This weekend past, we took Kayla to stay with a friend she had in Halifax who now lives in Metchosin.  This involved getting everyone up and going early Saturday morning to head to Tsawwassen to catch the 8 am ferry.  Early was leaving the house at 6:30 am.

It was a nice trip across to the Island, lots of sunshine, calm waters, and not too chilly.

After a stop in Sidney to grab some breakfast from Smitty’s, we headed to Metchosin.  Metchosin is south-west of Victoria.  Getting to Kayla’s friend’s house was interesting … we had the wrong street address and the GPS took us to a place that didn’t make a lot of sense.  With a little bit of a description from Kayla and the belief that we couldn’t be that far out, we eventually found the base (CFAD Rocky Point) and appropriate PMQ where her friend is living. Good thing because it turned out that none of the 3 cell phones we had with us were getting signals that far out.

We dropped Kayla off and headed over to visit with my cousins Mike and Gert and their kids.  It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen Mike’s kids, and wow, they’ve grown.  We visited a short while and then the 3 of us headed out with Mike to do some geocaching on the grounds of Royal Roads University.  Mike has one of those high-sensitivity GPSr’s (a Garmin Rhino) and was getting much better reception than we were.  Even still, he was smoking hot, nabbing all the 5 or 6 caches we got that afternoon (well, actually Gert got one too).  Gert came and met us half way there.  Aidan, unsurprisingly, took quite a shine to Gert.

We headed back and had supper with Mike and Gert and their daughter Marie.  After a great supper, we drove up the Malahat to Nanaimo to stay the night before heading up to Campbell River the next day.

It was the first time we’ve stayed with Aidan in a hotel room.  It was rough.  He just wouldn’t go to sleep, insisting on talking to us and singing.  When the fireworks started going off (no, seriously, fireworks) at 10 pm, fortunately he was asleep.

We found out that night that our Sunday plans had changed and instead of going up to Campbell River, we were going to meet my Aunt Jean in Nanaimo.  That meant we had some time to kill that morning, so we decided to do some geocaching.  Well, none of us slept particularly well, so you can imagine the moods we were all in.  Cranky 3 yr old, cranky 34 yr old and cranky and pregnant 30-something.  Adding to the geocaching difficulty were the Nanaimo bath tub races.  Muggles everywhere!

We only managed to grab two caches, one  of them down near the berth of one of the new “Super-C” class ferries.

After a bit of communication SNAFU, we found Aunt Jean on the edge of Nanaimo.  Yes, found.  The GPS came in pretty handy.

After lunch with Aunt Jean (note: Aidan has been saying “See you later, Sunshine” since then) it was a leisurely meander back down towards Victoria.  We stopped in Cowichan Bay and grabbed some artisan cheese (from Hillary’s) and bread from the wonderful “slow food” stroll along the shoreline there.  After Cowichan Bay, we headed into the Cowichan Valley and stopped by the Merridale Cidery and I picked up some hard apple cider.  I had been to both places while participating in the Grape Escape 3 years ago.

After that, it was pretty routine.  We headed back to Metchosin (and took some pictures along the way) picked up Kayla (Aidan really missed her) and headed back up the highway to the ferry.

Good thing we had reservations … we would have had a one or two sailing wait otherwise.  We were a little bit late leaving and didn’t pull into Tsawwassen until 10 pm.

Whew, what a long weekend.  Then the hike yesterday.  Now, it’s 9 pm and I’m ready for bed.

The weather’s supposed to be pretty crummy for the rest of the week, and the teenager wanted to get up into the mountains some time during her stay here, so I took the afternoon and we made a quick jaunt up to Squamish to climb The Chiefs.

It’s late, I’m tired and sore, and I still haven’t written up about our weekend on the Island, so I’ll leave you with some photos from our trip to the second peak of the Stawamus Chief.  The best thing about the hike is getting to the top…

The first peak

Mount Garibaldi

Squamish

The third peak

Proof Kayla was there

While on top, we were beset upon by a crew of 3 chipmunks and a bully squirrel.  They amused Kayla almost as much as the hike.

I’ll try to write something about our trip to the Island tomorrow.

Tonight was the opening night of the annual Vancouver fireworks festival.  This year it’s called the HSBC Celebration of Light, but in years past it was called other things as other sponsors mangled it.  I think my favourite was the Celebration of Fire.  But I digress.

Tonight’s competitor is Canada, and they’ve done a completely thematic “War of the Worlds” “Godzilla Attacks Vancouver” (?) sort of thing instead of the usual medley of songs.

It’s been utterly spectacular, even from our dining room.  Gwen and Kayla are down at Vanier Park, and I’m watching from home.

The timing to the music has been extraordinary, there have been some fireworks I’ve never seen before, and there have been some *very* large bursts too.  The trees in Choklit Park obscure the view a little bit, but I was surprised at how much was still visible.  Sadly as each year passes, we see less and less.  Maybe the Park Board can do something about that.

The competition continues on Saturday with the US’ entry followed by China next Wednesday and the finale on the Saturday after that.

On Sunday, we woke the live-in teenager up early and headed south to Seattle.

Happily enough, we were out of the house on time, and the drive to the Peace Arch was uneventful.  The wait at the border was about a half hour, but getting through was one of the easiest crossings I’ve ever had.  I think I said that last time I crossed the border too.  There must be something about my demographic that is appealing to the border guards.  We had a letter of permission for Kayla, but it proved unnecessary and that was a good thing too, because the letter indicated that we were the aunt/uncle of Kayla but I told the border guard Kayla was Gwen’s cousin (which is correct).  It might have been awkward if he asked to see the letter.

We raced down to the Seattle Premium Outlets in Tulalip where Gwen and Kayla shopped while I entertained Aidan with the motorized ride-on toys (which he’s happy to play on without putting any money in) and pushed him around in a car-shaped ‘stroller’.  We were there for about 3 hours, and between the two of them they only bought $180 of clothing.

From there we drove down to Seattle proper.  The plan was to go to the Space Needle and then hit the Pacific Science Center and follow it up with a visit to the Pike Place Market.  Well, when we got to Seattle Center (eventually … the traffic on I-5 was heavy and slow; it took us an hour) wow was it crowded.  We had no idea it was such a popular summertime place.  We went to the Space Needle with the logic that we had to do it at least once.  It was a long wait, expensive, and somewhat underwhelming.  But, we’ve been up the Space Needle.  It was the only place we took pictures.

After the Space Needle, we were all rather tired and it was around 4pm, so we gave the Pacific Science Center a miss.  We headed down to the Pike Place Market and gave it a quick run-through.

Heading north again, we had supper in what has become our traditional suppertime venue in coming back from Seattle: The Flying Pig in Everett.

After a more eventful supper than I’d have liked (Aidan knocked over a full glass of root beer on the table) we headed up I-5 again.  About 30 miles south of the border, we tuned into News 1130 (traffic on the 1’s!) and heard that there was a 1:30 wait at the Peace Arch (that’s 90 minutes!) and a two hour wait at the Truck Crossing.  And no wait at the other border crossings.  We immediately took the next exit off the highway, pulled out the Eee and fired up the GPS and Streets and Trips.  It didn’t take too long for us to get a route to the Aldergrove border crossing (which is the next one east from the Truck Crossing) and then we were off on a back-road-of-Washington tour.

And the Aldergrove border crossing?  *AWESOME*  A total of *5* cars ahead of us.  And once again, no interference from Canada Customs.  Even having to drive back up the Valley meant that we got home at least an hour before we would have had we come up the Pacific Highway.

How tired were we on Monday, though?