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.