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The Horseshoe Falls at dusk, as seen from the observation deck of Skylon Tower
On our list of favorite vacation spots and travel destinations, Ontario, Canada is surely in the top three, right along with Greece and San Francisco. For this year's summer vacation, we went to Niagara Falls, Canada. This visit was our third trip to Niagara Falls and our fourth trip overall to Ontario (we visited Toronto in 2005). Thomai and I first visited Niagara Falls as newlyweds back in 1998 and we had an absolutely great time. We returned in 2001 when K. was about 2 ½ years old and it was another memorable experience. Of course, our trip to Toronto was exceptional, but it was a pretty expensive junket and it wasn't in the cards (or in the budget) for us to go back this year, although we would have liked to do so. Because Z. had never visited the Falls, we thought this would be a good time share the experience as a family of four.
We were ready for a huge road trip, having compiled a massive mix CD that included some of our road trip favorites like "The Road I Must Travel" by The Nightwatchman, "Vacation" by the Go-Go's and "Holiday Road" by Lindsey Buckingham. We also added some new songs to the mix, like "No One" by Alicia Keys, which is a new favorite for Thomai and K.
It is probably worth noting that it was pretty sunny on the drive up to Canada and I had to break down and buy a pair of sunglasses at a Pennsylvania K-mart. And -- get this -- they were those huge "over glasses" shades that I joked about last year in my rant about Wal-Mart. Once we were back on the road, it finally hit me that I was 35 years old, wearing gigantic "over-glasses" sunglasses, and driving a mini-van with my 2 kids in tow. So I guess it is official that I am an old guy.
The one and only Santino Marella
We were a little worried about Stupsi on our first night there, as she had helped herself to a bag of the kids' candy a day or two earlier. But we did manage to get settled and walk down to Clifton Hill, which is one of our favorite spots in Niagara Falls. It is probably one of my greatest contradictions that I love such a kitschy, touristy place like Clifton Hill. The girls were pretty excited to eat at The Rainforest Café and I must say it was pretty decent for a chain restaurant. I was pretty stoked to find the WWE Retail Store right next to the Rainforest Café and we stopped there after dinner. I ended up buying a Santino Marella t-shirt which I will probably wear several times a week for many, many years to come. I had wanted one of these shirts pretty badly for about a month, but I hadn't got around to getting one online. Now, Thomai will tell you that she doesn't like wrestling at all, but I am more than happy to point out that Santino always gets a laugh out of her. I am pretty sure it's because his in-your-face "Italian" character reminds her of some of her more "boisterous" relatives in Greece.
Our first big stop during our stay was the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory. We had never been there before, and it was a tremendously interesting place to see. Thomai took some wonderful pictures there.
Yes, I gave this man $4.
Later in the week, we visited some of our favorite spots on Clifton Hill, including the Movieland Wax Museum and the Rock and Roll Wax Museum. Baby Z. has a bizarre fascination with Elvis these days, and we snapped an hilarious picture of her posing in front of a wax figure of "The King." Later that day, we came across a street performer who was working the Clifton Hill area with his very bizarre "Golden Elvis" routine. Both of the girls were really taken by his act and I ended up giving the guy $4 CDN (or two "Toonies") so that he would give the each of girls a set of gold beads. K. wore her beads for the rest of the trip.
Skylon Tower was a high point (pun intended) for us all and we took some great pictures of the Horseshoe Falls below. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a nice-looking spider spinning an impressive web on the outside of the observation deck screen, a full 775 feet from the ground. The pictures I took of that spider (with the distant landscape below as a backdrop) are some of my favorite pictures from the trip.
Spider web at 775 feet.
As usual, I wanted to visit a locally-owned used and rare bookshop as part of our trip and after looking a bit on the web and in the phone book, I thought Hannelore Headley Old & Fine Books in St. Catherine's looked like a good spot. This place was totally packed with rows upon rows of books, stacked as high as the ceiling in some places. I landed a couple of good finds, including Love and Struggle in Mao's Thought by Raymond Whitehead and a 1968 Progress Publishers book on the Ulyanov Family.
Our last day in Niagara was the busiest of them all, as we didn't want to leave without hitting all of the best "tourist" attractions. We have hit the Double Deck Sightseeing Tour, Journey Behind the Falls and Maid of the Mist on all three of our Niagara trips now and each attraction is a special and unique experience.
For our last big meal of the trip, we went to a ritzy Chinese restaurant called Golden Lotus, located in the über-posh Fallsview Casino Resort. Budgetary constraints prevented us splurging on $100-plus dishes like shark fin soup and abalone, but I did go with the waiter's recommendation, which was the tender pork neck in X.O. sauce. I had never tasted X.O. sauce before and I was a little worried that I wouldn't like it, but it was just spicy enough without completely overpowering the dish. The consistency of the pork neck was unusual, but very intriguing -- somewhere between a piece of ham and a pork chop. The dish was pretty fantastic, overall, as was the entire trip.
Niagara Falls has never let us down and Thomai and I were so happy to enjoy all of our favorite spots with the girls.
You can view pictures of our trip here. (username & password required)
Yesterday, I lifted the lid on the Spider House
for the last time this season. Although it has only been a few
months, this time around has been the most active and the most heavily
populated Spider House since I created it several years ago. This
experience has helped to point out a few significant design flaws in
the Spider House which will need to be corrected before the next time
around.
