I've been wanting to go to Niagara Falls for a year or so now. The recent news coverage of the beautiful frozen landscape definitely sped up my desire to make that trip. I contacted two of my good girl friends, who are also photographers (and just as crazy as I am), and I headed out to Pittsburgh, where they live. We left for Canada on Saturday and stayed for just about around 24 hours. The drive was tough. It was snowy and slushy all through Erie, but we made it by going nice and slow.

We got to Niagara Falls (Canada side) on Saturday midday, checked into our hotel, and went to the Falls straightaway. And wow, what a sight! The icy aqua waters flowing into the powdered-sugar-looking landscape was something that resembled another planet. It was so neat to see. We did Journey Behind the Falls, and got to see everything from a lower perspective as well. Two of the other viewing platforms were essentially closed, however, because they were frozen shut with icicles!

The girls headed off to some wineries, but I wanted to walk a bit around the falls. I ended up walking across the bridge you see in the photos below to New York, through customs, and back to Canada. I wanted to see the contrasting views. I would definitely recommend making the full trek to Canada for those who have never been. You get an awesome view of the horseshoe falls, as well as the New York side. Also, when I was there, it was like -15 degrees, and all the water on the NY side was spraying up onto the land, causing everything to immediately freeze. I sort of felt like I was in the movie Frozen. My jacket and cameras were immediately frosted over, and my focus actually stopped working. I had to manually focus the whole time I was on the NY side. I think I've only been colder once in my life...at the Eagles 'Snow Bowl' game a couple of years ago! Luckily we prepared well for this trip and I had lots of layers and hand warmers so I was ok.

Later that night, we headed out to The Garrison House at Niagara-on-the-Lake for dinner, which I highly recommend. It was delicious! I had a local craft beer at dinner, and we ended up finding out the brewery, Silversmith Brewery, which was only about two miles away, was still open. We headed over to Silversmith, which was in a renovated church building, and had a couple of marvelous beers, and turned in for the night.

Niagara in the winter was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime awesome trip, and I really hope to make it back in a warmer season to check out all the vineyards Niagara-on-the-Lake has to offer. I am so glad I got to see the partially-frozen falls though!

This is the horseshoe-falls area, that you can really only see from Canada.

It was very wet and slushy the day we were there!

I still can't get over the beauty of these amazing ice formations.

Falls on the New York side, as seen from Canada.

It looks like powdered sugar, am I right?

Here I was standing just about on the USA side on the connecter bridge.

Looking down on the connector bridge. I can't get over the beautiful color of that water!

The New York side where everything was covered in ice in a Winter Wonderland!

Back on the bridge and heading toward Canada.

Everyone's looking for a way to stay warm!

Falls at night. Niagara was red and white for Canada, New York was red, white and blue for USA.

Area of Niagara-on-the-Lake where the lake was partially frozen.