birthday chicken show!

And so ends another exhausting but fun weekend.

I left Friday morning for Eureka, which is a little over 300 miles north along the coast. It's a gorgeous drive, and the weather this weekend was perfect. This is one of my favorite poultry shows, it just seems so... mellow!

It took me 5.5 hours to get there, which is really good time. Traffic was very light, and since I was driving the Mom-mobile that sped things up to, it's easy to drive too fast in the minivan, whereas if you try that in my car if feels like it might fall apart (because really, let's face it, it might!). Plus, there was no way I could fit 26 birds in my car.

Anyway, got all cooped in and schmoozed a bit and then headed over to the "Banana Hut" (Hawaiian BBQ) for dinner. Coconut shrimp, mmmmm. Since a few of my buddies pointed out that it was my birthday (on Saturday, technicalities!) I was given a green flower lei. "Everyone gets lei'd on their birthday" as the guy at the cash register said. ;-)

I stayed with my friend A.R. and enjoyed getting to spend some time sitting around talking to her and seeing the art that she's working on at the moment.

Saturday is the day the birds get judged. It was... different. I wasn't too impressed with how that went, and I know I'm not the only one. Oh well, sometimes you just have to scratch your head and say "oh well." I spent the day talking to friends, and of course went and visited with the horses (especially the Friesians!) at the back of the fairgrounds.

Oh yeah, and Saturday was my birthday! I'm officially stopping at this age. No more, I'm staying right here! Nobody sang at the banquet this year, I was kinda bummed, but also kinda relieved (that happened a few years ago). Dinner was nice, I so enjoy the group of people that I spend time with at shows.

This morning was the raffle, and I was thrilled to win a nice cage that *everyone* wanted. It was a nice way to end the weekend, and compensated for the strange judging, sort of... Oh yeah and I sold all 13 of the birds I had for sale, which was awesome, and way more than paid for the weekend. Woot!

One more show to go this season. Gack, I don't even want to think about chicks yet! I would love to hatch about 30 chicks...and have them all be excellent. Ain't no way!

For your viewing pleasure and vicarious traveling, some photos:

A cute squirrely-thing that I was watching while stopped for lunch. (taken through the windshield)


I don't recall ever seeing snow on this drive before. The road conditions were fine, it was way up on the hills, but still...


I didn't take many bird pics but I thought this one of a sleeping sebright was neato:


One of the prettiest views on the trip, this is about a mile or so north of the Avenue of the Giants (heading south).


I still say everyone needs to see a redwood forest some time in their life. They are pretty awesome. And I know that's a really lovely bird poop on the window.


Just to try to convey the size... this wasn't even one of the really super huge ones.