Ahoy Matey

We attended this year's Pirate Festival in Gananoque last weekend.

There was a small ship

A dashing ship's Captain

Skeletons

Parrots

and of course, treasure.

Actually there was even an area where kids could dig for treaure.  There were lots of things for kids to do:

Games to play

Musical activities to take part in

Sword fighting

Over all, it was good family fun.  People were encouraged to dress in pirate garb, but not everyone did.

There was entertainment for adults too, including music

and dancing wenches

Here are some of my favorite Pirates of the day


The sword master

A fellow with a friend (this particular parrot wasn't real, but was animated)

The Newfie pirate, complete with Salt Water Sally

And of course, the star of the whole event, Capt N Tor











It wasn't huge, but it did make for an enjoyable afternoon and I'm glad we went. 

Christmas in the June Heat

As the heat shimmers off the pavement, and people are all finally happily wearing shorts and sandals, my hubby got to use his Christmas present for the first time.

I had found it difficult trying to find a present for him this past Christmas as he had more clothes than ever, and didn't need anything else either. Men aren't like women as they prefer things that are useful.  Women, on the other hand, are happy to receive nice things they would never buy for themselves.  And, as men do, he tends to buy what he needs or wants, when the thought occurs, even if it is just a couple of weeks before Christmas. That makes things even more difficult.

Then, online I discovered I could order packages of tickets to the theatre at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque well before they went on sale individually to the general public.  I remembered that he had mentioned we should go to a play several times over the past year or two. We used to go fairly often, but had not been for a while.  I thought this would be a great gift for him.

I discovered that instead of season's tickets there was also a package called the Flex 6 that sounded perfect.  I could buy these six tickets, and he could apply them to any play he chose at either of the two theaters, using as many as he cared to for any performance.  And, since I was buying them early, they would throw in an extra ticket.  He could use that to take his sister, or another family member or friend of his choice along with us. Or, as he chose to do, we could simply purchase another ticket after Christmas to pair with that one, and we would see four plays this coming year. He wisely decided to pick matinee performances so we could also enjoy Gananoque while we're in the area for the day. The bonus being that we don't have that long drive home late at night.

It seemed like a great gift, but thinking about it now, I realized that he never actually got anything until this past weekend.  After Christmas, he chose the four plays from the seven choices in the brochure I wrapped up, and picked the dates. By chance, the choices were all at the Springer Theatre anyway.  This weekend was the first time he ever got to see any of them.  We went to a musical romantic comedy called She Loves Me about two coworkers in a 1930's parfumerie who don't get along with one another. They each are secretly writing letters to a lonely hearts penpal they had never met. You can guess the rest.  It was a lively, fun loving show, with a lot of exaggerated but hysterical acting.  A few of the characters will be remembered forever in my mind, even though they were not the stars of the show.

Though I found myself recently feeling sorry for my hubby not actually getting the benefit of his Christmas present until six months later, I must say, I certainly can't complain about my choice.  Every time he gets to use this gift, I get to go along, not only to the play, but also to enjoy a meal out.  We had a lovely day and are already looking forward to the next outing.
 

Side Tracked

Thar be Pirates in Gananoque. Arrrrrr

Gananoque was holding its annual Pirate Festival, complete with a Captain Jack look alike contest and it just seemed like the perfect day to go spend some time by the water and enjoy all the fun.  I decided, since we were heading to an area that we don't get to all that often, I would download a few geocaches along the way.  It just seemed in keeping with a day with pirates, since pirates and treasures seem to go together.

Off we went and when we got to Crosby we discovered that their flee market was in full swing. Well, hey, treasure can be found at a place like that too, so we stopped and had a look around.  Before we were done, we had purchased three things.  If we had been heading for home, we would likely have left even more money there.  But some things just don't keep well in a hot car all day, so we'll just have to make a point of going back there before the season is over.

From there I noticed that there were some geocaches off to the right, and figured they were at the various locks nearby.  My satelight map somehow did not land on my GPS this time when I downloaded it, and though it showed up on my Base Camp program, the file could not be found even with a computer search, so I could not transfer it.  That meant we were pretty well flying blind.  My GPS has a basic map but if you go off a main highway none of the other roads show up on the screen. 

We followed the road to Davis Locks.  By the time we got there I thought we were actually driving around the lake, as we were driving away from the posted geocaches.  The road turned out to be a dead end when we got to the locks.  Still, it was a lovely spot, and very popular on this beautiful day.

By this time we were well aware that it was too hot to go to Gananoque and walk around all afternoon.  On our journey back to the main road we saw a sign pointing us to Chaffey's Mills. There are locks there too, so we took that road. Once more, I was amazed to discover we were headed away from the geocaches.  By this time we were getting hungry and thirsty so we found a little general store that served sandwiches and burgers. We had the latter along with a bag of chips and some soft drinks.  That helped refuel us for more explorations. 

Once we had thoroughly explored this location we decided to go through Forfar and head over to Athens.  It seems they had a tornado earlier this week.  There was lots of evidence of trees being snapped off and uprooted.  We saw a couple of garages that had definitely been hit by falling trees.  Most of the downed trees had been cleaned up, but not all of them.  There was one still leaning on a house. 

From there we headed for home, stopping to pick up a few groceries and a cooked chicken along the way.  It was not the day we had originally planned. We never did get to Gananoque, see any pirates, or even go looking for geocaching treasures.  Still, it turned out to be a perfect day and the treasures we found were the sights we saw.