Canadian Aviation Museum / Rideau Hall

We had a lazy morn­ing: break­fast in the room, show­ers, and so forth. We left the hotel about 11 AM, and drove out to the Avi­a­tion Muse­um, where I got to indulge one flavour of my nerdi­ness (includ­ing wear­ing a fight­er-jet hel­met dur­ing the ejec­tion seat demonstration).

The name­sake of my Air Cadet squadron, Lt. Col. Bark­er VC. 

Pat with the Canadarm. 

The Canadarm 

Tom­fool­ery at the Avi­a­tion Museum 

Tom­fool­ery at the Avi­a­tion Museum 

Fight­er-jet pilot hel­met. (Pho­to © 2017 Kath­leen Kalberg.) 

A DC‑3, aka Dako­ta, which I flew on more than once, back in my Air Cadet days 

The only Junkers J.1 still in exis­tence, it was sent to Cana­da from France in 1919 as a war prize. 

My flight at Air Stud­ies sum­mer camp was Voodoo Flight. 

The wings were stub­bier than I expected 

After lunch, we head­ed to our 3 o’clock tour of Rideau Hall, home of the new­ly-installed Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al, Her Excel­len­cy Julie Payette.

The Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al’s residence 

One of the rooms in Rideau Hall 

I’m not great at self­ies. Ask Kathleen! 

After that, we took about an hour to trav­el what the GPS said should take 9 min­utes. (Nev­er get lost dur­ing rush hour, kids.) We made it to the Mosaï­Cana­da gar­dens in Gatineau just in time for a cloud­burst, so we wait­ed it out in the car. As we were fin­ish­ing up the tour — like, in sight of the “Sor­tie / Exit” arrows — it start­ed to rain again.

Mosaï­Cana­da 150 

Mosaï­Cana­da 150 

Mosaï­Cana­da 150 

We head­ed off to Stel­la Luna for sup­per, but end­ed up find­ing the Mill Street Brew Pub sign instead. We called from the park­ing lot, and they said it was a half-hour wait. (Turned out to be almost an hour, but that’s OK, we sat at the bar and had tast­ing flights. I enjoyed the Milk­shake Cream Ale — IPAesque with flo­ral notes — and Kath­leen loved the Wel­ter­weight IPA, which is weird because she dis­likes IPAs as a gen­er­al rule.) Sup­per was amazing.

Back to the hotel, and crash into bed.

Step count: 8677.