Victoria

Our final port of call was Victoria, British Columbia. This photo overlooking the city has everyone in our group: Sally, Charlotte, Mark, Aaron, Ellen, Juniper, Janet, Rebecca, Hazel, and Luke.

Victoria was lovely, in the way that wealthy coastal cities often are. (And, no, there is nothing outside the frame of this photo to explain the piano. It's just a piano overlooking the ocean.)

Also tacky, in the way that tourist cities often are. No lack of maple in this Canadian city!

There is a pier where you can buy frozen chunks of raw fish and feed sea lions. The sea lions obviously know the routine and enthusiastically showed up to claim their fish.

It's fun to get close enough to a wild animal that you can notice normally unseen details, like a sea lion's nails.

Or the backside of a peacock.

We spent about 10 minutes watching this very angry peacock try to intimidate some crows away from a pile of birdseed. His tail was on full display the entire time. We also learned that in addition to displaying their impressive tail feathers, peacocks also rattle their feathers to make a clattering sound.



It sure seemed like the peacock was rattling his feathers to intimidate the crows, but science suggests the rattling may have been more about impressing the nearby pea hens. The crows never did leave the seeds, but this is one fine looking peacock, so maybe he had some luck with the ladies.

We wound up getting hot dogs from a shop on the busiest corner of the main tourist street because it was quick, convenient, and kid friendly. To our somewhat pleasant surprise, they were also delicious.

My mom took the kids back to the boat, and Aaron and I wound up with some time to wander by ourselves. We saw charming residential neighborhoods and stunning ocean views, and somewhat inexplicably, these steps into the ocean. No beach, no docks, just the barnacles and other sea life claiming the bottom few steps. Presumably there was some reason for these steps when they were built in the mid-twentieth century (our guess based on style and appearance), but these days there is no apparent reason for them. Just the pleasure of sitting, watching the ocean, and feeling like you've discovered a tiny private mystery.

Back on the boat, Hazel and Luke show off their matching Victoria T-shirts.

And attack Sally with icy hands. (They were also using ice water as hair styling product.) We had previously declared that Hazel and Luke couldn't sit next to each other at dinner because they would be so focused on playing that they wouldn't eat. We lifted the ban for our last dinner on the boat, and the kids were happy to get up to their silly shenanigans.

Whales!

No burying the lede on this one. We saw humpback whales!

We went on a whale watching trip out of Juneau, trading the big cruise ship for a much smaller and faster boat.

Captain Jack was straight out of central casting. We were told that he pioneered whale watching trips back in the 90's and that he's the best at finding whales. My rational brain may suspect there is no causal link between grizzled appearance and whale locating prowess, but just like a fancy label increases one's actual enjoyment of a bottle of wine, I have no doubt that Captain Jack increased our actual enjoyment of this excursion.

These sea lions were the first big animals we saw. They would usually qualify as the main attraction of any nature outing, but this one had bigger things ahead.

Environmental regulations prohibit boats from approaching closer than 100 yards. The strategy is to find an area with lots of whale activity, get as close as you can, then park and hope they come to you. We were incredibly lucky that a pod of four humpbacks surfaced about 15 feet from our boat.
 

They were close enough that we could see their blowhole muscles expanding and contracting.

Blowhole, hump, then tail. We never saw the whole whale at once, so even this close it was still hard to wrap your head around just how large these animals really are.

We were also lucky that while we were waiting on the whales, there was a group of really active sea lions very close to our boat. Again, it's hard to believe that these were not the most amazing animals we saw on our trip.

These photos are all Aaron's but Juniper was also documenting the trip.

 

She was a delightful mix of amazed, inspired, and content after we saw the whales. Her goodwill bubbled over into extra snuggliness.

Lucky to see such amazing animals and lucky to share the experience with family.

Seattle

We recently returned from a West Coast trip that included time in Washington, Alaska, British Columbia, and Oregon. This will be the first of several posts from our vacation.

We were in Seattle for less than 24 hours, but that was enough time to check out the terrific playground at Seattle Center.

Seattle Center's main attraction may be the Space Needle, but our family got much more enjoyment out of the cool slides...

...and giant fountain.

 At pools, we're always reminding the kids to walk, not run. Here, they could run as much as they wanted.

 And splash.

Sadly, not without consequences. They discovered that sopping wet clothes are not so comfortable for a cool and shady Seattle evening.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the Pike's Place Market. We sampled a variety of summer fruits and even got to see some fish throwing. (I assume that tradition has its roots in genuine efficiency, but now it seems to be just a tourist attraction that results in a mangled fish no one will ever buy.)

In addition to tasty food and good coffee, there was a giant piggy bank for making donations to a local foundation. Equally good for climbing and riding.

After the market, it was on to our cruise ship.

The kids briefly checked out the views of the departing city, were pretty interested in the other boats, and then moved on to the better entertainment of exploring and clambering.

Goodbye, Seattle!

Happy Birthday, Ellen and Rosi

 A big family dinner to celebrate...

...and two tired girls on the ride home.

Our birthday present to Mom was a trip to The Mystery Room. In our allotted 45 minutes, we successfully solved all the puzzles in the Black Ops room, rescued the scientist captured by terrorists, diffused the bomb, and generally saved the day. Go Team Awesome!

River rapids

We celebrated Jorge's 14th birthday with a family white water rafting trip on the Nantahala River.

The younger children and their mothers were in the designated calm boat.

Everyone else was in the "wild" boat. The river guides did a terrific job of customizing each boat's ride to what the people on board requested.

After the first rapids, Juniper proclaimed that she loved it. The second, bigger rapids splashed us with 52 degree water and began the permanent cold foot puddle at the bottom of the raft. Juniper was in tears and proclaiming that she wanted to get off the boat. But a few minutes later, when she was asked which fork of the river to take, she enthusiastically replied, "The longer one!"

The grand finale of the ride was the Class III Nantahala Falls, where all of these pictures were taken. Our guide gave us a heads up and a safety reminder before we approached the falls Juniper was nervous about the possibility of falling out of the boat and said that she was "all scared," definitely not a mix of scared and excited. She started to perk up when she saw a sign that advised: "Danger! Falls ahead. Screaming advised."

Approaching the falls...

Going over!

Even the calm boat got a big splash here. After we were done, Juniper said that she was "all excited, not at all scared!" Once she got over that initial cold water shock, she really loved the rest of the ride and can't wait to do it again.

Mark kept getting in trouble from their guide for paddling too hard. She told him he'd make a great river guide, but that as a passenger, he needed to turn it down to about 25% because he kept turning the boat around.

Nice to see the birthday boy having so much fun...

...and his grandmother too. Let the record state that my mom is an awesome good sport.

Can you tell which member of a party has done this enough to know where to look and how to ham it up for the camera?