Dragon Boat Festival, IKEA, and Crayfish dinner, oh my!

Today we went to Sloan's Lake in Denver to look at the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival. They sold all sorts of Asian foods, it smelled really good and almost very tempting to buy. Also saw some souvenirs, and very overpriced soda. We stayed for a bit and then decided to head to the new one and only IKEA (Centennial) in Colorado.

We arrived at IKEA, but it took forever because they were redirecting traffic and stuff, because it is so congested. IKEA had their grand opening on July 27. When we got inside and waas about to take the escalator upstairs, they told us to wait and we had to follow a lady to form a waiting line. Good thing we were at the front of the line, because when we came back out of the store, the line was extremely long and wrapped around the garage several times. If I saw a line that long, I'd turn around and leave!

I tried their Swedish Meatball combo with my sister. It came with 15 swedish meatballs with gravy, a scoop of mash potato, and lingonberry sauce; and salad, and a drink. I drank some lingonberry juice, which kinda reminded me of a much sweeter version of Cranberry juice. It tasted pretty good, I enjoyed it. Then we browsed their showrooms and I felt like I was taking a tour of a store. We then went downstairs and looked at some smaller individual items. Boy was it hot in that store, I guess with all those people inside the A/C had no power over the body heat.

After that, we decided to try some food in their cafe area. I had a pizza slice with drink and my sister had a vanilla frozen yogurt. The pizza was pretty good, and of course we had lingonberry juice for the drink. My sister really enjoyed the frozen yogurt. We hung out to rest on some couches for a while before leaving the store.

After IKEA we made our way to South Platte Park, which was fairly close by. We tried fishing the river, but my sister didn't really want to try it. So we drove a little bit further to access to the ponds. When we got there we tried to go fishing for fish but got no bites. We saw a father with his two young sons fishing for crayfish with some hot dogs. So I added a Gulp! Salmon egg on my hook and started fishing for them as well. I caught some on the artificial salmon eggs. The father offered us some hotdogs since he wouldn't be able to use them all and they would just spoil anyways, so we used them and caught a lot more. We took ours home and ate them. They were delicious.

Fly fishing

Today I learned how to fly fish. It is a bit difficult because all I knew before was how to spin fish. It was difficult because I kept wanting to whip the line out; I flick my wrist a lot and I stop poorly. The stop is what drives the line out. Hopefully I will improve as I practice (away from view of course).

Learning to fly fish from a buddy.

My prince is a toad

Today we walked Crystal at Golden Ponds. At first we were going to walk her from Izaak Walton to Golden Ponds, but it started to rain a little so my sister wanted to only walk around Golden Ponds instead. At Golden Ponds we went onto the pier and looked into the water and saw a bunch of Sunfish and a trout. Crystal was getting a bit impatient so we began walking around. We walked to Pond #4, but before that we walked down to the stream to let Crystal cool off her paws. I saw a toad and caught it.

My Prince is a Toad.

 I gave it a kiss, but unfortunately he didn't magically turn into some Prince. Maybe the toad was female, or am I doomed to turn into a toad in the future?! As we walked back up to the path, I saw another toad but this one was much smaller. We let Crystal swim in the pond, however the pond had a ton of nasty algae in it. My sister began to look for the frogs we saw here last time. Indeed we found them, bullfrogs I think they are. She shot some pictures and I handed her the net so she can try to catch it. She almost caught one, but because she was fiddling around with the algae it got away.

I then caught a small crayfish and used it as bait. I couldn't find any bass large enough to eat it, but then I saw a snapping turtle so I tossed my hook in front of him and BAM!!! With lightning quick reflexes he snatched up my poor innocent crayfish and managed to only leave a small piece of tail on my hook. Good thing he didn't get hooked I'm not sure how I would've landed him.

Once upon a busy day

On July 23, my sister and I went to eat at Q-Table BBQ Buffet in Northglenn. It costs $19.95 per person, which is pretty much the average cost when eating 'unlimited' Korean BBQ. We tried a little bit of everything, but the main course was the Korean BBQ. They had beef intestines, spicy chicken, spicy pork, bulgogi, short ribs, chadol, and pork belly.I also tried their spicy chicken wing, sour bbq chicken, sweet potato, etc.

