We spent the morning visiting my mother, getting laundry done, having showers and of course charging our electronics. We spent the whole morning there chatting and catching up.

We had had a late night the night before thanks to some drunken and very loud neighbors. I got up at midnight to go to the bathroom. While I carefully didn’t shine a light on them I did make sure they noticed me. They quieted down after and headed to bed. They did finish of their night with a drunken, off key, top of their lungs rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. They also had the words wrong. Fortunately they were only there for one night.

For the afternoon we went to Hope Bay Bible Camp for their Canada Day Celebrations. They had free hot dogs, drinks and ice cream. The kids played a game called Frenzy Ball. The camp is the sister camp to one here in Kelowna where we hold Beaver camps. I took a picture of the rules so we can play it ourselves. It also explains the existence of a small fenced hexagon.

The kids quickly got involved in a water fight. Most of it was sponge balls but there were two water guns. My kids all got a chance with it. They also all got soaked. Ian gave his best ‘Rambo’ impression which is scary since he has never seen the movie.

Margaret decided to be a sniper and climbed to the top of about a 10 foot wall and sat up there straddling the wall. She had Philip completely confused as he couldn’t figure out how he was getting wet. Then a leader spotted her, decided it wasn’t safe and made her get down.

We went back to my mother’s for dinner cooked by Tony. It was a wonderful chili soup and good bread. We talked and talked.

The residents of Pender have a phone tree for when Orcas are spotted. My mom got a call and we had about 5 minutes before they would arrive. We got down to the beach. We took some pictures of the kids.

We then spotted a seal just off shore. We think it might have known the Orcas were coming and was hiding. In looking at the photos I spotted a juvenile. The Orcas we saw are resident which means that they eat salmon. There are also transients which will eat seals and large variety of other things. The seal also may have thought we had fish. People fishing throw the bits they don’t want in the water giving the seals a free meal.

Then the Orcas came by. They came in two groups. With the first I mostly watched and took photos in the general direction. Most missed or were to far away to be any good. With the second group I zoomed in a far as I could and spent more time aiming. It meant that I missed seeing some but I got more usable pictures. This was something that Ian really wanted to do. He is totally enthralled with Orcas but I couldn’t guarantee that we would see any. I made him a collage of the photos that I am going to get a 8×10 print made. In some of the photos you can see a much smaller whale next to a much larger one. We believe that it is one of the newborn from this year. We have had 4 births this year which is excellent for an endangered species. Newborns are 8.5 feet long and about 300 pounds.

Favorite things…

I apparently forgot to ask today. I would have to say the Orcas for everyone but some might have thought the water fight.

Linking up at:

<