Niagara Falls May 24 – 27, 2025

 “Niagara Falls, located on the border between the United States and Canada, is a massive waterfall. It is the second-largest waterfall in the world. The name "Niagara" comes from the Iroquois word "Onguiaahra," which means "thundering waters". The Falls are known for their stunning natural beauty and immense water flow”

“The falls consist of three distinct sections: Horseshoe Falls, American Falls, and Bridal Veil Falls, which together form one of the most famous landmarks in North America. Niagara Falls is not only a significant geological feature but also serves as a crucial source of hydroelectric power and a popular tourist destination.”

Ducky came back from 1-month deployment in Kentucky on May 23.  We went to Niagara Falls right after that. We stayed at Sheraton Fallsview, Ontario, Canada. It was a perfect location!  Better than that, thanks to Ducky’s special kind of Marriott membership, our room got upgraded to Falls view!  We could see the American Falls right from our huge windows. 

This time, we did not get to prepare much. I did not have daily plan as what I did when planning for Japan trip. The only thing I did was to purchase the Maid of the Mist tickets which later, I found out, there was no need to purchase anything ahead of time at all, tickets could be purchased there for activities at Canada side or in the NY Niagara Falls State Park. 

On Saturday May 24, once getting there, we did a long walk over the scenic walk path where we could enjoy stunning American Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, and Horseshoe Falls.  Over the Horseshoe Falls, “Table Rock Welcome Centre” is located. We checked out the mall a little bit and walked back to pass the Nikola Tesla statue. At 10:00 p.m., we were happy watching the fireworks and colorful Falls from our hotel balcony.  

On Sunday May 25, we went back to “Table Rock Welcome Centre” and we purchased tickets for “Journey Behind the Falls” and “Niagara Parks Power Station + The Tunnel”.
Both activities were so awesome and memorable. We could experience how powerful the waterfalls are. We could imagine ourselves working at the power station and how complicated and dangerous it would be.  We got lucky as Nikola Tesla exhibit had been going on from Mar 8 – Oct 13 while we were there.  At night, we walked over to the scenic path to see the Fireworks up-close.

On Monday May 26, we walked over the Rainbow Bridge to the US Niagara Falls State Park. There we did “Maid of the Mist” and “Cave of the Winds”.  WOW!  I love them both.  The weather was very beautiful that day. For the Maid of the Mist, imagine when the boat passed the gigantic waterfalls and lots of mist spraying on you, and when the boat sat unmoved for a while close to the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls letting the powerful waves shake itself.  For the Cave of the Winds, we did not miss the “Hurricane deck”.  It is the ultimate MUST try for up-close experience.   All activities we did really completed the experiences of the Niagara Falls.  

Oh, I realized I did not mention about yummy food in Canada.  The food seemed very expensive there, we spent about 30 – 70 USD there for one meal.  But that is how vacation is for right? 

This trip gave me a new taste and knowledge of Poutine (Quebec French), “a dish of French fries and cheese curds topped with a hot brown gravy. It emerged in Quebec in the late 1950s in the Centre-du-Québec region”.  It was yummy and many restaurants created their own versions of Poutine with several kinds of toppings even with Korean BBQ.

We got to get our coffee and breakfast at Tim Hortons!  Before that, I knew nothing about Tim Hortons and now I had learned from Ducky that it was like Canada McDonald.  LoL  This made me happy knowing that, I could tell everyone I went to Canada.

Oh, and yep, and my first experience with “Inniskilling Ice Wine”, the wine made from -10 degree C ice cold grapes from Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, Canada.  Thanks, Ducky, for buying the whole biggest bottle. LoL  I guessed it was about 100 USD and even the biggest bottle, it was just a skinny bottle. It tasted very sweet and very easy to enjoy.  It did not make me drunk. I really enjoyed It.  It made me think about the warm German Gluhwein.  

Oh and one more thing not to forget, I really enjoyed the soft serve ice cream at our hotel there.  It was so thick, hard to melt and tasted super delicious. 

On Tuesday, May 27, we drove back to Buffalo, NY.  We just happened to find Canalside and the Navel & Military Park. I was so excited about the combat ships.  We got to look inside USS The Sullivans, USS Little Rock, and USS Croaker (submarine).  Wow, unbelievable!   They looked so complicated to build and controls with medium size bombs, and very huge bombs to load and all that. And they sure hold lots of memories of the past. I prayed for those lost their lives in the ships.  I am wondering how the combat ships look like in real life these days.  After that we stopped by Anchor Bar for Buffalo wings. Anchor Bar "is most famous for claiming to be the birthplace of spicy chicken wings known outside the Buffalo area as Buffalo wings"  Yum!