The beef intestines tasted like a piece of pure fat. Gross. Well it is better than the pork intestines we tried at the Dim Sum place. The intestines we had at the Dim Sum restaurant smelled like poop and tasted like poop. The beef intestines here at Q-Table didn't have such a vulgar scent or taste. The rest of meats were great, but the short ribs are always the best.

After lunch we proceeded to the Denver Botanic Gardens. We each paid the $8 admission, and first started to look around the gift shop. We headed on out to the extreme heat and began our tour of the gardens. I was really psyched to see their orchids, cactus and succulents, and carnivorous plants. One of the coolest plants we saw was the Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica), it was cool because when you touch them, their leaves close up. Today I ordered some of the seed from eBay, so I can hopefully grown my own.

To much of my dismay, the building in which the orchids were housed in was closed due to a private event. Bummed out we continued along the rest of the gardens. We saw some goldfish at the Japanese Garden; and the tea house was also closed because they were doing a tea ceremony which cost $30 to participate in. We also rescued a dragonfly that was drowning in the pond, it stood on my hand for awhile until I placed him on a nearby plant so he could dry off his wings and recover.

It was very very hot, at least 95*F, I was sweating like no tomorrow hehe. After that we went indoors and chugged down a lot of the water from the water fountain until the fountain started spouting warm water. We left the Denver Botanic Gardens and then proceeded to GameStop. Along the way, we stopped at a McDonalds because we were really hot still and quite thirsty, and I had a horrible headache due to the heat (due to the beginning of heat exhaustion?). I ordered a large frozen Strawberry Lemonade and Megan ordered a small Mango Pineapple Smoothie. We chugged down our drinks and felt much relieved. We continued to GameStop and when we got there we found out the game I was looking for was sold out. We had to head to a different GameStop to find it.

After GameStop, we headed back to H-Mart which we passed by when we were going to the second GameStop. Bought some groceries for mom and some ingredients Megan needed for her dishes. I bought some lychees that were pretty good, and two custard buns. I was kinda debating in my head if I wanted to bring home a delicious Monkfish for my mom to us, but in the end decided not to.

It was quite a day, we didn't get home until 9pm.

And once again I blog.

Yesterday after school, my sister and I decided to visit the Butterfly Pavilion because we haven't been there for a long time and I had a $2 off coupon. The last time we went there was probably sometime in 2001, so maybe about 10 years ago was our first time at BP.

After paying the admission fees, we headed towards the exhibits to look at the bugs. Of course there was Rosie, a real live tarantula that people can actually hold. I held her back then, but this time I didn't; besides there was a long line of kids waiting to hold her. BP also has a little section for aquatic invertebrates such as jellyfish, lobster, horseshoe crab, and starfish. The best part is entering the butterfly exhibit; boy was it hot and humid in there! Plenty of species of awesome butterflies and plants to look at. While in the exhibit a butterfly landed on my head, and one landed on my sister's knee.

After that, we went to the gift shop and looked around. I bought some chocolate that had big black ants in it. There was four pieces of chocolate, and each piece had only two black ants in it. I think that was cheap, they should've put a few more in! Last time I bought some roasted mealworms.

Butterfly Pavilion 2011

Anyways, today I rescaped my aquarium. There was a problem with having too many plants overcrowding each other blocking light which caused some of the plants to fall ill and die. I am also having some algae issues but hopefully it'll clear up soon. Below is a picture of what it looks like now, it may look empty but I am waiting for some Eleocharis spp. 'Belem' to arrive in the mail so I put it in the empty spaces in front. I'm hoping it'll grow into a nice carpet. If this plan doesn't work out, there would be Plan B...

I also planted one of my Pinguicula primuliflora into a glass vase along with some clumps of Utricularia graminifolia. I'm hoping the UG will spread around the butterwort like grass around a larger plant. I really love Carnivorous Plants. My favorite type are definitely Butterworts, and if the climate here was a bit more suitable for them and I had the funds I'd have a room dedicated to CPs.

In the evening, my sister and I went fishing at the St. Vrain State Park. Not much action today, all I caught was a baby fish while my sister caught a moderately sized Black Crappie.