Round About Tower Hill

Happy Birthday Aileen!

This morning the lady at the tourist information office introduced us to two colourful natives of the country. She had two red backed spiders in jars, after catching them yesterday just outside her shop. She showed them to us so we would know what to watch for and to keep away from them. She cautioned us that climbing into bed with one could be dangerous to our well being. After breakfast at a cafe, Jack and I went for a round about, starting at the Botanic garden recommended by Amy. There we saw wild cockatoos and budgies in their natural habitats. We managed to walk through several sticky spider webs, strung out between the trees over the creek before our eyes became accustomed to watching for their delicate threads glistening in the sunlight. We also did a photo session with a rather ungrateful member of the lizard family. He allowed only a few pictures before plunging into the creek and swimming into the shadows of the overhanging branches on the far side of the water. From there he kept a wary watch on us as we checked out the pile of branches into which a baby lizard had darted. Jess tells us this lizard sounded like it could have been a water dragon, which sounds much more fierce than he appeared to be, thank goodness.

We then followed a bike path which we hoped would loop us back to the botanic garden where we started. Instead we found ourselves getting farther and farther without any sighting of where we hoped to end up. Instead - after several kilometres we spotted an obvious local landmark, the tower atop the hill and immediately recognized we were behind the mountainous hill when what we really wanted was to be in front of the hill. Orienting ourselves to find our way back to the village of Picton we were hot and sweaty, tormented by some strain of Australian flies that liked Jack's sweaty aroma and pestered him mercilessly. I guess I didn't smell as sweet as did he because they did not bother me hardly at all. We did manage to get back to Jess' before she and the little ones got back from MOPS.

We came back to the house and sat on the deck with a Shandy to allow our weary bodies to cool and recuperate (a little reminiscent of another walking tour trip I was once on).

After a quick lunch we piled into the car for a cross country flying lesson, with Jessica Andretti Smith at the helm. Christian asked his mom to make the wheels of the car go funny. Oh how our babes innocently let our occasional indiscretions be known! Apparently he likes it when she wobbles the car left to right, doing short slalom zigzags on the highway. She wisely chose not to do it while we were in the car to experience this excitement.

Supper was almost garnished with some 100% Alberta beef in the shape of a thumb from a left hand. Do not fear, no one admitted to finding thumb pieces in their meal so when I remove the bandage I am optimistic I will find that my thumb is actually still intact with no pieces missing.

Well we are winding down for the night. The children are fed, polished and have had their final stories read to them for the night. I had a special request from Christian to read "paper bag princess" a-g-a-i-n... so goodnight one and all ....more tomorrow.

Missing all of you, but not enough to be ready to come home yet.

Grandma Gloria-Rose and Poppa Jack