Scott the canoe and imported goodness

I had this idea.  No, really.

We were left all kinds of dishes when we took possession of the cottage, but I noticed that we didn't have much in the way of glass mugs for refreshing summer beverages.  With the added benefit of decluttering stately Fournier Manor in mind, we brought the pair of these to CFB Crow Lake.

Hmmmm...Grower's cider...

The mugs were a gift from Chantal when Christine and I visited Calgary in 1998.  We spent an afternoon at the Columbia Icefield (obviously) and these were given to us as a souvenir.  Here's a shot from that day.

What an intrepid looking bunch!

Prior to "renting" that delicious liquid, Christine and I called upon the adventurous spirit displayed above and took our canoe Scott out for a paddle.

Scott is actually his name.  It says so on the side.

We were roughly at Bambi levels of wobbly when we first set off, but settled in fairly quickly.  Tip: When you sit in the back, no one can see you loaf.

We made surprisingly good time and Oscar is WAY better in a canoe than in a kayak (shocking, I know) or pedal boat. Yes, he wanders around about a bit more than we'd like, constantly changing sides from which to look over the side (tip: It's just going to be more water), but he seems interested rather than nervous.  That's a significant upgrade.  So aside from occasionally licking or biting your paddle, he's absolutely no problem.

We set a goal of reaching Gull Rock.  A few weeks back, when I went to the cottage with my dad, he spotted what we both thought was a rather hardy kayaker in the distance, being that it was about 2 celsius out.  A dead kayaker seemed more likely when we saw him the next morning in that exact same spot, though a pile of rocks also made sense upon further reflection.

We (Christine and I) checked the map by the Captain's Chair and sure enough, it's a tiny rock formation and not a dead floater.  We resolved to investigate further and return with photographic evidence.  You might need to right click and open the picture below in another tab or window to get a better look.

So what's the tripod-looking thing in the middle?  We thought it might be a reflector to help passing boats avoid the rocks.  It also occurred to Christine that it may be a device built to study alien activity...or built BY aliens to study HUMAN activity.  Having heard too many stories about anal probes, I insisted we get out of there post-haste.  That's not the kind of story I want to tell around the campfire (although ask me about the misdiagnosis of my first kidney stone some time).

Then Kathy showed up and the weather went all to hell.  Coincidence?  I don't see how it can be.  More on that day's events later; I still need to trim and resize some shots first.

Oh yeah, and we saw Elvis.