Columbus Day Weekend and the Ice Cream Gods

Finally had a four day weekend, it was just about perfect timing, as I was definitely ready for a little bit of time off.
My sister came up for the long weekend, and we ended up having a pretty good weekend, especially considering that we didn't have any plans made before she got here. We spent Friday evening trying to figure out what we were going to do. At first we thought about going to Niagara Falls, but then decided that was a bit too far to drive for just a couple of days. My platoon sergeant had mentioned that Alexandria Bay was supposed to be pretty, so we did what any modern girls would do, and googled it. Turns out they have the Thousand Islands Winery up there, and that they were hosting an Oktoberfest this weekend. And then it turned out that this was one of the last weekends that Boldt Castle was open, and so it seemed that all signs pointed towards heading to Alex Bay.
The Oktoberfest was fun, although it was a bit funny since they had more wine than beer (it was a winery, so I guess that figures). There was a crafts fair set up outside, and it all had a decidedly small town feel that felt comfortable even though we'd never been there before and didn't know anyone else that was there. People were sharing around some of the goodies they'd purchased, and offering to share the bottles of wine they'd ordered, which was definitely different than you'd probably have in a lot of places. They had a Bavarian band which was pretty decent, although they didn't use the accordian for the Chicken dance song. Oh well, guess you can't have everything, and it was an awful lot of fun.
The day after the Oktoberfest we went on a boat cruise on the St. Lawrence Seaway, and saw some of the Thousand Islands (the guide informed us that there are over more than a thousand and that they're split between the US and Canada). The weather this weekend was incredible, and was probably one of the last nice weekends that we'll be having in the North Country. After spending about 2 hours out on the water, we stopped at Heart Island and visited Boldt Castle. Boldt Castle is a story of why decisions made in the name of love aren't always the smartest things to do. Back in 1900, the family which owned the island decided to tear down their curent house and construct a castle in the European tradition. George Boldt (the husband/father) said he wanted to build a castle because his wife was a queen. They spent millions of dollars scouring the world for the perfect decorations, furnishings, etc and the castle was going to be absolutely incredible. Except that in 1904, his wife died from consumption, so he ordered all work on the castle stopped immediately, and forbid his children from ever working on it or living there, and no one from the family was to ever set foot on the island again. It was abandoned for decades, before the Thousand Island Bridge Authority finally bought the island and the castle with the agreement that they would never finish the construction, would never turn it into a restaurant or a resort, and would never make any money from the castle. So now, all these people get to visit the castle and imagine how spectacular it could have been if the dude didn't go off the deep island when his wife died.
We came back to my apartment on Sunday night and just kind of did a bit of chilling and watching some of the TV shows that I'd recorded. Nice and restful, and then decided that maybe we could do with a little bit of ice cream. I was in my PJs already, so Ashley said she'd run to Wal-Mart, which is literally like 2 mins away from my apartment. After about 10 mins she came back in and said my car wouldn't start. No matter what we tried, we couldn't get the key to turn in the ignition. Aside from the fact that we wouldn't get to have any ice cream for the night, it was a big problem because I was supposed to drive her to the airport for an early flight in the morning. So we ended up having to call and pay to change her flight to a late one, and Monday morning I got to wake up, call the dealer, have them send out a tow truck and spend almost the entire day sitting waiting for them to be able to fix my car. Turned out that some stupid little pin in the key cylinder had broken and was wedged in such a way that the keys wouldn't be able to turn. Once they actually figured that out and got the cylinder out, it took about 20 mins to fix, but it ended up wasting my whole day. Still, we decided that the ice cream gods must have been smiling on a couple of old trou (please, no EO complaints, I know its not PC, but what the heck, it makes the telling of the story so much better), and that our faithful devotion to ice cream allowed us to find out about the problem on Sunday night when we could actually do something to solve it instead of finding out Monday morning and missing Ash's flight.
I guess all things considered things worked out as best they could if the stupid car was going to break, but it just put a real damped on what was otherwise a great weekend.