Trees ARE plants!

Today, there was a workman at our house. He asked me about my poinsettia, which stands at a stately 5'7" this year. I told him it was a poinsettia. He exclaimed, "They're trees!?! I thought they were just plants!" Yes, it is both a tree AND a plant. Just in case you were unclear on that.

Little Boy Lost

Today for some reason I have been thinking of someone that I don't even know- I just know of him. A few miles from here there is a little boy in a really tough spot that he has no real control over. He has plenty of worries in his little heart - Where will he spend Christmas? Why can't he find a family to love and be loved by? Why can't he ever be "good enough" to be loved? What will happen to him? Where will he be a year from now? He's pretty much stopped believing in himself and the future. I wonder- will he become a truly lost child?

I don't know why I thought of him today, but I did. Maybe you all can think about him, too, and carry a prayer in your heart for a little boy who just needs someone to love him and believe in him and hang in there with him. And say a prayer too, for the Mom and Dad who can give him everything he needs. They are out there somewhere. They probably haven't met him yet, but maybe we all can pray him into their hearts.

LOL

I am watching (thank you TiVo!) BYU Devotional (or maybe Forum- is there a difference?) and the speaker is Lynn Truss, author of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" (which I must acquire and read someday, along with her other book "Talk to the Hand"). The book is about the importance of punctuation. About halfway into her speech, the subject of that popular, but comma deficient, road sign "slow children crossing" came up. Someone at a book reading once asked her if slow children crossing grew up to be slow men at work. Too, too funny (to me anyway)!

Calibrate This!

Most of Somebody's Children will remember Somebody's Parent telling them that it was important to learn to apply mathematics to their everyday lives. After all, "Nobody at work has ever asked me to work a page of math problems."

Well, yesterday somebody gave me a page of math problems to work. (News flash- just in case you forgot- I am not in school any more!) I just had to smile and think of a certain Parental Unit and think about how WRONG he was. To his credit though, it was "word problems" which is sort of everyday life. Here are some sample problems:

1. Calculate the approximate speed of a self-propelled sprayer that has an average completion time of 31.5 seconds over a course of 140 feet.

2. Calculate the nozzle delivery rate, in gallons per minute, for a sprayer that will travel at 1.5 mph, apply 2 gallons per 1000 square feet with a nozzle spacing of 20 inches.

3. A spray nozzle originally delivers 2.75 gallons per minute when operated at 25 pound per square inch. Calculate the psi required to deliver 2.5 gallons per minute.

Fortunately, I never have to actually use this information. I just have to know it. And by the way, I got the questions right! Not bad for a math-phobic little grandma.

All the pretty little ponies

So I was walking through a market last week, minding my own business when something in the beverage cooler caught my eye and I had to stop. Sure enough, it wasn't my imagination. Maltas. And not just any Maltas, but Pony Maltas. The real deal. Being a good Mother-in-law (OK-well maybe just TRYING to be a good one) I stopped and picked up a few. Then as I turned away from the cooler, what did I see behind me? More Pony Maltas; stacks of cases of Pony Maltas. In two different sizes. (I'm not sure, but I think the heavenly choir might have sung a chord or two.)

If you haven't ever had a Pony Malta, join the club. I have never had one and don't intend to have one because I am not into malted non-alcoholic beverages. But I know a certain Colombiano who LOVES them. So I put the cold ones back and got a few small ones to bring home.

Sadly (for someone), I have decided to keep them here for future use. Just in case they get scarce again before someone comes to visit. Besides- I don't think Tita has any room left in her suitcase.



Want one? Come and get it!

What's the deal with that, anyway?

