We stopped at Camping World to dump the tanks: a less glamorous but necessary errand. We pulled into the lot, surrounded by rows and rows of gleaming RVs: enormous, spotless, and, somehow, a little soulless compared to our scrappy bus. We found the dump station tucked out back, paid the fee, and did the unglamorous work of emptying the tanks.
Night fell while we were still driving, and we found a truck stop just over the Ohio line. The lot was a patchwork of semi-trucks with their engines growling low through the night. We parked alongside them, tucked ourselves into bed, and listened to the lullaby of diesel engines and distant highway noise.
I thought about Niagara. About how people build whole lives in places designed for passing through. About how something so stunning and ancient as the falls could sit right next to neon and concrete and casinos. And about how strange and wonderful it is to measure your days by things like waterfalls and dump stations and weird towns and stickers on the wall. To be small in a world that is still, sometimes, impossibly big.
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