Niagara Falls Helicopter Ride

So my sister, Beads, is an amazing woman.  She's a life flight nurse.  And she knows the helicopter pilots who run arial tours of Niagara Falls.  The girl got us in for fa-ree.  A lot better than the $90 per person price it would have been otherwise. 

And can I tell you how much I love New Yorkers?  We were chatting with the guy who takes peoples' money, and he was all, "Oh, man, you have this one pilot, so-and-so.  I hate him so much."  We asked why, and he said that pilot grabs your camera, while it's attached to your arm, and forces you to take pictures at this angle and that angle.  "I hate that *&%$#," he said again, fervently.

Some kids were messing with this scale that weighs you so you know how many people each group can have, and he turned to us and muttered, "I'm going to @^%#&& kill those kids..."  But he was saying these things in a really funny, almost jovial way.  It's hard to explain.  But I loved it.

What a trip it is to ride in a helicopter!!  I did okay airsickness-wise.  Except for when the dude banked pretty hard.  Then my stomach went, "Whoa."  But I did okay.  And we had Ben, the camera man, sit in the back so that the dude couldn't grab his arm and force him to take pictures when he really should keep both hands on that joystick thingey that guides the helicopter.  Sheesh.

And may I say that Niagara Falls always reminds me of Superman 2?

I thought that bed was so cool...

Kay, so there are two falls to Niagara Falls.  One is on the American side, and then there's this little island, and the other is on the Canadian side.  It's confusing.  But here are some pictures to kind of show you...

In this picture, the American falls are at the bottom, and the Canada falls are at the top.

And this picture is showing the Canadian falls at the bottom, the American falls at the top:

The American falls are kind of jaggedy:

 And the Canadian falls are shaped like a horseshoe:

Do you see that little boat at the base of the falls?  We got to go in that boat.  More pictures of that to come.

This is an arial view of this greenbelt-type thing we walked on to see the falls after this helicopter ride:

I think maybe you can see one of the great lakes in the distance there?:

And there:

Geography isn't my strong point.  But I know they're all situated near the places we were traveling in western New York. 

We had to take two different flights, but here we are together afterward. 

 It was sooo stinkin' cool.