Stop looking at your calendar. Maybe that should read “Victoria Day-trip”.

Gwen’s mother is still in town and on Thursday, we decided not to go to Creston (for a variety of reasons) as originally planned, and instead we decided on a (shorter!) day trip to Victoria.

So, we headed down to Tsawwasssen and grabbed the 9am ferry.

While waiting in line, I of course grabbed a micro cache hidden on the corner of the concession building, thus setting the scene for part of our time in Victoria.

Aidan was pretty, erm, active on the ferry. He wasn’t willing to stay in one place, and so the ride resulted in Gwen and I taking turns chasing the boy around the ferry. Up the stairs. Down the stairs. Into the play area. Back outside. Good thing the ferry trip is only an hour and a half.

After landing in Sidney we drove down to Beacon Hill Park in Victoria and used it as our base of operations. We walked back into the Inner Harbour and saw some of the sites.

On our way back from the Inner Harbour, we went into geocaching mode. We picked up two relatively easy virtual caches after being stymied at a few others which were a) too heavily muggled, or b) apparently in a derelict building, or c) being watered by sprinklers that must have been running for hours judging by the puddles where the cache must have been. We also looked for a third virtual cache that was supposedly a statue in a park beside the Royal BC Museum — but we couldn’t find the statue. You read that right. We had coordinates, we had a description. And we couldn’t find the statue. I swear it must be missing, but we couldn’t even find a spot where the statue should have been! (Update: turns out we had the right coordinates for the wrong cache … that is, I was reading the description for the “Crows greet the Governor of Nootka” virtual cache instead of the “Crows in the Square” virtual cache).

We walked back up to Beacon Hill Park and attempted another cache there, but didn’t find that one either (the boy was starting to crank by this point).

Changing pace, we took Aidan into the petting zoo at Beacon Hill. Oh, what a good idea. This turned his mood right around. The only thing they had that were pettable were goats, but that was fine. They had lots of goats. The aviary was also a big hit, but of course, you couldn’t touch the birds.

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After leaving the petting zoo, we did a bit of a driving tour around Ogden Point, and then redeemed ourselves by picking up three caches in Holland Point Park. The caches themselves weren’t too hard to grab, but at least two of them were too near drunk (and, um, naked) vagrants for particular comfort. We picked up a neat travel bug (a fairy) whose 6 year old owner has already emailed me gratitude for mentioning I was going to use some magic glue to put her wings back on. We haven’t decided if we’ll leave her here in a TB hotel or send her east with Gwen’s mother (who isn’t really a geocacher).Ferry service being what it is, we had either the 7pm or the 9pm ferries to target (there’s no 8pm). Just outside of Sidney, the ferry status sign advised that it was only 28% full (at 6pm) so we decided that rather than deal with trying to grab supper on the ferry, we’d pop into Sidney and get something from a fine fast food establishment. Gwen chose KFC, and so we pulled into the parking lot. Time was somewhere around 6:05pm. Gwen returned from the store at 6:38pm with the meal. Yes, 33 minutes. “Fast food” west-coast style. Apparently training cooks. We got “free” pop and cake out of it, but I don’t think it was worth it. Anyway, we were a little more than concerned we weren’t going to make the ferry, but we pulled into the waiting area with reassurances from the ticketing agent that it wasn’t going to be a problem. And, it wasn’t.The ferry ride back was uneventful. We ate in the car, and went up to the passenger deck for the remainder of the trip. Aidan played with (well, ok, around) a bunch of older kids in the play area, and we also sedated him with a Backyardigans on the iPod (thanks again Nickelodeon and Apple).

In hindsight, it was a good thing we didn’t attempt the 9-18 hour drive to Creston (9 hours pushing, 18 if you obey the double-your-travel-time -with-a-toddler rule-of-thumb) because Aidan wouldn’t have been in a cooperative mood at all. And the weather’s been pretty awful on subsequent days. Maybe sometime later in the summer.

There’s something about the West Coast that seems to drive a certain type of personality right off the deep end.

Today was our “Day Out With Thomas“. An early morning drive in threatening grey skies brought us to Squamish. There was periodic rain and blinding light; typical fare for unsettled weather in the Coastal Mountains. The excitement started with a shuttle bus ride from the parking lot to the West Coast Railway Heritage Park. Busses are typically a source of excitement, and we got to ride on this one! And, on arriving at the park, we turned it up another notch because there were Thomas and Friends posters and merchandise everywhere! It got even more exciting when the engine in question pulled up.

Whew. Good thing we had sporadic rain showers to keep us from getting over excited.

We got to ride on some old BC Rail coach cars that were pulled along behind Thomas. That part was a little disappointing. We didn’t really go anywhere, just up the rail line a little bit, onto a spur, into a rail yard, and then back again. I thought maybe they’d take us down to Porteau Cove, or maybe up towards Whistler a bit, but no dice. Aidan was strangely quiet inside the train. He seemed to like it, but the enthusiasm was a little muted. There were a few clowns wandering the aisles of the train (no not that type — real clowns: red noses, big shoes, fuzzy hair. No, it wasn’t Engineers out on a pub crawl!) and even these didn’t get much of a response. The one carrying the bird, or rather the bird itself, got some attention though.

