The morning started as the prior did, with me up first and getting the blog up over coffee. Mark had spent the night with other friends. Greg and Ash were up about 6:30 probably. We made our way out a little after 8am to get to a 9am meeting at the convention.

We made it to the 9am meeting in time to get decent seats. Mark met us there, and we connected with our friend Greg (yes, another one) from San Francisco, who hung out with us the rest of the day. The meeting ended a little after 10am, and the next one we wanted to attend wasn’t until 11:30 so we decided to go visit the GALAA hospitality suite that was at the Fairmont.

The globe on the right is over the lobby when you enter but I didn’t notice it when we walked in. The sessions today were in the “new” building – there are essentially two convention centers here, and on Thursday we’d been in the other one. There wasn’t much going on at the Fairmont so we made our way back, picking up some coffee along the way.

We got there by 11:05. For an 11:30 meeting. And the doors were already closed and they were closely monitoring how many more they would let in. Oh, and I should mention this was one of the few gay sessions that were on the regular conference agenda. We did manage to get in and lucked out getting a table in the back for all 5 of us. It was a good session, but we left about 12:15 because we had other plans.

This whale looks pretty smooth from a distance but it’s so not when you get close up to it. On the right, just looking back at downtown from the far west side of the convention center.

Shannon Falls was less an hour into the trip. It made for a nice stop. There were quite a few people about, and some beautiful trails that went much higher than we had time for, but we got some nice photos while we were there.

We took the gondola up to the top of the mountain and encountered this black bear mama and her cub just beneath us. There were mountain bikers speeding past on a trail above which had caught the cubs attention. Mark’s video below captures it perfectly. So cute.

We enjoyed stunning views of the mountains on the gondola, which was about a 30-minute ride all the way to the top.

We had time to grab a few photos before our 5:30pm dinner reservations. The Roadhouse on the summit featured an extensive buffet, which we all enjoyed. We had somehow managed to be 2nd in line – before about 60 students thankfully – and got a nice table next to a window.

There was a viewing deck that also had a bar and pretty much a 360 view of the surrounding area. On the right – a nice shot of the mountains behind Greg and Mark on our way back down.

We made it back to our condo about 9:30pm. It was a beautiful drive with lots of this in both directions.

Today is the closing meeting of the convention at 9am. It remains to be seen if we will make it there. Beyond that, we have no other specific plans. Come back tomorrow to see how it all turned out.