So the strangest thing happened this week. Twice. Early in the week, someone pulled over when they saw me out doing yard work, dug around in their car and pulled out two styrofoam cups, each with a big, (dead) spider in it. They had a friend who had found them and wanted to know what they were so they brought them to me. Hmm. I'm not spiderwoman. I'm not even the Spider Whisperer. I told her they looked like some kind of Wolf spider, but that I would see what I could find out. Later I set up my camera scope and computer, took some pictures of them and emailed the shots to a genuine spider whisperer that I know. (and I was right, they were wolf spiders, just really huge ones that were probably 3 1/2 to 4 inches across when they were alive instead of all curled up and shriveled in a cup).


Then Sunday night I got a phone call from someone in our stake. Their kids were freaking out about an insect they had found in the house. I had the dad describe it and then gave him a couple of names to image google. And yes, I was right about that one, too. It was a Jerusalem Cricket.


I don't know what's going on, but if it's a trend, we've got a problem.

Husband Tag

This is husband tag and I have been tagged! Here is how it goes:

Rules: Each person has to answer questions about their sweetheart. At the end of your post tag 4 people, post their names and then go to their blogs and leave them a comment about the tag.

(Because my blog is open, I will have to be creative. Also, the only people I know well enough to tag have already been tagged.)

* What is your husbands name? Kimo
* How long have you been married? – 33 years, 10 months
* How long did you date? 16 months
* How old is he? 56 years and some change.
* Who eats sweets? It’s a joint project.
* Who said I Love You first? He did.
* Who is taller? I am shorter by a few inches
* Who can sing best? Me, but he can carry a tune just fine.
* Who is smarter? I think he’s edged me out on that one.
* Who does the laundry? I get it washed and dried; he folds his own clothes and all the towels.
* Who pays the bills? He has taken care of the bills for the past ten to fifteen years or so.
* Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? He does. We have changed sides a few times over the years. When he started getting lots of middle of the night phone calls from work many years ago, I started sleeping on the phone side of the bed so that the guys at work had to talk to me first. Pretty soon, they stopped calling so often. For lots of years, I slept on the side of the bed closest to the bedroom door for the convenience of the children who didn’t sleep through the night. (Or was it really to intercept them before they reached Kimo?)
* Who mows the lawn? Our lawn boy comes once a week whether we are here or not. (such a wonderful luxury) I do the majority of the rest of the yard work, such as weeding, but Kimo will dig big holes, haul and shovel and spread mulch and compost, etc.
* Who cooks dinner? Me. He could warm up his own left-overs if he needed to. But would more likely get take-out
* Who drives? He does. I only drive us if he is sick. I’m a perfectly good driver, though. He can’t help it, he just can’t relax if he isn’t the driver.
* Who is first to admit they are wrong? It depends. I suppose it’s 60% him and 40% me.
* Who kissed who first? It was mutual.
* Who asked who out first? He asked me. I wasn't really interested but my roommate nudged things along.
* Who wears the pants? We both wear pants. (Once in a while I put on a dress.)

I'll tag someone as soon as I think of them.

A really special parade

We just spent a really pleasant 24 hours in Cedar City. We went down to catch the end of the fall run of the Festival. We saw Moonlight and Magnolias (a comedy about writing the screenplay for Gone with the Wind) on Friday night and Gaslight (a Victorian thriller) this afternoon. Both were excellent and we also took in the Literary seminar, the Props seminar and the matinee orientation today before the play started.

On the way to the seminars we were delayed because of a little traffic problem. As we headed into town, we encountered what seemed to be a traffic jam. Odd for little Cedar City- on a Saturday, no less. Then we could see flashing lights ahead and cars were pulling into the center lane and opposing lanes to U-turn or to take side roads. Hmm, there just be an accident ahead. After just a minute, though, we were able to determine the true cause of our delay. Our side of the road was packed with sheep, heading down the road into town. And I don't mean just a few sheep. The sheep were trotting fleece to fleece, nose to tail, three lanes wide and about a block long. We heard later that there were over a thousand sheep. We took a side road around the sheep to the next intersection hoping to get past them and on our way. But, alas, the sheep approached the intersection just as we did and and a police car insisted we had to yield to them. I present this snapshot as proof of our encounter.


