We left Victoria at about 9am and drove all of 17 kilometers to Goldstream Provincial Park. We stopped at a grocery store on the way. I might have to move here — they had my favorite cheese that I used to eat in France. I haven’t gotten to eat it for 7 years, so I was pretty excited to see the gouda with cumin. They also have chocolate milk in these tremendously cute 1 liter jugs. It’s a good thing we don’t have them back home, or we’d drink way too much!

When we got to the campground, people hadn’t finished checking out, so we went hiking while we waited for our campsite. We hiked along the river, up a hill, and then down a crazy set of stairs to get to the waterfall. Here are some photos:

The beautiful river:

Here’s a photo of the crazy stairs. You can only see part of the stairs in this shot — if you look closely, you can see another chunk over Haley’s shoulder, and they keep on going! Down was bad enough…

Once we got to the bottom, it was worth it. The waterfall really was beautiful.

Naturally, we took photos of each other before we crawled back up the stairs:

On the way back, we got to meet our first Goth banana slug.

The Goldstream campground has two presentations every day, at 2:30 and at 7:30. Haley got to go up to the stage during the 2:30 Parkopoly game.

I bought an audio file for my iPod that was a walking tour of Victoria. The cool thing about it is that it’s like your own personal tour guide, but you can pause and go check out this or that shop, wander off course and then come back later.

Of course, the tour led us in front of the legislature buildings.

It was officially 1 1/2 hours long, but it took us much longer.

During the tour, we stopped to watch a street performer. He preformed such feats as stepping through a tennis racquet while balancing a golf club on his chin and juggling flaming torches while riding a 6 foot unicycle. Very entertaining!

Then we hopped on a little ferry and went to check out Fisherman’s wharf. We had lunch at Barb’s Fish & Chips.

Since we’d paid for hop on, hop off tickets for a tour bus, we hopped on and hitched a lift back to the downtown. We went in to the UnderSea Garden, which was ok, but not awesome. I did get a couple good photos though:

Then we crossed the street back to the legislature building. They seem much more approachable than the capital buildings in Sacramento — there were people napping and playing frisbee on the lawn. We thought that sounded good, so we snoozed for a bit too. Then we pressed play and finished up the last bit of our tour.

I was still full from our Fish & Chip lunch, but Haley insisted she was starving. On the advice of the helpful hostel guy, we went to QV, a local burger joint. They have the 2nd best milkshakes I’ve ever tasted (Toni’s truckstop on Guintoli holds my 1st loyalty!) They use the coffee syrups to flavor their shakes, which works *really* well! I had chocolate with a shot of caramel, and Haley had a root beer shake. They had the best-presented burger I’ve ever seen 🙂

Today was our first day in Victoria. Parking here is a pain. The street is metered, so we can park on the street between 6pm and 9am, but then we have to move to a paid lot for the daytime. Haley had a bit of trouble waking up in time for me to move the car — we didn’t get to bed until 12:30, so 8:00 was pretty early. We did a lot of walking today.

Here’s a photo of Haley in front of some cool flowers. I forget what they’re called, but Mom has some in her yard. They tend to be the same color, normally, more reddish or blueish depending on the soil content (I think). I thought it was really interesting that there were two bushes with different colors right next to each other.

Victoria has lots of hanging baskets of flowers 🙂 They’re really pretty 🙂 Here’s a shot of the parliment building with some flowers in the foreground.

Our last adventure for the day was the ghost tour. It was cool 🙂 We got to hear about all kinds of hauntings in downtown Victoria, and apparently they have so many ghosts to choose from that they do a different tour every night of the week!

I’m still wondering whose job it is to water the hanging flowers… I think I’ll have to ask about it and maybe I’ll let you know tomorrow 🙂

Here’s a picture of the ferry.

