Dinner with Spencer and Tara

So this here is Zoe and I with an elephant, and my good buddy Spencer. I spent six weeks of the 2 years of my mission sweating my hiney off in the streets of the Dominican Republic with Spencer. He was my second companion and we served together in a town on the eastern side of the island called Higuey. Spencer married Tara and they now live in the Niagara Falls area. They were good enough to go grab a bite to eat with us while we were in their neck of the woods. Niagara Falls, Canada is filled to the brim with all sorts of tourist locales, including a Rainforest Cafe, which became the official dive for this, our first and only Canadian dining experience. I must say that the cuisine of Canada is far superior to the Dominican fare Spencer and I dined upon in yesteryears. When we were companions I was pretty fresh off the boat, and Spencer introduced me to the street chimichurri, which often contained at least partially cooked meat, and always plenty of cabbage. I ate more chimis on my mission than any five men should. Thanks Spencer, I send a great big "Uepa!" your way. Please enjoy the picture of Sara, me, Zoe, Tara and Spencer, which I stole off of Spencer and Tara's blog. Such thievery.

Over the Falls

How could anyone stare into the rushing current of Niagara Falls and not consider what fun it would be to pack him or herself into a barrel and get hurled over the edge to his or her watery death? Such have been the thoughts of various nut cases over the years. My favorite of these nut cases was Annie Edison Taylor, the first person to ever survive a barrel ride over Horseshoe Falls. Annie wasn't doing so hot as a professional dance instructor, so she decided her next best option was to become rich and famous by way of barreling over Niagara Falls. She did so on her 63rd birthday, October 24th, 1901, but not before testing the stunt on her cat Iagara. The cat didn't die, so of course she wouldn't, thus she lined her custom-built barrel with a mattress and hopped in. Beyond a gash on the head, she came out of the barrel just fine. As for fame and fortune, shortly after the stunt, her manager made off with the barrel and she spent nearly every dime earned speaking about the plunge trying to track down the barrel, which eventually turned up in Chicago. I love the picture of her, the barrel and Iagara above.

Bobby Leach was the next person to make the plunge in a barrel, but unlike Annie, he made a living doing reenactments afterwards. I only bring him up because I really like the picture of him and his barrel that I found. I also find it hilarious that he survived the plunge over the falls, but died after slipping on an orange peel 15 years later. There are so many cool stories about people dying, or nearly dying at Niagara Falls. I start reading them and get lost on Wikipedia for hours. The first guy to ever swim the English Channel, Matthew Webb, actually drowned trying to swim in the rapids below the falls. And there's the dozens of daring rescues at the waterfall by William "Redd" Hill, and the many crossings by tight rope walkers. Not to mention the great Yankee Leapster, who made a living jumping off of stuff, including the edge of Niagara Falls (sans barrel). I could go on forever. There's actually a separate section in the Niagara Falls, Ontario cemetery for the daredevils of the region. Had I known about the cemetery while we were in Niagara Falls, I definitely would have dragged Sara away from making those arrangements with the local coopers to check it out with me.

Waterfalls I Wanna See

Niagara Falls is neither the tallest, nor the widest waterfall in the world. Those designations go to Angel Falls in Venezuela and Khone Falls in Laos, respectively. Actually, the only world record held by Niagara Falls is that of the world's most powerful, in that more water goes over the edge per second than over any other cascade. There are a lot of waterfalls out there in the world, and I want to see a lot more of them. I think I've decided that I would like to add the two waterfalls above, and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe (the world's largest waterfall) to my list of places I gotta see.

