As part of our Salem trip on Thursday, we wanted to visit the Riverfront Carousel.  I checked the website and it was still on summer hours so was open until 7:00 pm.  When the discovery village (see prior post) closed at 5:00 pm, we headed to the carousel, about a quarter of a mile away.

When we got there, alas, it had closed at 5:00 pm for a private function.  I expressed (politely, I hope – sadly I don’t always handle these setback things well) my frustration to the worker telling us it was closed, indicating that the website had said it would be open until 7:00.  He asked if we would be able to come back the next day.  Unfortunately, no as we were heading home to Canada on Friday morning.  So he told us to go in and tell the worker running the carousel that ‘Joe said we could have a short ride for free’.

Vic, the volunteer running the carousel, asked us to wait for a couple of minutes – and then included us with the paid event – as they were not counting how many rides were taken or anything.  At the end of the ride, he asked if the kids wanted to stay on for another free ride, so we happily took him up on it, the kids all changed horses and we went around again for a while longer.

So, a wonderful time was had by all – and many thanks to Joe and Vic for allowing us to experience the Salem Carousel.