Happy Saturday

Some days are bad, some days are good and once in awhile you get a really great day in there. Today was one of them days.

Ron and I just went for a day out today. We had lunch then went for a ride. I heard a restaurant I knew moved into the neighborhood, so I wanted to drive over and see if we could find it. Once that was confirmed, we thought we'd just take the lake road back towards home; the scenic route.

Once we got closer to home, I thought let's go down to the river and just walk around at the Black River Landing. You know, one of those local places that when you live close by, you never take full advantage of! It's a beautiful place. The city was having a back to school festival, and we walked around looking at a few things. Then we decided to walk over to the river. They have a nice boardwalk up and down the river and it's just very peaceful, very beautiful. And, I happen to really enjoy just watching the boats go up and down the river.

Where the road goes over the river, there is a "singing" bridge that will split at the middle with both sides lifting straight up to let taller ships or boats through. It's really cool when that happens! While we were standing there, we heard the bell whistle signaling that the bridge was about to go up. As long as we're there, we thought we'd stay and watch what was coming through. It could be a big barge headed in to port, it could just be a tall sail boat, it could be just about anything.

Imagine my surprise when we saw the Brig Niagara coming though! Talk about a blast from my past! With most of my life spent in Erie Pennsylvania, I have never seen this ship actually on the water. While it wasn't under the power of sail, it was still an awesome sight watching this magnificent ship come into dock right at the Black River Landing! The only camera we had was Ron's phone camera so he took the picture posted above. You can even see the road raised on the left of the picture!

It sounds silly, but this really made me emotional. Maybe for my lost youth, I don't know. Maybe just the magnificent sight of this old ship right in front of me. I felt the history before me, and in a way, I felt honored just to be there.

We really do need to take more advantage of what we have right in our own backyards. I would have driven a lot farther to see this, and here we are lucky enough to have this two miles from our house. What a great day.