Informed readers might notice that this picture is of the ferry in *Victoria*, not Port Angeles. Yeah, well… That’s because we *just* missed the ferry we were planning on taking. That doesn’t mean that we arrived as it was pulling away from the dock. Oh no. That means that we arrived at 4:05 for the 5:45 ferry. You would not *believe* how early people get there! Plus, there are these things called reservations. Didn’t even occur to me… I really thought we were going to get on, but when the van ahead of us pulled in and had to park sideways, I knew they were full up. So we got to hang out for another 4 hours until the 9:15 ferry. We stopped at a book store and then had a lovely dinner at the Golden Gate restaurant (umm, Chinese 🙂 about a block from the ferry. And then we went back to wait. And wait… I was pretty ok with sitting around in the car reading, but Haley was less patient. Eventually, she went to go play in the empty terminal we were parked next to. I could see her through the windows, but I couldn’t hear her, which probably saved her life, or at least my sanity. When you’re traveling with grown ups, you can get some alone time. When you’re traveling with a kid, you can’t say, “Hey, go amuse yourself — I need a break, so I’ll see you later!” Oh well 🙂

Anyhow, the was only one other person in the terminal. He was hanging out, listening to music on his laptop. Over the course of a couple hours, Haley went from playing with her doll, to miming, to dancing to the music he turned up for her.

I wandered in, to make sure she wasn’t bugging the poor guy. Turns out he’s got at least one kid himself, so he was pretty tolerant 🙂 We got to talking about computers and webpages, and he joked that I should google him. Just did, and found out he’s a musician. Kinda neat 🙂 I listened to some of his music on his webpage — not bad 🙂 Kinda jazzy. Anyhow, there’s our brush with a mildly famous person. Almost as exciting as Mom going to high school with Sally Struthers… *laugh*

Alas, the ferry didn’t leave till 9:30, so it was very dark, and not as neat as it would have been during the day. When we got to Victoria, we *did* get our passports stamped (they normally just check, but don’t bother to stamp) and Haley was able to ask about BC’s official bird and flower 🙂 So the day wasn’t a complete wash… *grin*

We spent Monday and Tuesday nights at the Grandparents’ in Silverlake, WA. On Tuesday we drove down to Portland with Grandma and visited the zoo. Grandma’s favorite part was the 35 minute train ride through the park.

Haley’s favorite animals were the elephants

And, of course, who could forget the rutting gazelles?!

Tomorrow we’ll drive up to Port Angeles and take the ferry across to Victoria. This is Haley’s first trip outside the US, so she’s extra excited 🙂

Mom and Haley and I drove up to Ashland to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was really cool! Lots of hot guys prancing around in tutus and see-through tops. Uh, yeah well… They were faeries, you see… *grin* I couldn’t take any pictures during the show, of course, but I got a few before and after. My favorite is of our picnic before the show 🙂

My mom came over today. She brought another cake 🙂 My very favorite — Kahlua Mud Pie from Velutini’s Bakery in Eureka 🙂 🙂 🙂 I love birthdays!!!

I made out like a bandit this year — Mom got me an electric teakettle and tea for my classroom. My friends got me some cool camping blankets and some soap and wine and candy 🙂

My friends came over for a potluck dinner. We had so much food! After dinner, we played bocci ball, and then ate cake! It was good 🙂

We ended up going out to see the movie, “Hancock” afterwards. I enjoyed it, but it was a bit too old for Haley. We had to go wait in the hall for the scary part to be over!

I finally got around to putting the bumper stickers on my car! Considering I bought these at West – An Tir *LAST YEAR*, it’s really about time. That’s about average for me, though. They look pretty spiffy!

West – An Tir War was fun this year. I got to see a whole bunch of friends I hadn’t seen in a long time!

I got to do lots of fun stuff this war!

Friday I took two weaving classes. One was a tablet weaving class. It turned out to be a beginning level class which I’ve done before but it was still fun. The other was a class in which we wove belt pouches. Not only do we get to keep the pouches, but we get to keep the looms and needles as well, so I can make more pouches in the future!

Friday night my buddy Abe ran by our encampment with a ball and hurley sticks, so I got to learn how to play hurley! That was pretty fun, though brief since most of us wanted to fight the next day 🙂

Saturday I fought all day, which was fun. I got a good kill in during the very first battle, but mostly spent the day getting gacked by pikes. My shield is great for tourneys, but leaves my legs too vulnerable during wars. I also dug out my gauntlets and borrowed a pike and then a glaive from Moon. I got piked even more, since I didn’t have any shield at all, but it was fun to try something different. The showers on site were marvelous 🙂

Anyhow, this was a great event — probably in my top ten events ever 🙂