We started to ride across the bridge at Niagra to Canada, but took one look at the line of cars waiting to cross and decided that we didn't want to sit in line just to dip our toes over the border and ride right back. So, toes stayed in the good ol' US of A.

Known simply as the Falls , with the Horseshoe on the Canadian side and the American and Bridal Veil on the U.S. side, these raging cataracts serve as the conduit for shifting water from the four Upper Great Lakes to Lake Ontario and eventually out to the ocean. That's an awful lot of water, as the Great Lakes hold about 20 percent of the world's fresh supply of the precious liquid. The 2,600-foot wide Horseshoe Falls, for example, blast 600,000 gallons per second down their 170-foot face. This is looking from the US toward Canada.