What happens in Spring...

Is that apparently you get friends to come and visit! Or at least, friend. :)

The week before last, Calvin (our friend from Victoria/Nanaimo, which really should be called Vicmo, Nanaimoria, or prehaps just "The Island") came out to visit us. Of course he and I got up to all sorts of shenanigans while Taryn was forced to sit huddled in her little room studying hard for her exams. Ah the life of a student.

Anyways, Calvin and I did a bit of exploring, hiking (even a bike & hike multi-modal expedition), and chowing down at Pete's Frootique.

Finally on Taryn's day off, the three of us and Ritchie took part in what is a very eastern (but not necessarily East Coast) activity: visiting a Maple sugar camp.

Our experience starts at the cabin, where we were sat down and fed a glorious meal of sausage, maple baked beans, maple brown bread, and all-you-can-eat pancakes smothered in, of course, maple syrup. Someone at McDonalds must've been to this place when concocting the maple-baked-in-flapjack-sandwich-artery-clogger called the "McGriddle".

I must say that the food was fantabulous, simultaneously slowing me down with fat and pepping me up with sugar. My poor body had no idea what hit it.

Once we were able to drag ourselves back outside, we did a bit of exploring of the premises (unfortunately they weren't boiling the sap that day) and helped ourselves to some maple taffy we poured in snow.

We even got the chance to play with the farm's cute little springer spaniels, which apparently enjoyed picking large rocks up with their teeth and wandering around. Sure, why not?

Finally, today's Halifact: The Maritime Museum has recently acquired a live cockatoo which it has on display. When it's not squawking at teenagers that taunt it, you can usually coax it into saying its name. We couldn't, however, get it to say "Polly want a cracker". Arrrr!