Corniest Date Ever

This morning we went on the corniest date ever. Months of waiting came true as we went to the corn maze!! It was a pretty good sized maze with a pyramid and sphinx in it!

Here are the rules! Don't get too cornfused!

It also had a little town from the wild west. Inside some of the buildings were corny jokes such as:
Q: What does a cowboy say when he sneezes?
A: Horse shoe!

We got cool stamps to let us go in and out of the maze:

Saanich Fair

On Labour Day, some of the young adults from church headed off to the Saanich Fair. It was... well... a fair. Lets see what there was.

There were chickens:
Lots of chicks:

I milked a cow:

Did you know the space shuttle says "eh!" on it?

There were rides:

And even danger (besides scary fair rides):

Canoeing the Inner Harbour

What's the best way to spend lunchtime on a Thursday? Canoeing in the Inner Harbour with Rebekah of course! I told her to block out time for a surprise, and then she had 3 days to wonder what it was going to be.

After going as far as we wanted to, we decided to float for a bit. She turned around in the front so I got a better view:

Her view:
I asked the guy to rent a canoe and he said "What are you, from the east coast?" and asked if we really wanted kayaks. We considered it, then he admitted, "You can be more social in a canoe." Hence this social picture:
Then we had a nice lunch on the beach at the gorge.

However, we can't forget about the cool tacky thing we found! There's a radio and a base and top of a wine glass stuck in the concrete in this wall. Elsewhere in the wall, there is a bottle, and a golf ball as well as other little knick knacks. You can't see this from the land!

Young Adult Retreat

We came back from Banff on a Wednesday and then the next Friday, I left for a young adult retreat with friends from church. We invited other churches from around the island as well. Earlier in the week we thought there might be only 6 people going, but it turned out to be 21 people or so.

We only planned the meal and speaker times, which left plenty of time for playing sardines, Monopoly, Risk, frisbee golf, hiking, swimming, or whatever else. Since everyone signed the waiver, I can post this fun Risk picture, taken after I had already been wiped off the map. Yes, it was my first Risk game ever. Yes, it is surprising. Yes, Rebekah did tell me better than to spread my army so thin.

Here are some of Rebekah's soldiers. One of them is injured.

Here is Allie showing off the fantastically broken bowl.

Banff

I got back from Pittsburgh/Seattle on a Wednesday, then left on Friday for Banff. Brad, Steffi, and I all drove to Banff with the intent of camping along the way. The trip was an overall pleasure, as seeing mountains and glaciers is always fun. Unless of course you are frozen inside a glacier, then maybe not so fun.

We left at about 4:30 at night, and Brad decided to do the drive sans map. That meant we drove to Nanaimo so that we followed the Trans-Canada Highway the entire way. A good idea in principle. However, we arrived at the ferry terminal at 6:45 and missed getting on the 7:20 ferry. So we waited for the next ferry at 9:25. It actually left at 10:00, so we got off the ferry near downtown Vancouver at about 11:45. Then we decided to drive out of the city before finding a place to sleep, and I was outvoted for setting up camp and we ended up in an expensive hotel.

Nevertheless, we had a leisurely drive to Banff the next day and got there in time to set up camp in the dark and eat dinner in the dark. Sunday and Monday we spent exploring all that the national park had to offer. Ok, just pieces of it. We went to the ultra touristy Lake Louise, where I took a plethora of pictures. We walked past the "hikers" in high heels and kept going on the trial. Fortunately, the further we went, the less people there were. We made it to the top after 2.5 hours, about 30 minutes after the tea house closed. Oh well. I guess if some guy in our group didn't take so many pictures it would have gone faster. It took us 50 minutes less to walk down.

Monday and Tuesday morning we saw an array of smaller things, such as hoodoos, Lower Bankhead, a canyon, and a natural bridge. We drove back on Tuesday and made it to Hope. Then we left on Wednesday and made it back home by the early afternoon. It was a good trip, and a good last view of Canada before Steffi headed back to Germany the next Sunday.

Photos are here.

Pittsburgh

About a week after my parents came, I set sail for Pittsburgh for about a week. By sail, I mean I flew out of seattle and required a ferry to get to Seattle and staying there overnight on the way back. I did that because even after the US$120 ferry and US$57 hotel, it was still cheaper than flying out of Victoria or Vancouver. Plus I got to see Seattle for the first time.

Pittsburgh was nice and relaxing. I visited Grandpa and we took it easy and hung out. We went to a few parks to walk around. But by far the highlight was going to 2 baseball games in which the Pirates beat the Cardinals. The first night (Friday) was free bobblehead night, and the second (Saturday) was free hat night. Saturday they also wore their heritage uniforms from the Negro League team the Homestead Grays. We also walked around downtown, because for all the times I've visited Pittsburgh, I've never been downtown. Grandpa pointed out the building that he used to work in, so of course I took a picture.

Seattle might be a cool place to visit, if you didn't live in much cooler Victoria. I had to walk through the sketchy parts of town to get from my hotel to the ferry. One street I decided to walk down because there were 3 cops wrestling 2 guys into a van. I decided that cops made that street safer.

I also feel the need to point out that I flew in first class on the way to Pittsburgh from Seattle. That's because I fly so much, they gave it to me for free. That gave me a nicer seat for sleeping all night. But the way back home was horrible. There were 2 major accidents on the way so the 30 min drive to the airport took 2.5 hours. Needless to say, I missed my flight. But they were nice and I flew standby via Chicago. It must have been one hairy day for the airport, because one of the 2 accidents was on the entrance ramp to the only entrance to the airport. So it took about 1.5 hours just to effectively go up the entrance ramp. Thus, almost everyone missed their flight. Ironically though, despite leaving over an hour later, I still arrived in Seattle 40 min earlier than my original flight would have.

As expected, photos are here.

Parents Visit Victoria

I've been a bad blogger recently. I'll make an effort to cover what has happened in the past month+, since it really is a lot.

From July 23-30, my parents were in Victoria visiting me. My goal was to wear them out every day, and I think I succeeded, though maybe not the next to last day. My mom left saying that she would tell people "Sean lives in paradise."

We really did pack in a lot of stuff in one week. I'm sure I'll forget something, but here are some of the things that we did. I started out by giving them a tour of the city and its little niches. We watched airplanes land on the water. We then branched out by looking at the city from the top of Mt. Douglas and Mt. Tolmie. Around the city we saw Craigdarroch Castle and Government house. We flew my new kite at Clover Point and saw "wild" seals at the Oak Bay Marina. We ate lunch in Beacon Hill Park 3 times, since it is such a neat place. We also pretended to be Canadian by going 5-pin bowling. Of course we did the touristy thing of going back downtown at night to take pictures of the Legislative Building all lit up.

We branched out a bit and explored parts of the island such as Botanical Beach, East Sooke Park, Witty's Lagoon, Ocean Blvd., Potholes Park, and Hatley Castle. One day we took the ferry to Vancouver and the bus to downtown. It was my first time downtown Vancouver, and we wandered through Gastown then along the waterfront to Stanley Park. Coming home, we caught the 8pm ferry so we got to see the sunset from the ferry.

There are photos located here. I didn't take any on the first half because I'd already been to those places. If you can't identify where they are, well then you better come visit me and I'll point them out. Ok, or you can just peak at the captions.