We turned around again and made it to the theater just a few minutes late. Later as we were walking towards the center of town, we saw a banner that explained our strange encounter. It was the weekend of the Livestock Festival and the sheep were headed into town for the sheep parade.

Ah, Cedar City! Gotta love it!

Here I am

So yesterday Somebody's Mother's daughter suggested that I am way behind in the posting department. And Somebody's Mother's other daughter commented on the lack of postings about that Magical Kingdom visit earlier in the month. So here you go. Here is a picture taken while Somebody's Parents and grandchild were busy on the carousel.
The whole trip was lots of fun but a little exhausting because the grandparents stayed up later than the little guy but still got up early when he was ready to go have more fun.

Here is a picture of JJ at one of his favorite Disneyland places and a couple of "fun with Grandpa" pictures.

So, call me Donald, instead

I have had some compliments on my Sally haircut. Here’s one I got today:
“I like your haircut. It looks like a duck’s butt.”

Call me Sally

Here you go. This is my new haircut. Right now it looks like my hair is channeling Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally- the one with her hair in sort of a swoop/flip.

The very straight hair around my face hasn’t quite made friends yet with the curly, swoopy, flippy, mind-of-its-own hair on the rest of my head, but we’re working on it and I hope to achieve some kind of reconciliation soon. In the meantime, each day is a hairy adventure.

Here are some pictures of today’s version of the new do.




First- blown dry with no primping.

The other three are after some touch-up on the strands of straight hair and a few strands of excitable, frizzy hair.

Willy Wonka Wouldn't Wanna Walk With Us

One side effect of the climate at the Grand Canyon is the fact that chocolate really doesn’t work out as a snack or treat. It is just too hot. Even m&ms-you know: melt in your mouth, not in your hand- suffer from a failure of structural integrity in the heat of the day. They soften, melt, crack and then flatten, making a mess of the rest of your trail mix.

I know you really don’t want to leave your chocolate behind, but let’s say that you were to take just two or three Milk Duds, for example. Suppose you dropped them into your belt (fanny) pack with your snacks, planning to eat them before the sun came up. That would probably work, if you really did eat them before the sun came up. Then suppose that later in the day, while it was hot, and dusty, and you had been walking for hours, you noticed that you had a sort of dirt/dust stain way up on the front of your shirt. But the rest of your shirt was still pretty clean looking. Usually you get dirt on your socks and bum, but since you could possibly get stains up on your shirt, you don’t worry about it while you are on the trail. But you would probably rinse out the stain (a strangely crispy stain) at the end of the day to start clean in the morning. Then suppose that the next day, the stain came back and every time you stopped, you noticed that it was a little bigger than the last time. Then suppose that finally, you got suspicious, because the stain had worked its way through the shirt, and the shorts and yes, even the underwear. ‘Hmm, very strange for trail dust’, you think. And then suppose you have a flash of inspiration, and you dig through the snacks in your belt bag and find, yes- one very soft, flat (flat, flat) Milk Dud mashed against the inside of the bag where it rests against your shirt. If you did find a Milk Dud like that, you would be amazed at just how far one little milk dud can spread out when it is trapped between a warm body and warm snacks.

But since common sense and experience tell you that chocolate and hot weather don’t go together, you wouldn’t do anything like that anyway.



The large “gorge” running from the top to the bottom of this picture is where about half of the trail that we used is located.

Great weather, good company

As I mentioned, this was the best rim-to-rim ever. Every other crossing has had it’s own little patch of adventure. This year was notable for what there wasn’t: no blisters, no sunburn, no heat exhaustion, no fractures, no lightening, no cuts or scrapes or bleeding, no flash floods with rock slides, no beavers, no hiking out with flashlights, no food allergies, no little critters snacking on our snacks (not that one didn’t try a couple of times). This picture is looking back as we start up the last 3 1/2 miles to the South Rim

The weather was pleasant. The inner canyon- aka down by the river and everything else at the bottom- was in the low 90s. We have trudged through when it was 115 in the shade, so this was really nice. There was also frequent cloud cover. When you combine all that with the tall cliffs and the angle of the early autumn sun, we were in the shade at least 50% of the time. With all that shade we were able to move along fast enough to be off the trail on the first day before it even reached the high temperature for the day.

