3 - Tuesday in Kingston - Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Tuesday in Kingston - Necessity is the Mother of Invention

We woke early this morning to an overcast sky and spent a couple hours reading and enjoying the cool of the morning. I made a potato salad, Wayne washed up the dishes. He very cleverly used a folding colander as a dish drainer! No room for all the amenities of life. Make due with what you’ve got!

At 8 am we heard a wailing noise. What the heck? It’s a bagpiper! - in a complete kit including kilt and sporran! What an alarm clock! He is quite a site marching up and down the docks playing God Save the Queen! Probably a few who imbibed too heartily the night before were ready to cold cock the guy. Wayne and I thought it was pretty cool and raced to find the camera to take a picture.

It turned out to be another very hot day. We wandered around Kingston a bit, went shopping (more on that below) and hit the farmers market which was very expensive - corn: 75 cents per ear, $3.75 for a small cup of raspberries or blueberries! Holy cow! There were some interesting things there, but expensive so we didn’t stick around long. After We went for lunch at the Prince George Hotel and had Fish and Chips with Vinegar and Dungloe Sauce. We were very curious about the Dungloe Sauce and asked the waitress (who had a very lovely English accent by the way); Horseradish, Mayo, Yogurt, Capers, Peppers and a “few other things”. We liked it very much.

On the trip from Sackets to Oswego, we had peaches, oranges, apples and bananas. They took a bit of a beating, so on the trip from Oswego to Kingston, we tried tying them in bags from the hand rails in the main salon (i.e. where we do everything except sleep, brush our teeth and pee!). The onions had a nice mesh bag, but since we didn’t have anything else we used plastic shopping bags for the rest. The fact that they were hanging was great, but the plastic - not so good! Lucky it was only one day, but even at that the heat turned our oranges into a white fur ball! So we were looking for something we could use to hang the fruit. Originally I was thinking a toy hammock, or maybe a hank of fabric, table cloth or lace curtain. After much searching we finally found mesh laundry bags. Zippered top, nice soft mesh. Perfect!

After lunch we toured a redoubt where a swivel cannon was mounted to defend Kingston. ( http://www.kingstonhistoricalsociety.ca/murney.html ) The center is a massive column of stonework to support the weight of the cannon. The design and engineering is very impressive and quite a work of art too. We also found a Maritime Museum, a public beach, and some wonderful parks. The heat finally chased us back and we sat in the Marina lounge to cool off some before we headed back to the boat. Supper was cold turkey, salad, and just a bit of 75 cents an ear corn. Way too hot to try and cook. We took some of those extravagantly expensive raspberries and put them on top of some vanilla yogurt. A treat to die for!

We finally had a cold front come through that gave us a blessed cool breeze that dropped the temperature to about 80 degrees. A nasty thunderstorm passed just north of us but we were lucky and never even saw a drop of rain. Nice and cool sleeping - finally!