July 28, Friday, Newboro, Ontario

Another day was also spent at the Newboro lock in the little town of Newboro. We walked to town in the morning and treated ourselves to breakfast at the Sterling Inn.

Later we watched as other boaters came in, and were delighted to see Barefoot Lady again – Dodie and John – who we met on the wall in Ottawa. We helped them tie up and caught up a bit and made a plan to show them the town, all three businesses (!), when they were settled. I also spoke with Marilyn, one of the retired campers on the hill, and learned she is a professional organist, pianist and choir leader. I suggested that I might want to sing later and play my ukulele and she invited me to join their campfire where a friend often plays her guitar.

I invited John and Dodie to join us for dinner, as I was planning to make veggie Chili. This decision was made because the missing part for the pressure cooker suddenly turned up on the counter somehow. Turns out Dirk found it in the engine room! Huh? So I washed it thoroughly and later started pressure cooking the soaked beans. It seems to be going well when all of a sudden – stream and spatter! All the bean-colored water from the pot sizzled out of a small hole onto the walls, etc. No major harm was done and I don’t know why the newly found part failed, but it was exciting! Fortunately the beans were almost done and the chili turned out fine.

After dinner it turned out that the uke playing and singing happened on our sundeck as Dodie and I started going through some of my uke chord and lyric sheets (I brought 2 copies!) Dodie is a wonderful singer, and Dirk and John joined in for some songs. Later Marilyn joined us as well as another camper, and a guitar player across the canal was playing along with some songs, and we had neighbor from Quebec stop by and join us for a while. We were singing for about 2 hours on a narrow canal with about 10 boats around us, and we had no complaints and even some applause and a really good time!