The trail was in great condition- no rock slides extending down multiple switchbacks, no mud, no scrambling and no places where we couldn’t find the trail. Last time we finally gave up in one spot and pushed our way through the rushes and undergrowth at the beaver habitat, climbed down into Bright Angel Creek and waded down the creek until we finally came to the trail again. This time there was a lovely little foot bridge through the beaver habitat. Nice!

On the second day the hike out was also good. We were on the trail by 6:00 a.m. after a hearty 5:00 a.m. breakfast of bacon, eggs, pancakes, peaches and juice. That’s one thing about sleeping and eating at Phantom Ranch- you don’t go hungry. We stayed ahead of the sun until almost to the top of Jacob’s Ladder, a tough stretch of switchbacks that becomes grueling if you are in the sun (you can see part of it in this picture). After a snack and a change of socks under the trees at Indian Gardens we headed out again and enjoyed a partly shady trail the rest of the way up to the top. The higher you get in the Canyon, the cooler the temperatures. The temperature in the shade that day was below 80 degrees at each shade house. We still sweated plenty because it is a strenuous hike out, but the shade and frequent breezes were welcome relief and we reached the top earlier than we ever have before.






Evening shadows move across the canyon as we walk over to the El Tovar Lodge for an early dinner before a good night's sleep.

"Now the day is over, Night is drawing nigh,
Shadows of the evening Steal across the sky.

Jesus, give the weary Calm and sweet repose;
With Thy tend’rest blessing May mine eyelids close."

I hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim

...and I got a haircut.

(forgot to mention that little item in the last post)

I'm not cured yet!

There is a strange malady that commonly strikes Grand Canyon hikers. I was afflicted ten years ago when I did my first rim-to-rim hike. What is this malady? It's the urge to return again. The drive to do it one more time. To either do it better, faster, more enjoyably or simply to add another crossing to your count. It can't be explained. (After all, it's hot, long, hot, exhausting, hot, hard on the toes and hot.) We have asked other RTR hikers why they come back again. They get this familiar look in their eyes, shrug, and then admit that they can't explain it- they just have to do it.

This year, as we trained and prepared for our annual rim-to-rim, I thought I was cured. (see parentheses above) Evidently not. I was really just cured of the urge to hike the Canyon smack-dab in the middle of the hottest part of the summer.

As you can see, I am back from the Grand Canyon. Best Canyon hike ever for reasons that I will mention later. We plan to go to the Canyon less frequently so that we can have more time to see and do things on a list of places that keeps getting longer and longer. Secretly, I had thought that maybe this was going to be my last time through. Orland isn’t ready to give up the Canyon, though and now that I have done it again, I have to admit that I plan to go back.

I hope this isn't a trend

I am teaching again this semester. This week my students turned in their first reports. I try to keep the class pretty informal and don't expect much. I gave them all a list of what was required in each report, you know- use spell check, don't triple space, use appropriate margins, tell me the name of the person you are writing about. Nothing too hard.

Here is a little excerpt from the email I had to send to my class now that I have read all their reports.

"Also, please remember
• These words have very different meanings and are NOT interchangeable:
Our-are
Their-there-they’re
Course-coarse
Then-than
–y’s and –ies a the end of a word (as in country’s and countries)
s and ‘s (as in dogs and dog’s)

• A paragraph has more than one sentence.
• Put your name on each report, even if you submit it as an attachment in an email.
• It is not acceptable to use text message abbreviations in college level work.
• Do not change fonts in the middle of your work."

Just in case you think I'm kind of hard on the kids, none of them are fresh out of high school and most of them are between 25 and 30.

Oops!