After the big train ride, we rode on the miniature train that they have set up there. It was $2.50 per person, and even at many times that it would have been much better value and fun than the big train. It absolutely poured for the 20 minutes we tootled around on the mini-train, but Aidan seemed to enjoy that much more. The heavy rain meant that we didn’t take any photos, though. There was a little wooden train (stationary) that the kids could climb over and through and this was a hit too.

The place was quite a bit more crowded when we left, and the shuttle bus was full going back to the parking lot. It didn’t mute the renewed enthusiasm for being on the bus though!

All in all, I was impressed by the Railway Heritage Park. It was crawling with people, but I can see that we will definitely return there later this summer and take in more of the attractions. Squamish isn’t so far away, and that miniature train was pretty fun!

Shhhh, come close, I have a secret to tell. It pains me to say this, but this past Sunday Saturday, we went to Surrey.

Actually, Surrey gets a bad rap. It’s just a typical suburb to a big city, with everything that goes along with that. Although I really don’t know any “Surrey girls”, they seem to have the same reputation as “Passage girls” did when I went to high school. That’s Eastern Passage, a small community outside of Halifax, that bears absolutely no resemblance to Surrey whatsoever.

So “Why,” you may ask, “why did you go to Surrey?” Well, we went to Surrey to take in the Surrey Children’s Festival. Now, Vancouver has a perfectly good, well renowned children’s festival of its own. Close too, located down in Vanier Park. However, the Vancouver festival is (a) expensive, and (b) not very toddler oriented. Surrey’s Children’s Festival had many things to do for toddlers, including several toddler-specific tents with things like tunnels, and ride-on cars, and a big sand pit, and so on. Also, live music. Also, free. Well, mostly free.

So on Sunday Saturday, after Aidan’s nap, we rushed into the car and headed down the East-West Connector to Bear Creek Park. We’ve never been to Bear Creek Park, but have driven by it a few times. This is a park located just south of the Whalley neighbourhood, which is notorious as much for its drug and homelessness problems as for its Little League teams. It was a bright, sunny day, with the thermometer pushing 30°. It was a very popular event, and the parking lots were packed beyond capacity.

The reason we rushed was because, if our timing was right, we intended to take Aidan to his first concert (well, I guess his second if you count seeing Charlotte Diamond in the City Square Mall). At 4pm on Sunday Saturday, Fred Penner was playing the last of 4 shows he performed at the festival. Fred Penner missed my generation — he hit his stride more with people my sister’s age. I certainly remember the show “Fred Penner’s Place“, but I was somewhat beyond the age that it targeted. Regardless, we both know who he his, and several of his songs. Maybe not as many as Raffi or even Sharon, Lois, and Bram (who were also a little later than us, but not quite as much).

Things worked out well, and we had a chance to explore the festival’s venue, take in some of the sights and sounds, and let Aidan blow off some steam in one of the toddler play areas. Maybe 10 minutes before the performance we brought him into the theatre, since the “main stage” was actually indoors at the Surrey Arts Centre. Aidan had never been in a theatre before, and was quite impressed by the blue-mini-light lit stairs and spring-loaded chairs. By the time the show started, the theatre was perhaps a little over half full, and a good portion of the crowd was running up and down the stairs, or in front of the stage, or through the rows of seats. Not in an awful way, but in the way you would expect several dozen toddlers and preschoolers to behave. This made controlling the boy a little on the difficult side, but we managed.

The house lights went down and the show started. Aidan sat on his seat, transfixed. Although I don’t think he recognized many of the songs, he was pretty good in absorbing them, and the whole atmosphere of the show. He didn’t sit on his seat the whole time: some times he was standing up, clapping and banging his hands on the (empty) seats ahead of us, sometimes he was dancing, and sometimes his attention wandered and he wanted to run up and down the stairs. In which case, I might add, he would have simply been joining a few other toddlers.

I must say that I was incredibly impressed with how well Fred managed the show, and the crowd. It certainly showed why he’s so popular and successful. The show was peppered with bits oriented to the parents, with his guitarist breaking into the riff from Stairway to Heaven, and at another time Fred slipped a little bit of the Juno-winning “Crabbuckit” into the end of “The Cat Came Back“. He talked to and interacted with the gaggle of kids that had broken through security and rushed the stage. After several people had taken photos and had been chastised by the theatre staff, he told the crowd (and the staff) that since it was the last show of the festival that they should relax the rules and let people take as many photos as they’d like. And so they did.

At one point when Aidan was getting restless, he was crawling on the floor, under the seats through the toddler-proclaimed “tunnel!”. Unfortunately Gwen had a slight incident involving the chair seat and the crouching toddler. There was some loud crying and it was clearly heard on stage. Fred turned to us, and asked the name of the crying child. We told him, and then he proceeded to talk to Aidan, using his name several times. Well, you can imagine that this got the boy’s attention pretty quickly and the tears evaporated within moments. Again, it showed how good he is with the crowd.

So, we had quite a bit of fun!

After the concert, we went back out to the festival grounds and listened to some more music — an odd mix that can be best called South Asian (almost bhangra) fusion. It was definitely sub-continent flavoured but it had a fiddle player. And an electric sitar. Anyway, it was incredibly dance-able, and both Gwen and Aidan did just that. Sorry about the photo — I wanted to capture the stage as well as Gwen and the boy, but unfortunately that put some “Surrey girls” in the centre of the photo, and you don’t really want a close-up.