President's Day Weekend: Mayne Island

OK, it's been a while since I've cranked on the old blog. There was the Christmas in the last few months where we were all sick but still plowed through the festivities anyway. There was some Facebook distractionination including a bit of a run on Farmville -- you can see that it was ominously featured only a couple blog posts back. And there's been the travel every other week or so, mostly to California.  But enough grousing excuses, let's see if we can make this thing go for a bit.

This weekend we saw that the girls had a long weekend from school so we sorta last minute headed north to see Ma and Pa on Mayne Island.

As you can see the girls are getting to be good packers. Of course, packing for a trip means bringing the dolls, and all their equipment. Oy vey!  Here's Maizy with Katie, and Katie's doll and Katie's dog Coconut. 

BTW, that pink tape on the floor there in the play room is the Kinect do-not-step-over line. I am intoxicated by pink tape for some reason.

The trip north was relatively uneventful. I think the only excitement was when Kim realized that her passport expired back in December. Ha! She had a few wide-eyed moments there, and I provided a few helpful, "meh, whatever" comments -- which of course made everything all better. Turned out that the border crossing people didn't even notice. Neither side -- coming or going -- no one said a peep.

We rolled in after dark and first thing Saturday morning it was nice and sunny..

This is the view from the deck looking past Navy Channel back toward Whidbey Island and the Orcas Islands in the US. I liked how silver the water looked -- reminded me of Shakespeare's lovely description of England in Richard II (line 48 here..).

We laid around most of the morning -- here's Bea demonstrating.

Bea was by herself on this trip. By herself in the sense that we opted to leave Dante with his relatives for this trip. He still gets up and barks a bunch at about 5ish in the morning, which was why I wasn't crushed when Kim said she had arranged boarding for him and he'd sit this trip out.. Of course, I'm pretty sure she was thinking of the stories by the Invisible Fence guys about finding eagle nests full of dog collars had some impact on the decision. Ha! Just for the record, I think those stories are bull-hockey -- and so does snopes -- but there are some scary birds "bigger" than eagles around Ma and Pa's place, so there is that.

Late morning we decided to take a hike and have a late lunch picnic. For Lucy a "hike" is synonymous with piggy-back ride.  Here she is hanging onto my horns.

Here's the little load of angry luggage standing on Point Alice.

Maze, who did all her own walking, stood out on the windy point for a few minutes too.

Here's the whole crew -- minus me -- sitting in a small wind-break getting ready for some lunch.

Grandpa took some great pictures of the ladies before we left. Apparently Pt. Alice is privately owned, and there is a nice house tucked away on the point with some amazing views of the surrounding islands.  There's no road in. Pa said he talked to the owners and they're cool with people hiking out there.

The rest of the day was taken up with napping and eating, and that evening we all sat down to watch a movie on the fancy new Netflix setup they have. Nice! We got to watch one of my top 20 all-time movies -- GROUNDHOG DAY!!! 

This is such an awesome movie because in a fairly understandable context it explores some pretty deep material -- like, how would you *really* spend eternity if it was just plopped in your lap? And, why wouldn't you live like that anyway? For some reason I find it a hugely spiritual movie and there's not even a scrap of religion in it. Maybe that's why?  heh heh..

Early the next morning I got up early and wandered around outside for a bit.

 The moon was just going down over Active Pass..

..and the sun was just coming up over Navy Channel. Maybe someday I'll get a real camera.

Those ships were there the whole weekend. My guess is that they're waiting out some paperwork and there's a handful of guys that are playing a lot of cards..

Later that morning Pa and I jumped in the hot-tub. Leaving aside all this fetching man-flesh, what you don't see here is the view that we get of the islands -- see the pictures above. There is something very relaxing about sitting in hot water in the cold cold air and seeing for 100 miles in every direction.

That afternoon we headed to the park (see the obligatory Canadian flag in the background) for some runnin' around.

Maze and Lu are almost heavy enough to counter me if I choke way up the seat. Ha! OK, not quite.

Sunday evening after Lulu and Maze were in bed we got to watch another classic -- BOWFINGER!

Not sure this is top-20, but it is definitely a classic Steve Martin gig. Chubby Rain. Keep it together, keep it together.. Sigh.. I'm currently reading a very cool book about the movie industry -- The Biz -- and this was a nice reminder of how wonderfully sleezy that industry really is.

And just like that the weekend was over and we were back on a ferry (at 7:45a!) headed for the border.

The new border construction is finally done and our wait heading back on a holiday weekend was 5 min, if that. Wow! So combined with the border officials not noticing Kim's expired passport, we were feeling pretty groovy. Until we saw this sculpture.  And then we were a bit confused.  It's like a negative space "blank" billboard. We weren't really sure what it was supposed to mean.  Maybe it's meant to symbolize the "moral vaccum" that is the United States?  Who knows..

I do know that the whole trip was haunted by large birds. We saw a pair of impossibly large turkey vultures, some giant Ravens, random herons ambling all over the place, a hawk the size of a Cadillac sitting in a leafless tree, and six huge flocks of swans. Maybe it was just because Kim was driving and I wasn't just focused on finding WASP cars, but I have never seen anything like it. Another inscrutable sign from the beyond.