So I have this little habit that backfires on me now and then. Sometimes, I put something in the microwave that only needs 15 or 20 seconds and hit the instant minute button and then just open the oven as soon as it is ready. Then I might put in something else to use up the rest of the time. Once in a while, I forget that the thing I put in needs to come out before the cycle ends. And it gets overdone.

Yesterday, I put in a pat of butter to melt and pulled it out after about 12 seconds. Then I put in my little plastic squeeze bottle of homemade pancake syrup and hit the "add a minute" button because it would need just a little more than a minute, intending to give it a shake halfway through and then pull it out before the one minute and 48 seconds was done. Then I got side tracked.

My attention returned to the syrup when I heard a loud pop and then a steamy whistle from the microwave.

My syrup bottle had had a blow out.

On one side of the bottle.

While the turntable was still going.

Oops.

Our trip to Kohler

We are back from our trip to Kohler.

Our little trip has provided me with a few firsts:
•My first aborted landing (at nearly the last second-no reason given) followed by a panoramic circle around Chicago before a hard touchdown.
•My first Bratfest. Tried the brat egg rolls. Surprisingly OK.
•My first Chicago dog. Not impressed- just a dog with a really tough casing.
•My first significant flight delay (four+ hours). Counted our blessings and crossed our fingers- many other flights were canceled. We did finally get on a plane that evening and made it home in time to grab a bite to eat before the restaurants closed.

We had a nice visit with LLL, JC, J, A and M. Lots of fun with the boys, plenty of time to chat with LLL, pretty good weather whenever we wanted to do something. We upgraded more of the electrical in theouse, pulled a lot of weeds, pruned a lot of shrubs, and went to the beach, to parks, for walks and also visited two farmer’s markets and watched the Bratfest parade go past one of the markets. Our favorite group in the parade was the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies. So cute and you could tell they had all practiced more than any other group in the parade. I just found out they have a website. Google them and you can see a picture.

Blessing day was a nice day. M was quiet through the whole thing. He is definitely the third child-we had all changed our clothes, had dinner and started naps before it occurred to me that none of us had taken any blessing day pictures of everyone in their Sunday clothes with the baby. I grabbed a couple of shots of the big-tiny once he was awake again.

I've been blogged!

Ok, so now I have officially appeared or been featured in almost every form of mass media/communication. Somebody has put me on their blog. Add that to radio, TV, newspaper and magazine/newsletters. I guess maybe there is nowhere left to go from here.

I did a little unofficial visit after work to someone who called the extension office to give them a few tips on their garden and they put me on their blog.

grittypretty is on blogspot

Nana on the Job #4

Just a few pictures from today.



J decided to play in between the front door and the screen door.









M was putting extra effort into looking cute today.




It was garbage day and the boys brought in the trash can this evening.

Nana on the Job #3

Laurellee has pretty much summed up the past few days. Here are some pictures to go along with all that.

There was a bunny in the front yard when I looked out the bedroom window this morning. Evidently there are frequently bunnies in the yard. We also see squirrels and beautiful male cardinals by the back deck.

Yesterday J and A decided to be funny with some boots, the house is just to the right of the picture with the parade, the green area is called "the bowl" and is a short walk from the house. The village uses it for outdoor events, fireworks, band concerts, etc.

Nana on the Job #2

Well, the past two days have been mostly uneventful. Yesterday was mostly spent waiting for bedtime, as we (adults) were all pretty tired. I had not recovered from my sleep-deprived weekend and then spent quite a bit of time with little M on Tuesday night. Last night, I tried to get a jump on things, got to bed by 9:30 or so and then he also had an exceptionally good night and didn't need any grandma time.

Bean and Moo and I had a few rousing, rough-housing games of running, chasing and tickling our way through the living room and around through the hallway. No matter how many times I chased and caught them, they wanted to do it again. Fun boys.

Bean and I also went to the grocery store before lunch and resting time.

