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.

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?

As Gwen mentioned on her Being Savvy Vancouver blog, the Surrey Fusion Festival is happening this weekend.  This is the sort of thing that appeals to both Gwen and I so we decided to drag the kids down to it too.  We made quite an adventure out of it: we took the bus to the Broadway Skytrain station and then rode the Skytrain to the end of the line (King George station).  From there it was a short walk to Holland Park, the venue for the festival.

The Fusion Festival is a multicultural festival celebrating the local ethnic diversity.  It had many pavilions showcasing food and products from diverse ethnic origins.

In addition, there were four stages set up around the park featuring music and dancing from different cultures.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of South and South-East Asian ethnic groups represented (ie, India, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia) and China had a big presence too.  Did you know that they’re hosting the Summer Olympics this year?  >snort<  However, there were other groups represented too.  The Jamaicans had a surprisingly large presence.  The Chieftans are playing there, as is Jully Black.

There were a surprising number of RCMP there too.  They were there in typical ’street’ uniforms, the Red Serge, bike patrols, ATV patrols, and I’m sure they had some plainclothes ones too.  I think it was all in the spirit of community outreach, but I bet the number of RCMP was in the dozens.

Gwen and Kayla stopped by one of the pavillions (ok, they were tents) and got some mendhi put on them.  WOW, Aidan sure didn’t like that.  Every time (yes, *every* time) he saw Gwen’s hand, he broke into tears and told us he didn’t like mud on Mommy’s hand.  And she couldn’t touch him with that hand either.  Our boy gets some weird ideas sometimes.

By the middle of the afternoon, the boy was beat and cranky so we headed back to Vancouver.  Since we were at the start of the Skytrain line, we got some primo seats.  In fact, Aidan and I got to sit in the very front of the first Skytrain car, so for the whole ride from King George to Broadway, Aidan sat on my lap and chatted insessantly about the trip and all the things he could see.  Given the length of the trip (about 30 km, about 30 mins on the train) and the fact that he got antsy on the ride *to* Surrey, this was priceless.  Oh, and that ride to Surrey?  Once again Vancouver proves how inconsiderate it is.  I mean, hello?  A pregnant woman gets on the Skytrain with a toddler in tow and is forced to stand because no one offers her a seat?  I was steamed.  So freaking typical for this city and its typically self-centred inhabitants.

We also had a cool, chatty bus driver on the trip from Broadway station back to Willow Street.  Translink gets a big double-plus good today.

And so does Surrey, for that matter.  Surrey knows how to do these things right.  The Surrey Children’s Festival is much better than the one in Vancouver, and I can’t imagine the Fusion Festival happening anywhere in Vancouver with the quality, diversity, or price that Surrey had.  In Vancouver, it would have cost $30 at the gate and sucked. :)

Record breaking heat this weekend.  Cold and wet start to June (the local weather personalities were calling it “June-uary” — which got real old, real quick) and now blue sky and scorching heat.  Welcome to the dry season.

This weekend was busy doing an assortment of things.  Saturday was chores and errands in the morning, a quick trip (hah!) to Highview Lookout in Cypress Provincial Park for some photos and cache placement scouting, and then over to the COINANZA geocaching event in the Barnet Marine Park in north Burnaby.  Aidan had a good time playing in the sand and watching the trains whiz by as we socialized.  If you go through the photos at the event, you’ll see Aidan made it again. :) Grocery shopping after that, and then Aidan and I went by bike back to the grocery store because I forgot to get the one thing we were supposed to get — hamburger buns (for supper).  Doh!

Full size (10 MB)

And, oh, we also picked up a travel bug at the event:

Today was a bit more of the same.  Back to Cypress to drop off a geocache that we’re placing (not published yet, link to come) and then to the Wal*mart in North Van to get The Boy some summer jammies.  Back home for a nap that didn’t come and then we beat it down to Spanish Banks for a picnic on the beach.  Whew.

What kind of bug is this?  Anyone?  It was on the beach where we were trying to picnic:

You know, the views in Vancouver never get old.

Full size (9.5 MB)