A cool damp ride. I definitely woke up and started having a great time after we entered Canada and met up with the Niagara Recreation Trail which gently wound its way along the Canadian shoreline. The falls were pretty impressive although Niagara Falls, the city, is a bit strange. The entire "downtown" has enormous hotels, Planet Hollywood, and a WWF amusement park. The real downtown where the hostel was is a depressed ghost-town. It's strangely empty with the hazy look of dust hanging in the air. The hostel was in a beautiful brick building with a quirky old caretaker. We met a few people passing through - a young British couple traveling through the US by Greyhound bus, an Australian brother and sister duo, and a South Korean girl traveling in the US by bus as well. We tried watching le Tour which aired at 10:30pm but both passed out and went to bed.

We made good miles in the early morning and crossed into Canada just as the thunderstorm approached. There was a menacing darkness over the Peace Bridge. The clouds formed into what seemed like a Macy's day parade balloon in the shape of Dick Cheney. It instilled fear in all of us.

The falls are more impressive then the clichéd postcards everybody has seen. There is a grandeur that is often lost in those cheap photographs. We finally checked into the Hostel where outside of watching some more of the Tour we got to speak with some Australians. I immediately inquired about the cane toads and received what I was looking for: Tim (the older brother) used to fasten knives on his remote control car and hunt cane toads. He said they were everywhere. Another story to add to my already colored vision of what Northern Queensland is like.