All is well here. Little M has lost a bit of weight, but is eating well and I expect he will be gaining it back pretty quickly.





Here are some pictures for today. J and A both like to eat their cookies frosting-side first. M doing what he does best these days. J and JC having baby time together.

Nana on the Job-#1

Today is day one of Nana on the Job. After sitting on I-15 at a dead stop on the way to the airport (thanks to my delay in getting out of the house), I made my flight and the rest of the trip to WI was uneventful.

Now that I am here, though, I have discovered a problem. I will have to be careful and remember to stifle the urge to giggle when out in public. The reason for this is the local accent. When I listen to the conversations around me, I just have the urge to giggle. I keep forgetting that everyone else here probably thinks my accent is the strange one.





As instructed, I have a couple of pictures of the new arrival and one his brothers.

"Ockit"

I need to confess. I have corrupted Little J.

Michael and Tomoko brought us some chocolate from Hawaii and this morning I was eating some (actually I was eating a lot of some). A little chip broke off of the piece I was eating and I offered it to J. He opened up his little mouth and I put in the chip, telling him it was chocolate. Immediately his trusting expression turned to one of bliss and he said "Mmm!" So cute!

Later I gave him another little chip and he immediately signed "more." Not long after that he was chattering "ockit, ockit?" When I took him out to the kitchen, I picked up a piece and held it to his mouth so that he could take a little nibble off of it. As most babies do, he kept leaning forward to get more of it into his mouth, and I kept scooting it back to try to keep the nibble small. Then he reached up, grabbed my hand and shoved it into his mouth for a lightening speed, good-sized bite of ockit. What a proactive little guy.

If you give a Bear a . . .

I've made the acquaintance of "Teddy" and "Sammy" this past week. Teddy is a small blue bear and Sammy is a large tiger/cat- the companions of Jonah and Tommy. Sammy is generally well-behaved but frequently makes his kitty comments. Teddy, however, has a few problems. He needed a small "freshen up" today because he got a few smudges last night that deeply concerned his boy, Jonah. Not really a problem this time, but I worry frequently about his safety and cleanliness and try to protect him. The real problem I have is with what is going on in Teddy's head.

There is a little bell in his head. It jingles with the slightest movement, which makes Teddy bad company in a motel room with other people. I wished I could give him a lobotomy or something, but then I remembered all of the "If I you give a . . . " picture books. I'm pretty sure if I give a bear a lobotomy, one thing will lead to another and I'll end up with something that doesn't resemble Teddy at all.

Bellevue, Seattle and Home

Today we had a whirlwind tour of three gardens and the Space Needle. It had to be a whirlwind because the restaurant in the hotel only had two servers at breakfast. There are 56 people in our group and there were other hotel guests in the restaurant as well. Someone really dropped the ball in communicating the fact that all of us would want to use our complementary breakfast coupons and that we all had a deadline. Breakfast was so, so slow. One guy, who wasn’t in our group finally got up from his table saying he wasn’t a waiter, just a mortgage broker, but there must be something he could do. He rustled up a coffee pot and a pitcher of water and went around the dining room taking care of all the people who were waiting. Eventually, we all did get breakfast but we didn’t get out of the restaurant on time and that meant we had to shave time off of our tours today.

The gardens today were all beautiful. We scurried through the Bellevue Botanical Garden and then over to a beautiful Japanese Garden in Washington Park Arboretum. It is a beautiful garden- so well done. We went to another large Japanese garden in Portland last year. This one didn’t seem to be as large, but it was so nice. If we are ever in Seattle again, we will go back because we could have used more time there.

We had lunch in the Space Needle after that. A nice salad and Prime rib dinner. We had just enough time to go up to the top of the Space Needle and look around before we got back on the bus. Before we went to the airport we drove out to a Bonsai collection at the Weyerhaeuser headquarters and it was absolutely worth the drive. First, their headquarters building is pretty cool and set in a pretty, woodsy area. Second, the collection was the most beautiful collection of bonsai I have ever seen. Beautifully displayed and all of the bonsai were like works of art. There was no doubt they were all works of love.

