SKYTRAILS is Complete//Niagara Falls

Welcome to the August 2025 edition of...
What I'm Into, What I'm Up To
#59

IT'S DONE!

On August 3rd, I finished the audio and final edits for the third book in the SKYTRAILS trilogy, Return Of Spirits Lost.

The ebook went live on the 7th. All three ebooks are up on Amazon (exclusively, for now).

I thought about sending an email on the 7th, but, for one thing, I've been sending a lot of emails this summer. And, for another thing, I was with my family at Niagara Falls on the day the ebook went live.

Niagara Falls... With Style

I've been wanting to do a real, all-the-frills Niagara Falls trip for years.

We went once when Asher was a baby, but only stayed long enough to look at the view from the Canada side and get some food.

This time, though, we did it all!

We started on the New York side and did Maid of the Mist and Cave of the Winds (which would both make great fantasy novel titles).

If you don't know, Maid of the Mist (and its Canadian opposite, Hornblower) are fleets of big, two-story boats that go right up next to Horseshoe Falls, which is the big U-shaped waterfall featured in most Niagara Falls photos.

It is fun and definitely worth doing, but by the time you get close to the falls, you need a diving mask and snorkel to see anything. I guess that's why it's called Maid of the Mist, but it seems like Maid of the Torrential Downpour would be more fitting.

Cave of the Winds is a walkway at the base of Bridal Veil Falls which has to be rebuilt every season. The part of the walkway closest to the falls is called the hurricane deck. Our son, Ezra, said being on the hurricane deck was the best thing he had ever done in his whole life.

If you want to get the same effect at home, have someone stand on a ladder and spray a pressure washer at you while wearing a full body plastic poncho. The ponchos are included in the cost, but we all still got at least partially soaked with them on.

Then we went to the Canada side and bought another combo pass which included Journey Behind the Falls, The Power Station (which is fairly new as an attraction and very interesting and included a long walk through a deep tunnel and lots of info about Tesla—the man, not the car company—who had a lot to do with bringing hydro-electric power to Niagara Falls and the world), the Whirpool Aerocar (still in operation after over a hundred years), the Whitewater Walk, and a butterfly observatory. Oh, and 2-day passes for the incline railway and the bus, both of which were pretty close to essential.

So, yeah, we did all the things everyone is supposed to do when they go to Niagara Falls. And there's still a bunch of stuff left over to do next time.

We also spent a few days in Toronto with family and did a quick tour of that fair city, and on the way back home we stopped at the Corning Museum of Glass (where the glassblowing show, Blown Away, is filmed) for a couple hours. I learned way more about glass than I ever thought possible.

All in all, great trip! We each walked away with 4 new ponchos. Well 3 new ponchos. The ones from Cave of the Winds were pretty much destroyed. So if you want to spend a lot of money on some souvenir ponchos, Niagara Falls is the place you ought to go.

Currently Watching

The Gilded Age on Max (or HBOGo or whatever they're calling themselves now) is by the same person/people who made Downton Abbey, according to reliable sources.

I never got into Downton, and I saw enough of it to have gotten into it if I was going to get into it, but I am into The Gilded Age.

It's about the rich families of 1880s New York (and Newport, Rhode Island, which I only mention because we went there once and toured one of the fancy gilded age beach homes called 'The Breakers') and the social politics of old money versus new money... and race, and gender, and freedom, and greed, and all the usual human drama.

It's a little soap-opera-y, but not too much. If you're looking for something dramatic, but humorous, with a great cast, and serious-but-not-too-dark subject matter—I recommend checking it out.

Currently Reading

I finally finished Hounded (book one in the Iron Druid Chronicles) by Kevin Hearne and liked it! My friends were right. I plan to continue the series... eventually.

Right now, I'm reading Coyote America by Dan Flores, about... well... coyotes. In America. Super interesting. Also, Playground by Richard Powers, about a handful of characters and how their lives intertwine with one another and with the ocean.

Currently Quoting

I went down a rabbit hole recently which led to some funny quotes about tea and coffee:

"Tea and coffee have been more effective in containing the vice of drunkenness than all the teachings of the moralists and the learning of the Enlightenment."
—Unknown

"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."
—Attributed to a 'distinguished citizen of North Carolina', 1840 (often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln)

"The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of the time, even at breakfast, were weak ‘small beer’ and wine. … Those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert and stimulated, rather than relaxed and mildly inebriated, and the quality and quantity of their work improved. … Western Europe began to emerge from an alcoholic haze that had lasted for centuries."
—Tom Standage, historian

That first quote is apparently misattributed by the Corning Museum of Glass to Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, the comte de Mirabeau, a French Revolutionary statesman. But he seems like an interesting guy. Here are two authentic quotes from him:

"Nothing baffles the schemes of evil people so much as the calm composure of great souls."

And—

“The little wisdom that the world possesses, was introduced by lunatics.”