Costumes like the one actress Robin Hutton wears in this year's production of Hello Dolly!, will eventually end up in the Stratford Festival's Costume Warehouse in Perth County. Touring the museum is sure to bring out the ham in you. -- David Hou/Stratford Festival of Canada

The woman pivots in front of a full-length mirror, the floor-length velvet robe swirling like a cape. Her husband doffs a broad-brimmed, plumed hat in a courtly and admiring bow.

If there's a little ham in you, a tour of the Stratford Festival's Costume Warehouse will bring it out.

It's one of world's biggest, storing an estimated 40,000 costumes. Each was created for the Festival by a skilled team that made more than 1,000 outfits for the 2004 season alone.

Public tours, which include a look at a huge number of theatrical props, began in late May and continue through Saturday, Nov. 5. They're offered Wednesdays to Saturdays on dates when a matinee performance is scheduled at the Festival Theatre. Book online at stratfordfestival.ca or call 1-800-567-1600.

The Costume Warehouse is just one of Perth County's unusual attractions.

St. Marys, just west of Stratford, is home of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Fergie Jenkins' Cy Young Award is there. So are rings from the Blue Jays' 1992 and 1993 World Series, a turnstile from the old Maple Leaf Stadium in Toronto, and some wonderful photos of baseball superstars and baseball action.

So is a copy of a letter in which a St. Marys native, Dr. Adam Ford, described the first recorded game of baseball, played at Beachville, not far from St. Marys, on June 4, 1838.

The facility sits on 13 hectares of donated land, most of which is devoted to three baseball fields. The biggest, in a hollow with grassed banks around it, is slightly larger than the one at SkyDome. Behind home plate are some of the 2,000 blue seats from the old Exhibition Stadium in Toronto the museum owns.

The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is open 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends in May, and daily the same hours June 1 to Thanksgiving weekend. Phone 877-250-BALL or visit baseballhalloffame.ca.

Tucked away on an unpaved road north of Milverton is the first straw museum in North America -- and one of the very few in the world -- which opened last summer.

Most of the objects are from Switzerland, collected over the years by Nelly Hofer and her mother-in-law, Marie.

You'd expect straw hats, and there are lots of them, plus handbags and corn husk dolls. But what surely must surprise and please visitors are the examples of how straw can be used for decorative objects, such as wall hangings, and worked to closely resemble inlay and parquet.

Another part of the Hofer operation is the Ontario Corn Maze. This year's will cover more than seven hectares.

Hours for the museum are the the same as for the maze, which opens in mid- to late July and closes around the end of October. Their website, ontariomaze.com, contains updates on the opening date.

Bottom Line

MORE INFORMATION: Log onto visitperth.ca for more tourism information.