We really lucked out with the weather on this trip. It was supposed to be cold and rainy every day. It was cold, but we had brought our big down jackets and the only times it rained, we were either in our hotels or on our bus. It never rained while we were out trying to see things.

I would like to go back again someday to see some of the gardens in mid-summer.






Here are some pictures. One is a view through the Japanese Garden. The others are of a few of the bonsai. One of them, the one with the big chunk of old bark as the base, is from a tree that was growing in the 1500s but the artist has only been working with it since 1986.

We had perfect weather today. It was cold and overcast when we got on the bus but the clouds burned off by the time we got to Butchart Gardens (the name is English, not french- pronounced butch-ert). We got there before very many people and really enjoyed our morning there. The last time I was there it was busy and crowded.

Butchart Gardens was built on the site of a cement quarry. The wife of the owner didn’t want to leave an ugly scar on the land and decided to plant a garden in the quarry. She had soil hauled in by horse drawn wagon and spent many years planning and planting the garden. She did quite a bit of the work herself, to the point of having the workers at the quarry and plant lower her over the edge in a sling or onto a scaffold to plant things in the crevasses and pockets of the quarry walls. This original section is know as the sunken garden and is spectacular. Over the many, many years since her original work, her descendants have continued to develop and care for the garden and there are many other areas of the garden surrounding and above the quarry. If you are ever in the Vancouver or Victoria Island area it is a “must see” attraction even if you aren’t a garden lover. Here are a few pictures: a small container next to a fountain, a small stream in the Japanese garden and part of the sunken garden.

We also had a really nice lunch catered by Butchart Gardens. Several different salads (so good!), pasta, chicken, salmon, potatoes and vegetables plus a yummy selection of sweets such as lemon or chocolate tarts, layered sponge cake, etc.

Can you tell I like Butchart Gardens?

After we left the gardens, we headed directly out to the BC Ferry to go back to the mainland and into the USA. A couple of interesting things happened on the ferry. First, we watched some bicyclists ride onto the ferry ahead of us. Then while we were on the ferry we looked out the window and saw something in the water. Lots of somethings. I was a really big group of either seals or sea lions swimming alongside the ferry going the opposite direction. Fun! Here is a picture of our ferry pulling up to the dock before we got on and a picture of the inside of the ferry by our bus.

The ferry is huge with room for rows and rows of buses and big rigs on the lower level and rows and rows and rows of cars on the level above that plus the 2 decks of seating and dining and shops above that. We lucked out on the ride back and Dad found four seats next to a big window, facing each other so that the four of us (Wally, Fran and us) could just sit and visit and look out the window.

When it was time to return to the bus we went back down and noticed that the cyclists were all there in front of our bus, ready to go. I stopped to talk to some of them and they said that they had come over to the Island on Tuesday, gone biking on the Island on Wednesday and now they were heading back. I asked if they had been really cold the whole time and they said it wasn’t bad because they were dressed for the weather (never broke above 50 degrees) and stayed in a condo at night. Here is a picture of the bikers and pedestrians getting ready to get off and of the two ladies I talked with. So nice.

Victoria

Today we took the BC Ferry to Vancouver Island and ate lunch at the Empress Hotel before we went to visit a tiny one-acre garden nestled in a residential neighborhood. Then we spent the rest of the day on our own with Wally and Fran, exploring the downtown and harbor area. We checked out a paper and stationary store, a chocolate shop, a Tilley store, a yarn store and then went to a nice restaurant for dinner before we walked along the inner harbor on our way to our hotel, the Royal Scot, just one street over from the harbor and a few yards from the provincial Parliament. It is easy to walk around the area because when you want to cross the street the cars stop for you.



Here are pictures of the inside of the ferry as we were leaving the bus to go up a few decks, the dining room at the Empress and pictures of a flower and a shrub bed at today’s garden.