This is the part I’ve been dreading for the past seven hours-changing into my thermal underwear outside. My dashboard thermometer reads 19 degrees. The parking lots at this summer concert venue are close to trails and stairs where anglers can access the river. I reach the Lewiston Art Park around 2:30 a.m. Cosmo Condina North America/Alamy Staking Claims The bottom of the Niagara Gorge at Lewiston, N.Y. ![]() Even with some of its power harnessed, Niagara Falls still pulverizes enough limestone, shale, and sandstone to give an aquamarine cast to the Lower Niagara’s waters. The hydroelectric plants that divert the water from above the falls and deposit it in the lower river generate one-quarter of the electricity used in New York and Ontario, Canada. The falls continued retreating 3 to 5 feet closer to Lake Erie each year, until water management over the past century reduced that number to about 1 foot. Twelve-thousand years ago, Niagara Falls plummeted over the Niagara Escarpment here, but centuries of erosion have moved the 8th Wonder of the World 7 miles upriver. This monotonous drive will terminate in Lewiston, New York, a village 30 minutes north of Buffalo, where there are coffee shops, art galleries, and historic hotels, all set along the banks of the Lower Niagara River. ![]() My family was unimpressed but unsurprised, having grown accustomed to my nighttime departures, whether they be midweek hunts for striped bass in June, offshore marathons for tuna in August, or cannonball runs for steelies in the fall and winter months. Four hours earlier, I’d pushed away from the Thanksgiving dinner table (“No pumpkin pie for me, thanks”) to head for the far western corner of New York. ![]() Caffeine and tryptophan have been at war in my bloodstream for most of the drive across New York State from my in-laws’ on Long Island, and I need to refill on the former to overcome the latter. Around the time Black Friday shoppers are lining up for “midnight madness” sales, I pull into the empty Seneca travel plaza off I-90 in Victor, New York.
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