Robert & Leia hosted the Allyshian Pas d’Armes this year. It was pretty fun. We got there after dark Friday night, but set up our tent by the light of the full moon (and assorted streetlights:) On Saturday, we armored up and had both rapier and heavy fighters. The heavy tourney was such that the gallery selected a challenger, the challenger issued a challenge to another fighter, and that fighter got to pick the weapons and format (three bouts, 10 thrown blows, etc.) It was fun 🙂 After the fighting, I put my armor away (yay me!!!) and brought out the henna (woohoo!)

Wendy painted my hand

and Paula painted my face 🙂

BTW, for those who aren’t familiar with it, henna is a plant that is ground up and made into a paste which is applied in fine lines. When the paste is removed, the skin beneath has been dyed a reddish brown. The thicker the skin, the darker and longer-lasting the dye. That’s why my hand is darker than my face, which will be dye free within a week.

Grandma Ruby and Mom came up to visit us. We went to dinner at the Chart Room. They have excellent clam chowder and fish, a good view of the sea lions on the dock outside, and a neato shark carving out front.

Then we went to the Simpson Reed Grove, to go on a walk. Grandma, Mom, and Haley posed on a bridge.

Here, Grandma and Haley pose in front of a fallen redwood.

This tree grows all the way across the trail, reaching the ground on both sides.

But now matter how hard she tries, Haley can’t *quite* jump high enough.

Haley would like to move into this tree-cave, but only if we get rid of the spiders first.

Haley and Grandma in a hollow tree 🙂

We drove home via Reedsport, even though it’s slower, so that we could stop by the Wild Game Park in Bandon, OR. It was a complete surprise for Haley. Since the entrance to the park is the back door of the gift shop, she didn’t know what it was until after I’d bought our tickets and we went on through! We had just enough time to see most everything.

Haley got to pet a ferret.

The lion’s coughing roar filled the park.

The lioness laid at her ease.

The leopards were beautiful.

There was a white tiger, just like Haley’s new stuffed animal.

We got to pet a lioness cub.

Haley got to meet 2 baby goats.

We also got to pet a baby panther,

and a baby lynx!

Then it was time to go, though we did feed the sheep/goats/llamas before we went. All in all the park was a blast! We made it home just before dark and actually unloaded & cleaned out the car before showering and hitting the sack. Tomorrow we’ll drive down to Eureka to pick up our cat from Mom’s house 🙂

Our triumphant return to the USA had us driving down to Grandma & Grandpa’s house. The original plan was to hang out in Seattle on the way, but that was before the 1 1/2 hours we spent inching along at the US border. Kinda ridiculous when you think about how easy it is for any real bad guys to sneak across. Then we hit rush hour going by Seattle. Argh. It was a SLOW drive. I did have plenty of time to take a photo of the official border marker though!

Once we got to the grandparents’ house, we mostly just crashed. The next morning, we had a chance to take a couple of photos. Here’s Grandpa in front of his tomato garden.

And here are the four of us in a family photo 🙂

Aka “Haley puked on the Seabus”

We set out in high spirits, but on the bus, Haley announced she had a headache. It wasn’t quite bad enough to return to the hostel, but she was not a happy camper. Pressing on, we boarded the small passenger ferry (Seabus) to go to north Vancouver. It was a migrane after all, cause we had to beg our fellow passengers for a seasick bag. Luckily a couple of people had empty shopping bags 🙂 Haley napped for a few minutes at the next bus stop, but then felt much better. Kind of an accelerated, mild migrane.

Grouse Mountain was a lot of fun. We took a skycar up the mountain.

We got to see a Birds of Prey show with trained birds flying about in front of the audience. We saw a hawk,

a turkey vulture,

and a bald eagle. He was too young to have a white head, but he really wanted to cruise the neighborhood. He took off during the show, and it took them a while to get him back. He got to spend the rest of the show being held by his jesses.

The lumberjack show was a lot of fun! They had various contests like a sawing race

and a log rolling competition.

But when nobody was looking a drunken tourist stole some equipment and climbed up the pole. “You’re crazy!” the announcer screamed at him. “No, I’m Canadian!” he responded. (He turned out to be part of the show)

We got to ride the chair lift down the mountain and back up. The view was great!

Next we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge.

I got Haley to take my photo too!

On the other side of the bridge they had tree platforms connected with smaller suspension bridges, à la Swiss Family Robinson.

Here’s a view of the Suspension Bridge from further away… Wait a minute, we have to go back over that?!

We had a nice dinner at the White Spot. It ended up being our only sit-down restaurant meal during our whole trip!

Then we hustled back to the hostel to watch the fireworks from the beach. It was awesome to sit in the sand and watch the fireworks across the bay.

The fireworks show was choreographed to music. Luckily, another group had brought a portable radio, so we could listen in! Here’s a movie so you can see and hear it too!

We made it to our hostel last night just fine, though I’d rather not deal with rush hour in Vancouver again any time soon! There are three hostels in Vancouver; 2 are more or less downtown and one is out on the coast in Jericho Park (that’s ours). Our hostel is great — even though the dorms have lots of beds in them, they’re divided up into little 4 bed suites with a walkway on the side — kinda like a train car without the doors 🙂

One of our roommates was a lady from Quebec named Claudia, who has hair like Andrea. She recommended a hair cream that she makes herself, and was kind enough to give me a jar! It has the recipe on the side, so I can make some more myself if I like it 🙂

Today it was raining. Undaunted, we took a bus to Granville Island, and explored. We popped into the brewery, stopped by a hammock store, and visited a kitchen stuff store (I love gadgets!) We went to the Public Market, which has all kinds of booths. We bought fresh fruit,

olives,

and fresh bread.

Then we hit a wine store — the sales clerk was from France, so we spoke in French! I’ve been able to speak in French with lots of people (like Claudia), which has been awesome!

Last we visited the Kids’ Market, which was a building filled with shops aimed at kids. We managed to escape after buying a “Haley” pen.

Then we left Granville Island, walked a few blocks, and jumped on the bus to the iMax theatre. There we watched Deep Sea, which was a really neat 3D movie about (duh) underwater stuff, mostly centered on the coral reefs. It was pretty neat, and only occasionally nauseating *grin*

Finally we got back on the bus and came back to the hostel. Here we made dinner — canned soup left over from camping, fresh fruit and bread from the market. We had a rambutan fruit for dessert — it doesn’t look edible, but inside the funny skin it’s sweet and kind of rubbery — a bit like a gummy bear 🙂

Tomorrow we hope to go see the Capilano Suspension Bridge, Grouse Mountain, and then walk out to the beach from our hostel to watch a fireworks show 🙂

So we left the campground this morning and headed over to the famous Butchart Gardens. They really were beautiful. Here is Haley in front of the Water Wheel Garden:

They had hanging begonias!

There were lots and lots of different kinds of roses.

I liked the Fountain of the Three Sturgeons.

After enjoying the gardens, we drove over to the ferry terminal. Wow, it’s a *lot* better than the one in Port Angeles. We got there at 1:40, and left on the 2:00 ferry! Our ferry was the Sannich Queen.

Since it was light outside, we were able to enjoy the spectacular view 🙂

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 🙂