Wyland is a famous marine life artist. We learned that he would be at his gallery at the Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort. We decided that we should go and combine it with a little trip over the border to Buffalo, New York.
Karen’s friend Helayne came down from her cottage and we met up with Karen’s friend Paula at the Ikea in Burlington. The drive to the border was fine except that it took us over 1 hour to cross the border.
Our first stop was at Big Lots. We each picked up a Cocomotion for $16.99 … what a bargain. They sell for $50 here in Canada. We stopped by Wegmans for a few groceries and then headed to the Cracker Barrel for an early dinner. Helayne enjoyed herself at the Cracker Barrel since it combined two of her favourite things … eating and shopping. We crossed back into Canada and headed over to the Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort.
We found the gallery and walked in to find Wyland painting away. We took lots of pictures and we got him to sign a few things. I got him to sign a picture of the sail that he gave to Captain Gene of the Scotch Mist II (Travel Blog entry). Wyland said that that was the first time that he had seen the sail.
We left the gallery and went into the casino to see if we could win some money. I was fortunate enough to turn $20 into $80.
We went back to the gallery to see what was going on. Wyland decided to auction off the painting that he was working on. We were told that normally this size of painting is around $30,000. Wyland started the bidding at $12,000. It went up by $500 until it got to $17,000. There were 3 people bidding on it. Wyland decided that instead of getting the price sky-high, he would just paint a picture for each of the other 2 people that were bidding.
I can’t believe Dorothy didn’t bid on the painting with her winnings!