If you are planning a romantic getaway to Niagara Falls, you have probably already started thinking about your accommodation and travel requirements. By following a few simple guidelines you can find the best Niagara Falls hotel packages for your needs and pocket.

When planning a trip anywhere you should start by considering your budget for the vacation. What can you afford? How much of that will be taken by travel and daily expenses such as food. How much can you spend on your accommodation? Booking a romantic 5 star luxury hotel with private Jacuzzi and deck is impractical if you cannot afford to eat for the duration of your stay.

Finding the best Niagara Falls hotel packages for your getaway requires planning ahead. Start searching early, both online and offline, to see what is available and how each package compares to the other. Some companies may offer you a full travel and accommodation package, but do your research to ensure this is better than booking hotel and flights separately.

Are you prepared to travel off-season? Niagara Falls is beautiful at anytime of year, and if you are happy to travel off-peak you will find better value and more inclusive packages. The busiest time of year at Niagara Falls is during the summer months, so consider a romantic winter or spring break.

What do you want from your vacation? If this is a second honeymoon for you and your partner I am sure you will not want to be surrounded by screaming kids on their school vacation. Look for a package that gives you the opportunity to enjoy your partner’s company in privacy and quiet.

Do you want to be in walking distance of all the sites or are you happy to travel? You may find a better hotel package further away from the main hub of activity.

Plan ahead, do your research and make your hotel and travel bookings early, to take advantage of the best Niagara Falls hotel packages available.

Ever the romantic, Issy Hart enjoys discovering new nc-romantic-getaway.info” title=”romantic getaways Romantic Getaways around the world, including finding the best romantic oakes-hotel-niagara-falls.info” title=”hotel packages for niagara falls Hotel Packages for Niagara Falls

The UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites considers 830
properties world wide as having outstanding universal
value, 13 of those are in located in Canada, and 5 of
those are in Alberta.

1. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.

For thousands of years the native people of North
America used the Buffalo to provide them with life’s
necessities, meat, clothing, shelter, tools and fires.
They stampeded herds over large cliffs and butchered
them at the bottom where they had camps set up. The
skeletal remains, at places more than 30 feet deep, are
still there. At the butchering camp the remnants of meat
caches and cooking pits are on top of layers of bones.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is known around the world
as a remarkable testimony of prehistoric life.

2. Dinosaur Provincial Park

The first time we traveled through Alberta, the
landscape suddenly changed. We felt like we had
literally landed on the moon. A feeling shared by many.
Strange land formations rise up on all sides, sculpted
by wind and water into beautiful shapes sunbathed in
terra cotta, bronze and amber. A trip to Dinosaur
Provincial Park is a 75 million-year trip back in time.
This region was then a subtropical paradise populated by
turtles, crocodiles and sharks. Here dinosaurs once
hunted and mated, and ultimately met their demise,
leaving an amazingly rich fossil and bone record for us
to discover today. Dinosaur Provincial Park — a world
heritage site like nowhere else on earth!

3 Wood Buffalo National Park

With 44,807 square kilometres, Wood Buffalo is Canada’s
largest national park. It was established in 1922 to
protect the last remaining herds of bison in northern
Canada. Today, it protects Canada’s Northern Boreal
Plains. The largest free-roaming, self-regulating bison
herds in the world, the only remaining nesting ground of
the endangered whooping crane, the biologically rich
Peace-Athabasca Delta, extensive salt plains, and some
of the finest examples of gypsum karst topography in
North America.

4 Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks

Seven parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains have some of
the best-known mountain scenery on Earth. More than nine
million people annually visit the seven preserves along
the Alberta-British Columbia border. There are four
national parks in the ensemble — Banff, Jasper, Yoho and
Kootenay. They account for most of the preserve’s 22,990
square kilometres. Adjoining them are three British
Columbia provincial parks — Mount Robson, Mount
Assiniboine and Hamber.
The park has a wealth of natural wonders: jagged peaks
and conifer-clad slopes, silt-laden glacial streams and
turquoise lakes, the vast Columbia Icefield and the
complex Castleguard Caves. The Burgess Shale, in Yoho,
contains one of the world’s most significant finds of
soft-bodied, Middle Cambrian-age marine fossils, with
about 150 species, including some bearing no resemblance
to known animals.

5 Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

The abrupt rise of the Rockies from the prairie
flatlands has made the twin parks the place “where the
mountains meet the prairie.” Nature has provided much
that is worthy of protection: high mountains and deep
canyons, forest belts and prairie grasslands, deep
glacial-trough lakes and rivers that feed three oceans.
Diversity of wildlife – mountain goats, bighorn sheep,
coyotes, grizzly bears, scores of birds, and a
celebrated “international” herd of elk that migrates
annually between summer mountain habitat in Glacier and
winter prairie ranges in Waterton.
The highlight of Waterton’s sparkling chain of lakes is
the international Upper Waterton Lake, the deepest lake
in the Canadian Rockies. In 1932, the park was joined
with Montana’s Glacier National Park to form the
Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park – a world
first.

