Visiting the In-Laws

Good to be home! We had a great trip - lovely drive, great weather, and surprisingly, a very good time visiting L's folks. They live quite a ways away (2+ hour drive and ferry), so it's a bit of an event to go see them.

My painting went over really well - my f-i-l almost teared up. They both loved it and are going to hang it over the fireplace.

I always enjoy the roadtrip portion of our journey, especially since we have a new car (a nice 2005 Miata), as of 2 weeks ago. I took a bunch of pictures while up there. I also took some pictures of my brother-in-law's Wall of Death. Fun! He gave us a bear head a few years ago (it's in our den).

I went shopping with my m-i-l. We had a great time. We mostly hit thrift stores and 2nd hand shops, with a few new shops in between. I got a skirt, a shirt, 4 pairs of shoes, 2 pairs of earrings, a necklace and a purse. Some very cool stuff that I'll show off in the next week or so. Actually, not one pair of shoes - I bought some Keds so we could go for a hike (there's a pic of me in them somewhere).

We also played mini golf, had a BBQ, picked huckleberries and salmonberries, played on a merry-go-round (haha, L and I were drunk and laid down on it and spun around). Caught the first ferry back this morning, home around noon, then went out for lunch with Andrew.

If only we didn't have to work tomorrow...it sucks that Canada Day is on a Tuesday this year. Oh well, makes for a short week.

Pictures!

The drive up:

Pretty, eh? That last one's kind of blurry, since we were zooming along at 140 km/h.

On the ferry:Sparkly water! It was so hot on Friday that even being outside on the ferry was lovely (it's usually freezing - that's Pacific Ocean there).

Sunset, looking back at home (well, sort of - home is very much south, and this is looking west).

My brother-in-law's rose bush - the roses were just gorgeous and smelled incredible. There is just something about roses on the plant versus from the florist that I love.The Wall of Death: Those are all animals he's hunted - I've eaten some of them. On the left, a big set of moose antlers, 3 deer antlers on the top, and a mountain goat's horns in the middle. Various deer antlers off on the right side (under the crossbow). There's a rifle at the very top, and yes, that's a necklace with some sort of small animal skull and teeth. But see? A vase with red roses. Whatta guy!

A close-up of the big rack of moose antlers. We ate some of this moose (several years ago) and the b-i-l cooked us up some fantastic moose steaks on the BBQ last night for dinner from his most recent moose (from last year). You haven't done organic until you've done wild game!

This is a cougar skull. The b-i-l found it and cleaned it up - he wouldn't kill a cougar unless it was about to eat him, I'm sure.

L and I went for a hike yesterday:

Me in my new Keds ($39.99 on sale plus an extra 30% off), jungle print blouse (Jacob), cream cotton cami (Vero Moda, Plum), khaki shorts (Point Zero, Plum), wooden earrings, necklace and bracelet. Always have to be fully accessorized! My legs look very muscly.

View to the west from the top of the hill (it's called a mountain, but it only took 30 minutes to hike up it, so it's a hill):

View to the north: View to the east:

View to the south:We saw this little guy rustling around on the way back down and stopped to see if we could get a picture - he was fearless! He came right on over. Baby squirrel, for those of you who are city-folk. Funny little white patch over his eye.
He got within 3 feet of us (this tree was an arm's length away from me):
Hee, what a funny pose!

And back down we go: