Eggertsville, NY Outdoor Activities

The 12-foot-wide vertical wind tunnel at Niagara Freefall Indoor Skydiving & Interactive Center stretches 20 feet to the ceiling. Inside, it churns with currents of recirculating air—a system that allows its operators to control the wind conditions and temperature regardless of outside weather. Padded walls and floors, as well as trained instructors, keep those inside safe as they're borne aloft by currents of up to 120 miles per hour. Instructors prepare adventurers—who may be as young as 7 years old—for these turbulent conditions during preflight training sessions, during which they divulge flight physics, safety, and communication hand signals. They also encase their visitors in all necessary safety gear, such as helmets, pads, flight suits, and invisible force fields.

For 35 years, the instructors and staff of Dip 'N Dive have demystified the magic of breathing underwater. They instruct and outfit both scuba divers and snorkelers at their Buffalo location, and the facility's curriculum of PADI and NAUI courses help budding divers stay safe, maintain control of their equipment, and walk like Naomi Campbell while wearing fins. From beginning diving lessons to advanced instructor training, courses include classroom work, pool exercises, and real open-water-diving trips.

The dedicated guides of Niagara Fun Tours escort flocks of visitors around the Niagara region during scenic seasonal tours. Seasonal winery tours visit and taste at four wineries studding the Niagara Wine Belt, where settings range from mountain chalets to baroque and modern castle decor to rustic wood farmhouses. Visitors can also opt for a discovery tour to glimpse Niagara Falls. Guides often conclude their tours with stops at locales such as the fresh-fare-focused Kurtz Orchards marketplace or Chocolate FX, where chocolate artisans fashion often-unconventional taste combinations using traditional panning and moulding techniques. Oenophiles and sightseers embark on a new microbrewery and winery tour, a seasonal winery tour, or scenic tours of Niagara Falls. The four-hour winery-and-microbrewery bus tour makes stops at three nearby microbreweries along with two wineries in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Participants enjoy tastings at each location, have a chance to grab some lunch at Benchmark restaurant, and receive a sneak peek of at least one brewery's production facility. Niagara Fun Tours also provides round-trip transportation for each tour, loading guests into large shuttles that accommodate up to 48 passengers or into vehicles that accommodate up to 24 giraffes.

For all its might, Niagara Falls remains one of the world's youngest geological formations, carved by the melting of glaciers a mere 12,300 years ago. Its thunder power has fascinated humanity for the extent of documented North American history, from the Native Americans who lived in the region to the French priest Louis Hennepin, the first European to behold the cascade. That power also drew early captains of industry, who sought to harness the ferocious rush of liquid with water wheels, an idea so common it threatened to ruin the area's natural beauty. In 1885, some of the earliest ecological crusaders changed history—successfully pressuring the state government into designating the Falls and its surrounding lands as one of the United State's oldest State Parks.

Today, the Park serves as a popular destination for tourists in search of natural wonder, wedding parties and honeymooners seeking an unforgettable backdrop, and coopers seeking to market their barrels as recreational vehicles.

In addition to outfitting aquatic adventurers with necessary equipment, Buffalo River Canoe and Kayak Outfitters sends groups of paddlers splashing downstream during guided explorations seven days a week. Headlining an assortment of trips, the Buffalo River Urban Trails tour unveils some of the city's historic waterfront sights, highlighted by industrial-area businesses and grain elevators that stand as towering links to an agrarian past or prophesies to an apocalyptic future where morsels of homogenized chicken byproduct no longer exist. The Outfitters' other point-to-point adventures—ranging from 2.5 to 6 miles apiece—also provide varying launch points, such as Red Jacket River Front Park and Seneca Bluffs.