With information obtained from Canada’s Parks.
pc.gc.ca/progs/spm-whs/index_E.asp

Francine Gielis immigrated to Canada in 1971. She has
been an employer, an employee, an importer, exporter,
entrepreneur and long time volunteer. She considers
herself a happy, successful and fully integrated and
passionate Canadian citizen. Learn more about
immigrating to and life in Canada from her website
the-happy-immigrant.com the-happy-immigrant.com

If you want once-in-a-lifetime adventures, enjoy learning about U.S. history, and seeing amazing sights, the National Parks will provide experiences you’ll always remember.

And if you’re one of the more than 125,000 people who collect National Park cancellation stamps, like I do, you’ll find the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park in Virginia a joy to discover while zigzagging across the United States on your giant scavenger hunt. More about the stamps in a minute.

No other country has anything that even comes close to the U.S. National Park System. It ranks as one of America’s most magnificent achievements. While other countries have preserved lands, the U.S. National Park System is a core part of America’s identity. The National Parks logged 275 million visitors last year. By comparison, that’s over three times greater than the number of passengers traveling through the world’s busiest airport in Atlanta in 2005.

Have you visited a National Park recently? The Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park located in Virginia provides a wonderful glimpse into the U.S. Civil War period. Authorized in 1933, the park had 535,000 visitors in 2005.

Other fun facts:

Commemorates four Civil War engagements: the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Chancellorsville Campaign, the Battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

Includes the location where Stonewall Jackson was fired upon by his own men (Chancellorsville visitor center), the burial site of his left arm (Ellwood) and where he died (Jackson Shrine).

Has three historic buildings used as medical facilities during the Civil War (Old Salem Church, Chatham and Ellwood). The bullet holes are visible from the church pews.

Displays pontoon bridges used by the Union Army to cross the Rappahannock River.

Just 60 miles south of Washington, DC, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park offers a view of four Civil War battles.

Now, back to those cancellation stamps.

They resemble the post office’s cancellation stamp you see on the mail in your mailbox. Not all parks have cancellation stamps and some parks have several unique cancellation stamps scattered across a variety of park locations, such as visitor centers, entrance gates, and ranger huts.

In most cases, you can apply the stamp yourself, although in some parks the rangers will apply the stamp for you.

You can get in on the fun, too, by visiting the more than 460 national parks, seashores, lakeshores, recreation areas, historic sites, battlefields, memorials, monuments, trails, preserves, reserves, scenic rivers, parkways and heritage areas across the United States.

Karen Midkiff’s Got the Stamp? book series provides quick and easy instructions for collecting the most cancellation stamps in the shortest amount of time. The series includes nine National Park U.S. regional guides (Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, National Capital, North Atlantic, Pacific Northwest & Alaska, Southeast, Southwest, Rocky Mountain, and Western) and select individual state guides.

The National Park Mid-Atlantic, National Capital, North Atlantic and Florida guides are available at

Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is a must for serious hikers on the west coast and through much of the world. While it can be great, you need to keep an eye out for potential critter problems.

Pacific Crest Trail

The Pacific Crest Trail stretches from the Mexican border to Canada. It contains some of the most beautiful scenery you will see anywhere. The trail is set up in such a way that as much as 80 percent of it can be done with day hikes, which makes it a very attractive option for long weekends.

Since the Pacific Crest Trail is so easy to day hike, many hikers fail to take into account the animals that cross the trail on a daily basis. Of course, this can lead to small inconveniences or horrendous disasters you read about in the newspaper. Here’s a list of critters you should keep in mind.

1. Mosquitoes – Where there is water, there seems to be mosquitoes. The sections of the trail in Southern California aren’t too bad, but northern areas can be horrendous. As spring comes on, the snow in the mountains starts to melt and you get standing water. During these periods, there can be absolute clouds of mosquitoes in some areas. The area around Klamath should be avoided at all costs in June. Just don’t go.

2. Snakes – Most snakes are not confrontational. On the southern sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, you are definitely going to see rattlesnakes. When you do, just calmly walk away from them.

3. Mountain Lions – Mountain lions can be a bit troubling. They are much bigger than you think, weighing as much as a couple hundred pounds. They are also known to track humans on the trail, but attacks are extremely rare. If you do happen upon one, do not run away or start screaming. Mountain lions are predators, so don’t act like prey. Just stand there or calmly back away. Try to grab a stick or even a can of mace if you have one.

4. Bears – Black bears can be found in mountain areas, but are fairly harmless. Unlike what you see in movies, these bears tend to eat plants and you don’t look appetizing. If you see cubs, absolutely leave the area as calmly, but quickly as possible. Mother bears are very aggressive if they think cubs are in trouble. You don’t want to face off with an angry bear.

5. Humans – As with all aspects of society, there are scumbags on trails. If you objectively feel you can handle yourself, don’t worry about it. If not, it is best to travel with another hiker you know well on the odd chance you run across a jerk.

In retrospect, that may all sound rather horrific. In truth, those hiking the Pacific Crest Trail rarely run into problems. Just make sure you keep in mind you are in the wild, not your local canyon.

Rick Chapo is with NomadJournals.com – makers of nomadjournals.com/hiking_trail_journal.cfm hiking trail journals. Visit NomadJournalTrips.com to read more articles about nomadjournaltrips.com/hiking hiking and nomadjournaltrips.com the great outdoors.