First, we again spent a leisurely morning on the rooftop of our B&B in Brockville.

We started our drive to Ottawa with various stops along the way. Our first stop was at Prescott another lovely riverside town.  We parked along the river and walked along the lovely riverfront and went for stroll.

We passed Shakespeare’s Garden which had some lovely flowers. Always worth a stop in my opinion. I love gardens. Sadly, I am too lazy to garden.

After that, I made a series of mistakes.

Then we saw 2 lighthouses. I also love lighthouses and we saw many of them in eastern Canada. first one was Prescott Rotary lighthouse named after the local Rotary Club no doubt. It is a rather small lighthouse and I doubt it ever operated.

The second lighthouse we saw was the Prescott Heritage Harbour Lighthouse.

Later I realized we had missed the best lighthouse of all, the Windmill Point Lighthouse. It is located on a height of land near the town of Prescott not in the town so we missed it. We would have had to travel a bit farther east, but had I known about it, I would have meandered there.  So it was the fault of inadequate research that I did not know it is there. A little advance research on a place is usually well worth the effort. I was bad again. That was mistake no. 1.

This was not the last mistake I made this day. Not by a long shot! But first we stopped for lunch at an Irish Pub. That is never a mistake.  This one was called O’Heaphy’s Irish Pub. And here we did something truly remarkable. We did not purchase any liquor. Just lunch!    It was sacrilegious to avoid liquor in an Irish Pub but we did it. And the lunch was great.

I ate chicken tenders and Chris dined on bangers and mash.  A friend of mine once said all Irish food is abominable, but this is a slight exaggeration. We had to eat inside the pub, rather than the patio because all the tables with chairs were taken. That was pity, because it was a beautiful warm afternoon. Inside the pub, there were 3 television sets going in sports bar style. I hate that style. Huge TV sets everywhere you look. No matter how diligent you cannot avoid these huge moving screens which draw your eye to them no matter how hard you don’t want to see them This bar though had sports on only 1 of them. The other two played religious preaching, but thankfully without sound. Sermons inside an Irish Pub really would be too much. That would also be sacrilegious too.

Maybe none of this should be surprising because earlier I misread a sign: as “God and Country Club.”

After that we set out for Ottawa our destination, where we had arranged to join my niece Shannon, her husband Colin, and daughter Teddy.  But half-way there when we stopped at a Tim’s for a donut and coffee, I realized what my big mistake of the day was. I had left my credit card at the gas station in Prescott earlier in the morning.  I couldn’t reach them on the phone so had to drive about half an hour back hoping they found it.  This was not my kind of meandering. And here I learned a valuable lesson. Most people are honest. A customer had spotted my card at the gas pump where I had self-served gas and the staff had it waiting for me to came back. Needless to say, I was very grateful. People are good.

After that we continued on to Shannon’s home where we had a delightful meal with them and their parents Harv and Barb Lane who had been at the same celebration of life.  Here we had another kind of celebration. She and Colin are outstanding cooks and hosts. Colin also took me for a spin in his BMW electric and show me how fast it could accelerate silently. It went 0 to 90 km. inside one city block in an instant.  It was frankly, astounding to a rube like me. The future is here.

Life was good again. Thanks to good people. Even though I was sacrilegious.