Where Baby Waterfalls Come From

All three of us liked Niagara Falls very much. I think that if I were a bird with a valid passport I would spend all day flying from one side of the waterfall to the other. I've been trying to figure out what crazy act of nature caused the waterfall to be the way it is and where it is, but I just don't get it. Maybe I have to be a geologist or something, but all I can really understand is that this is because of Wisconsin Glaciation. I guess back like a gazillion years ago some huge chunk of ice cut its way through the entire Midwest and cut the place up really good. When the glacier melted away it left behind the Great Lakes and its connecting rivers, including the Niagara River. Then there was this escarpment thing that created a cuesta that turned into a waterfall. And that's where enormous waterfalls come from. Geologists are still researching the topic, but from what I'm reading, the Wisconsin Glatiation will be complete in the Milwaukee area sometime in the late 3200's.

Niagara Falls is made up of three waterfalls separated by two little islands. The big daddy waterfall is named Horseshoe Falls, and is by far the coolest. The little baby waterfall is separated from its daddy by Goat Island, and is called Bridal Veil Falls. Then there's the tiny Luna Island that separates Bridal Veil Falls from the mommy-sized waterfall, American Falls. From June to November of 1969 the Army Corps of Engineers redirected the flow of the Niagara River so that the American and Bridal Veil Falls went completely dry. They then fixed up the cracks caused by erosion from the waterfall and turned the water back on again. Thank goodness for the ACoE, we wouldn't want nature to have its way.

Rainbow Bridge and Niagara Falls

I've probably mentioned this in my blog a number of times, but my absolute favorite part about traveling are those minutes as you approach a site of major interest and you expect it to be just around the corner. As it comes into view, after a lifetime of waiting, and 15 hours of driving, you can feel that awe come over you as that place officially becomes a part of you. I swear that the road to Niagara Falls was built to maximize the suspense of approaching one of North America's most incredible natural wonders. The waterfall(s) flow down from the United States side into Canada. Because of this, the view from across the river in Niagara Falls, Canada is much better than from above the falls in Niagara Falls, New York. We checked into our hotel on the US side of the falls, got our passports and Zoe's cute little passport card at the ready, and headed to Rainbow Bridge.

This has got to be the coolest bridge ever, it spans the valley carved by the waterfalls and provides a spectacular view...of the mist being churned up, thus prolonging the anxiety and transforming this arch bridge into one of suspension. Before Rainbow Bridge was built in 1941 there was another bridge 500 feet closer to the waterfalls called Honeymoon Bridge. This bridge was of such shoddy construction that when a parade passed over it in 1925 the in-step marching of the band caused the bridge to sway nearly unto collapse. Nearly 13 years later, on January 27th, 1938 huge ice chunks smacked into the pillars supporting Honeymoon Bridge and knocked the thing clean over. Crazy! The pieces of Honeymoon Bridge are still at the bottom of the river.

After passing by the border guards we finally got on the road that runs alongside the Niagara River and wow! I have never seen something that amazing. Wow! You have got to see this place before you die! We forked out our dollars, parked the car, and stood there mesmerized by the falls. Luckily Sara was very adamant that Zoe not fall over the edge, so my hypnosis from the flow of the falls did not impede my ability to keep that little monkey from climbing over the wall. Sara had spent a lot of the time en route to Niagara Falls reminding me that the scene in Superman when the little boy is rescued from toppling over the falls by the Man o' Steel was only fiction. It's gettin' late, I best be saving the rest of my Niagara Falls ramblings for another day.

Just Say No

Just up the road from the Newell K. Whitney store is the Kirtland temple. We didn't have a ton of time, since we wanted to get to Niagara Falls before dinner time, so we just stopped by and let Zoe run a few laps around the temple yard. The Community of Christ does tours of the building's interior, and maybe we should have gone inside, but we just wanted to get back on the road.

Our April road trip was pretty cool, in that we didn't really have an ultimate destination. It was sort of a jaunt around the Eastern midwest with stop-offs at many places of interest. Because of that, we really didn't want to spend a whole lot of time in any single place. This made it really hard to visit these church sites to the full extent that the missionaries therein had pre-planned for us. We only wanted to look around, maybe rehear a few familiar stories about what happened at the spots we're standing in, take some pictures and move on. These cute little old missionaries have visitors centers full of information for us to absorb, and at least an hour's worth of movies for us to watch, and it is so hard to say no to them. But how does a good Mormon say, "no thanks, we'd like to have a life-changing spiritual moment, but we don't want to miss the three o'clock tour at Spam World"? I guess whether we watch the movie or not, we now have the right to raise our hands during Sunday School and say that we've been there.