Niagara Falls - (World Geography) - Vocab, Definition, Explanations | Fiveable | Fiveable

Niagara Falls Hotel Ontario | Sheraton Fallsview Hotel

Evening without Internet

I have not been able to find time to write for almost 9 months now.  I still have a lot to talk about from Japan trip to the move to Dawsonville and yes, with the move, I sold my house in Marietta.  The closing date is this upcoming Wednesday June 11, 2025.  Today is June 7, 2025.

Jasmine came back from Boston. She went to see Prem, her good old friend from Thailand. They hung out together for about a week.  She traveled there and came back by herself. I sponsored the plane tickets and the Airbnb room for her.  I am glad they got to see each other. 

I got to donate Thai Children’s books to a group of Thai families with young kids. They asked me if I would like to hang out with them.  They thought I had little kid(s) too.  LoL

This evening, a very severe storm passed right into our Sunrise neighborhood. OMG I had not seen anything like this for quite a while. There were big tree limbs and branches hitting the side of the house, I guessed.  I was not sure if they hit the side of the house or hit the roof and slid down to the side of the house. I was so scared, and I prayed hard.  It happened very fast within a couple minutes when the eye of the storm was passing by our house.  

Ignace and Dawn, our neighbors stopped by and checked on me. They said their next-door neighbor had 2 trees fall over to the lake.  Then, another neighbor walked over and said he also had 2 trees fall.  Ignace volunteered to be a ground keeper for the hood this year. After checking on me, they went on to also check other neighbors.  It is very nice of them, and it is very nice to be in a nice neighborhood.

No internet tonight meant no Netflix.  Good thing was, because of no Netflix, I had a new post to my blog. 

Sunrise EP 25 - Aunt Linda visited

After the hurricane Helene hit Florida on September 26 and moved up to Georgia and South Carolina, Ducky was sent to Greenville, South Carolina. This time he drove there.  He headed off on September 30 and stayed there until October 27. 

While he was there, the lawn crew leveled the front yard and the ground around the house and seeded the grass. Oh, I had to mention that Ducky had 19 trees cut in September and the stumps were glided so, the front yard was ready for the grass!

He drove back to water the grass couple times. I could imagine how tired he could be. 

Aunt Linda visited for 5 days from October 29 to November 2. Ducky took her to Dahlonega downtown, to Horseshoe Bend where he used to live with Kevin and Amber and to the Blood Mountain. We also went to hang out at Kevin's house on Halloween night. There, Aunt Linda and I met several new people. 

I did easy home cook for 2 nights as well; turkey stuffed acorn and fried rice with salmon. As long as it was not so spicy, Ducky and Aunt Linda could eat pretty much anything including my simple cooked meals. 😀

Aunt Linda had difficulty going up and down the stairs. I helped her go up most nights. Other than that, she looked very much in good shape at the age of 75 (she was born in 1949). She said she would be back again, maybe after the house is done done.  (When would that be then? 😁)

Hurricane Helene - Wikipedia
Hurricane Helene (/hɛˈliːn/ ^ⓘ heh-LEEN)^[1] was a devastating tropical cyclone that caused widespread destruction and numerous fatalities across the Southeastern United States in late September 2024. It was the strongest hurricane on record to strike the Big Bend region of Florida, the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Maria in 2017, and the deadliest to strike the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005.<sup>[2][3]


New friends
Mike and Dianne - Amber's next door
Bob and Dana - Pirate house
Rick and Natalie - Carribean
Kurt and Jennie - Schneider
Emma - Vietnamese Canadian American
Lisa - she brought chicken</sup>

Sunrise EP 24 - The Wood in the Bathroom

We spent hours after hours to pick bath towel hooks. Etsy has lots of cute stuff from around the world. It was funny that when I was ready to hit pay, then, the page started to show other similar items the customer like me might like. And indeed, I picked the other one instead and we really loved it! We now had a huge tree to hang our towels and also little bears to help clean up the toilet. 

Sunrise EP 23 - Master Closet

September 2 was the Labor Day of 2024. That long weekend, we talked about doing a short visit to Ashville in North Carolina or Greenville in South Carolina. But we ended up working on the house project instead. And here's the beautiful outcome!

