The first item of business concerns where we are living. We first moved into site 36 at the KOA and thought that would be it for the rest of the summer. With the heat, sunshine, and wind the west facing lot made it impossible to sit out in the evening; something you know we love.

So we asked the folks at the KOA to give us a new pad if it became available and on the 1st of August a great one opened up. We have a tree!  The sun sets in the direction this picture is taken and the tree is a real benefit. It also cuts the wind a bit and we are now able to sit out in the shade of the old oak tree.



This weekend is also the Kempenfest, one of the largest functions hosted by Barrie and anything north of Toronto. Every month in Canada has a Monday holiday ... nice touch. This month, like in the US, has no natural holiday to celebrate so they just made Monday off and call it the Civic Holiday and it is normally a big deal.

Barrie closes off their waterfront and hosts over 400 vendors and many bands to entertain several hundred thousand visitors for the three day weekend.

The festival is right in front of the condos on the waterfront and well laid out. Unfortunately the weather was a bit hot for us old folks. We hit the place on Saturday morning with about 100,000 other folks and it was already about 85 and 85 percent humidity ... yuk.

We walked about a mile along the waterfront through the lines of people and trade booths and then by 11 am we were so hot and soaked with sweat we crumped. Here's some jugglers who were quite impressive.

And this is for the Tillema's. After about two hours of festing and sweating we decided that the Irish had a better idea. There's an Irish Pub on the main street of Barrie and as we hadn't been there before ... and it was air conditioned ... we settled down for a break.

Here's the ol guys with a couple of pints of Harp ... really welcome today. I've got some awesome ground lamb soft tacos which were really super accompanied by a Cesar salad. Jo had a steak sandwich which was open face and covered with brie and mushrooms and accompanied with some chips and gravy.  Pubs R Us!