I like the picture at the top there, Sara looks pretty hot, and it's sort of like a "Where's Waldo" scene with Zoe hidden away somewhere. Props to the 1830's Mormons for building a pretty building like this one. I remember hearing that the women of the time crushed up their fancy china into the stucco to make it shiny. I would have fought tooth and nail to get that job when the temple building assignments were getting handed out. They should have put that in the movie, or had a china breaking booth at the visitors center.

Milwaukee to Kirtland

Man do I love a good road trip. We live in the best country in the world, and it is cram packed full of all kinds of wonderful things to see. Sara, Zoe and I set out to quench a bit of our travel thirst, by way of our own little Tour de Midwest. Or I should say, Tour de Eastern Midwest, upstate New York, and Pennsylvania. Sara spent the better part of March planning every mile of our journey, and I helped by way of mentioning all sorts of places that we didn't have time to drive to, such as Fiji. But we made it a point to visit every place of significance between Milwaukee and Scranton and back.


The longest leg of our trip was the first day. We left at 3:00 am to avoid Chicago traffic, and were at the point of Lake Michigan while it was still dark. Right over the Illinois/Indiana border (after paying the second of thousands of tolls) we drove through Hammond, Indiana which is the city where the movie "A Christmas Story" was based. Ho Ho Ho!! It was cool to see that the place looked just like the movie. We didn't stop to put our tongues on any lamp posts because Zoe was asnooze and we didn't want to waste any of the precious moments.


Kirtland, Ohio is a few miles east of Cleveland, and a must-stop for any road trippin' Mormon. It was a pretty cool town, though nowhere near the production that Nauvoo is. A nice missionary lady showed us around the restored buildings. The coolest one by far is the Newell K. Whitney store, which has seen little change since the roaring 1830's when the Church was teeny tiny. Joseph and Emma lived in the upstairs room of the store, and it was in this same building that the School of the Prophets was held. Newell is one of those British names that I wish I had the guts to force upon one of my kids. Newell McArthur. Another one is Liam, but I think it would sort of melt into McArthur, LiaMcArthur.

Cash in Those Owl Pellets

Sara and I's first apartment was at the scenic junction of I-15 and Bangerter Highway. It was definitely the best apartment in the world, as proven by the many sorts of creatures that flocked there, including the drug dealers below us, and the entire troop of pigeons above us. Neither of these groups of pests were easy to get rid of since the apartment management and the state of Utah wouldn't allow us to exterminate anybody. Anxious to prove to my new little wife my handiness, I bought a plastic owl and trained it to look threatening. I placed him on our porch and waited for the swarms of intruders to evacuate, but to no avail. Instead, we learned to accept our new life of scratches and coos coming from above, and sirens and sweet-smelling smoke wafting from below.

The owl sat prominently on our dresser for many long whiles until about a year ago when I had a sudden epiphany that he would make a spectacular place to hold our pennies. Zoe and I used a hammer and a screwdriver to put a quarter chute in his noggin and voila! Owl bank! I'm just realizing now that the whole reason I did this might have been to reprove my handyman prowess to Sara. Chicks really dig guys that can use common tools to convert plastic fowl into banking vessels.

Last month the owl was getting very heavy, so we decided to cash his guts in at the bank and use the proceeds to buy souvenirs during our annual April trip. You'd never believe it, but there was exactly $50.00 and one peso in that owl. Yehaw! But enough about the empty owl, I've got about 120 pictures of our April road trip burning a hole in my c: drive, and now that my exam is over, off we go down the yellow brick road to the merry old land of Blog.