What we did Last Summer Pt 2 (or maybe 3and 4 )

As I was TRYING to say.
We took a day trip down to Gloucester Mass..It's the fishing town that the movie The Perfect Storm was about. They've got a memorial to the 5000 fishermen who have lost their lives on the job (!!!) since the 1600's .

Also one for their wives and kids ..waiting for them to get home

Looking out to sea...which was like a mill pond that day.

 

The New England coastal towns are picky-postcard perfect

 Had to tear ourselves away though and head up for a look at Maine and then cross over to Niagara Falls on our way up to Canada .They are a good day out.Hundreds of thousands of gallons (4 times that in litres ) per second ....or minutes....or something......lots.

 The ducks didn't seem worried though

That's Canada in the mist/spray on the other side

 

Then it was off to Canada to see our friends Rick and Donna of Lorbas who we'd cruised in the Bahamas with in '08 and Cuba in '11 can't remember if we did a blog on that.

Anyway they live (in summer ) up in Georgian Bay north and west of Toronto. Beautiful area with lots of rocky islands and clear FRESH water.

This is their outlook from the bottom of their garden.

( below that is ...that's a hotel above )

Apparently it all freezes over in winter and they get around on snow mobiles etc. Well their neighbors do. Rick and Donna and Lorbas sail around the Bahamas/Caribbean area.

Then it was back over to the States via Buffalo where we met our first pain in the arse Border Security guy. He didn't seem to understand the word RETIRED and was convinced I was working in the USA. After he kept us hanging around for a couple of hours he snuck out and went off shift and was replaced by the usual courteous and friendly officer who gave us our visas...but did suggest that they normally like you to be out of the country for more than 5 days. Fair enough.

Next stop was Mansfield Ohio to see our favorite family the Morgans.

Ray , of course , is famously the son I never had....and never wanted.

 An old joke from way back when we first went to Oriental to buy Jabiru but we did spend a lot of time with Ray and Bridget and their 2 boys Max and Noah.....and I would have adopted Ray but would have had to take the whole package!

Anyway we had a good old play on the porch.

And even called our old mate Bob up to join in with his banjo

We left the boys at home one day (or rather they declined to join us old farts )and went up to the Rock an' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland

 

It was fantastic .Everything from...

The first Telecaster

To the first Rolling Stone mag.

Janis Joplins Porche

(even though she wanted a Merc. )

Jimi Hendricks couch...full of various stains and burn holes!

And everything you could think of  to do with our musical heroes.

Cool.

Another day we went to the Ohio State Reformatory , a beautiful old building built to give young criminals a sense of culture that they could aspire to.

Unfortunately the interior didn't really give that impression.

It was used for the filming of The Shawshank Redemption and as a Gulag for Airforce 1.

Looking at a photo of Max and Noah checking out one of the Shawshank props reminded me of how long we've been here.

 Anyway , as always ,it was time to keep moving . I forgot to mention that 'my boy ' Ray was all over town as a poster boy........so we got to give him another wave 'bye on the way out of town.

 We drove down through Amish country ,which I thought would be interesting but ........mmmm?
The scenery was stunning all the way down through the mountains and we were heading up to the Smokeys,where we would love to live one day , but thought we'd leave that 'til closer to Fall ( see earlier blog ) and turned off to go look at the old Civil War battleground of Gettysburg instead.