The main reason for the trip, my first significant batch of time off since January's well-documented cross-country drive, was to visit friends and family. I pretty much found myself hanging out with other folks every lunch-time and every evening except for the trip to Victoria. That was great, as I've not really had enough time to make many friends in Maryland, and those I have tend to have a different set of interests and backgrounds than those people I know from Microsoft.
I didn't take a lot of pictures of people, but here's one of Trevor (now a Google guy,) thinking hard during a game of Goa we played with Adam and Ally. It's good he did so, since he won.
Trevor Thinking Hard About Goa
The side trip to Victoria resulted in a lot more pictures. I took a seaplane out and back, operated by Kenmore Air. Taking off and landing on water was a new experience for me, although I'd been on small planes before. Both directions, the plane I was on seated about eight passengers, plus a co-pilot seat that was available for a passenger both times. Here's a photo of the plane:
The Seaplane to Victoria
I sat in the co-pilot's seat on the flight back, so I got a great picture of the approach to Lake Union, in Seattle. If you look very closely in the upper middle of the photograph, you can see the Space Needle.
Seaplane Approach to Lake Union
Victoria is a nice little town that is very friendly to the large number of tourists that visit. I'd gone there to go hiking in the area and generally relax, and only had two full days to spend, but I could see spending a week there some time. I pulled a U-turn at one point while driving in town and sort of cut off someone coming out of a side street. He pulled up along side me at the next light and I could see he was trying to get my attention. I thought I was about to get cursed out or something, but once I looked over at him, he said, "Your headlights are off! Have a nice evening!" New York, it ain't!
This guy playing violin on a street corner was very odd, but also not a typical Victoria resident.
Darth Vader Playing Violin in Victoria
I took two hikes while I was there. The first was to Thetis Lake, intended as a kind of warm-up, since I hadn't been hiking in awhile. I bought a book of hikes on Vancouver Island, so I had what I thought would be a pretty good map of the various trails around Thetis Lake, but it proved to be just awful. At one point, I was basically lost, or would have been if I hadn't known which direction was south and after heading that direction for a bit could hear the highway. There was another lake north of Thetis Lake that I'd wanted to find, but I never did.
Here are a couple of pictures of the lake:
Thetis Lake
Thetis Lake
The second hike I took was to the top of Mount Finlayson, generally touted as a fairly difficult one in the area. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn't really have any trouble climbing it. So far, no hike I've done has really compared to the one I took up Mt. Dickerson north of Seattle in 2004. It was steep, but not terribly long, so the steepness was very manageable. I snapped a photo of the marker at the top. I also got a pretty good picture of the distant Mt. Baker from the summit of Finlayson.
Mt. Finlayson Marker
Mt. Baker from Mt. Finlayson
Coming down the back of the mountain was much less steep, but the down side was you end up walking some two miles down a winding, narrow blacktop road, which is less than pleasant. I did pass a farm with llamas and a goat, though, so I got a great up-close picture of a friendly llama. He did have two ears, his right one just happened to be folded back.
Hello, Llama
So finally, I'll leave you with this self-portrait I took while on the seaplane. I believe it is fine expression of me having a good time.
A Self Portrait
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