Sunrise EP 22 - Bill and Jiang Hua (Hanna)

On September 1, Amber invited us for a boat ride. It was very relaxing. Then, in the evening, she had her neighbors visited. They were Bill and Jiang Hua (Hanna). Jiang Hua was using a translation gadget. She said it would be 3 years in February 2025 since she had come to US. Ducky asked if she had an English name and that how we came to know the name "Hanna". I remember spotting her English name in her phone and it was Hanna without an "h" like Hannah. What interesting was, Bill did not seem to know that name. 😀

Amber told us that Jiang Hua was a great cook, and she served like 10 dishes for them. Jiang Hua told me that before coming here, she was not that good cooking but because the lack of understanding English language here, she needed to find an alternative strong point to be able to stand out in a certain way. 

Bill used to work in military for several years. He had been travelling around the world. He always had lots of stories to tell us. Some seemed to be confidential matters in the past. 😜 I did not catch all of what he said and could not remember everything. He was holding 2 citizenships. I could not remember what was the other one. It was a small country with political issue or so. He mentioned obtaining the citizenship by helping their government (I hope I got this right). Bill married a Japanese woman who was his first wife who passed, he divorced his Thai wife who owned a Thai restaurant Kevin and Amber dined in from time to time. And in 2024, his girlfriend (or new wife?) was Jiang Hua. He sure loved Asian women. Oh, and he could play guitar and sing very well. Maybe he could teach me guitar lessons. 

Jiang Hua was a very smart woman. She used to work as a key management for a Chinese company supplying bottles to Coca Cola. (LoL, I needed to check with Ducky if I remembered that correctly.) She traveled around the world as well. I would like to know but did not ask how come she ended up in USA and what she was doing for living here. Bill praised her along with raising the point that her dad was the first pilot of some sort of an important plane. Jiang Hua refused to talk about her dad mentioning it made her sad. She liked Guinness beer. She could shoot as well. Wow! She sure was a smart woman. How come she did not pick up English after living here for almost 3 years. Or actually she knew English but could not let others know about that fact. There were still some mysterious points to think about her. LoL

Ducky and I met Bill and Jiang Hua 2 times during my one month with Ducky at Sunrise. 

Well, that's not Bill though. 😀

Sunrise EP 21 - Convection Range

After coming back on August 20, Ducky had not been deployed until September 30. It was unpredictable. I thought I would only have 1 week with Ducky, and we also rushed to complete the master bedroom and bathroom, and the 1st move from my house within the 1st week he came back. Then, he was told that he would not be deployable until after September 19. I was so happy to hear that. So, we spent time to arrange things in the kitchen's cabinets. We shopped grocery and we did our first stove top cooking. 

I made easy fried rice as the first stove top cooking meal! My first time using convection stove! I also fried salmon and cooked beef stew with Chinese Five Spices powder on stove top. I was a bit surprise that when frying salmon, the oil did not splash like crazy.

My first bake good in the oven was Red Lobster Biscuits bought from Costco. I forgot to buy cheese to mix with it. I had to learn the oven, and the rack position being used was too close to the top. I later swapped the rack position and finally the biscuits were ready!  I needed to learn the oven more.

We made chicken casserole together. Ducky is my whipping cream maker. The casserole was a success with the oven. 😉

We did bake goods couple times; pumpkin bread/cake, banana bread/cake, and blueberries muffins. Some of these bake goods taste better the following day. I guess it takes time to absorb all the ingredients together. 

Ducky bought temperature measurement to sit in the oven. He learned that the oven is off by 14 degrees. I have learned that to wait until the oven is at the set temperature said in the measurement, and stick the mixture in, outside get burned in no time before the inside is cooked. There are several things that might contribute to it as well: the type of baking tray, the rack position in the oven, etc. When baking the banana bread/cake, we did our own way by setting to 350 degrees and waited 10 minutes to stick the mixture in and waited 30 minutes then, it was done nicely.  

I will definitely read about convection oven before I go to the Sunrise home next time. We have to practice couple more times to understand the oven. 

Oh, and I cooked Greek Chichen with yogurt and beef stew in the crockpot. We also enjoyed yummy salads. Apart from that, Ducky introduced these new drinks to me, Caucasian 😁 (White Russian), Daiquiri, and Umeshu with peach sparkling water.

Our first stove top cooking!

Our first oven cook!