The most problematic of these flaws is the relatively "escape proof"
design of the "roof" of the enclosure. I designed the roof to
allow for airflow while minimizing routes of escape for "spider
food" like crickets and flies. The problem here is that once egg
sacs from female spiders begin to hatch, the "spiderlings" aren't able to
wander far from their place of birth and large numbers remain
concentrated in the corners of the house. At one point in the
summer, I had about 3 egg sacs hatch at once, which yielded a couple of
hundred baby spiders in the Spider House. It was kind of crowded
in there for a while. But in this kind of situation, spiderlings
ultimately became easy prey for the adults in the house, which is kind
of unfortunate. I know from experience that if egg sacs hatch in
an enclosure with air holes that are a decent size (big enough for the
babies to exit, but small enough to keep the adults in), the
spiderlings will eventually stray outside of the enclosure. Along
the way, they leave tons and tons of little webs behind, coating the
outside walls of the enclosure. It sounds creepy, but it's pretty
cool.
A few weeks ago, I went kind of crazy catching funnel weavers when I found a whole slew of
them hiding in a large plant in our front yard. A couple of these
spiders ultimately emerged as the dominant residents of the Spider
House, spinning webs all through the various levels of the enclosure
and making short work of their main competition, which were the large
brown and red garden spiders. I took a picture of the web network
in the Spider House as it looks today, but after a couple of months of
spider activity, one might well imagine that the scene is pretty messy
and nasty.
I probably could have maintained the Spider House a bit longer, but
there are still quite a few unhatched egg sacs left and I figure that
if I leave the enclosure open and effectively end the experiment for
now, I will let a few hundred baby spiders free. This way, I’ll
have some time to reflect on the lessons learned from this year's
Spider House so that next year's experience is even better.
A view from the inside (roof) of the Spider House. Those little dots are baby spiders... and, yes, they are alive!
If
it’s any consolation at all to you spider-hating folks, soon it will be
cold and all the spiders (and all the pictures of them) will eventually
be in short supply. But for now, I have a new picture. This
evening, I went back to check on our baby mantis (who is in about the
same spot as the other day) and I came upon a rather impressive
sight: I found a huge reddish-brown spider snacking on a
yellowjacket. There was a light breeze and it was difficult to
get a good close-up picture, but I tried my best...
click on the picture to view a larger image
I returned a few minutes later to catch this beast for the Spider
House, but she had dragged her dinner away to a safe spot behind a
drainpipe. But I’ll check back soon.
Here’s a picture of a really big spider that I found on the north side of our house today. I think it’s a Black and Yellow Argiope.
She is about 2 inches from top to bottom (or that might be from bottom
to top, as she is pointing down towards the ground.) I would
typically be inclined to catch this beauty and put her in my Spider House,
but that particular project has gone by the wayside for now. It
seems as though my plate is now full with two jobs, two kids, four fish, a
dog, volunteer work and a blog. So she will stay on where she is
for now and we’ll entrust her to keep all of the other pesky bugs away.Click here to see another spider that I found last year.
When we were kids, my brother and I used to catch spiders during the
spring and summer. We usually kept them in jars and I would like
to say that there was some sort of scientific value in our efforts, but
we really just liked to watch them fight and eat bugs. About 7
or 8 years ago, I thought it would be interesting to catch a whole
bunch of spiders and keep them in a more complex environment where I
could watch their development over a long period of time. My idea
was for a "spider collective" of sorts. Let’s call it "The Spider
House."
The view from the front click on the picture to view a larger image
So years ago, I built a small spider habitat in a 1½ gallon
aquarium. I filled it with about 10 spiders or so and it was
pretty cool for a while. But at that point in time, I really had
a lot of competing interests and my interest in the project faded. I
held on to the aquarium, though, and with the arrival of spring this
year, my interest in building a spider commune has returned. I
recently got the old habitat down from a shelf in the garage, dusted it
off, and added some new nooks and crannies for the forthcoming
occupants of The Spider House.
Included inside the tank are some rocks, a
Gargoylesaction figure
(without any wings), some bits and pieces from around the garage, and a
broken head from a statue that I found smashed in the street near our
house. The lid of the tank is plywood with a few holes drilled in
the top. The "domes" are the tops of bubbles from a toy vending
machine. These cover the two large air holes. The air holes
were originally covered by some plastic screen pieces when I had first
built the habitat, but when I had dumped some feeder crickets in the
tank for the spiders and one night the crickets chewed right through
the mesh and they all escaped. At that time, I was keeping the
tank in my office at my old job and the crickets were all over the
office for weeks.
The view from the top click on the picture to view a
larger
image
Most of the spiders that I catch are small run-of-the mill orb weavers,
although from time to time, I might be adventurous and try to nab one
of those gigantic garden spiders or some funnel weavers here and there.
I prefer female spiders, partially for their longevity and also
because it is really cool when their babies hatch. I have already
welcomed 6 or 7 spiders into the new and improved Spider House and I
have tossed in a few flying insects to make sure that the spiders don’t
turn on each other right away.
I was going to take pictures of the spiders as I catch them and offer
readers of this page a chance to give the spiders names, but I decided
there must be some kind of limit to my geekiness.
