This time Bender was the handful. He just could not calm down. We drove out to Toodyay and he was a pest in the car, while Barbie did her usual thing of sleeping or gazing out of the window.
We found a parking spot and then walked back across the bridge. N wanted to watch from the bridge for a while, but Bender was alternating between looking like he would try to jump off the bridge into the water a long way below, or jumping off the kerb into traffic.
When we got to the other side of the river we found that we couldn't go anywhere along the nice grassy foreshore in Toodyay as they were having an 'International Food Festival', no dogs were allowed. The whole area was fenced off, and we were forced to walk along a road to get down to an unoccupied stretch of river.
Barbie seemed to enjoy the sights and sounds near the river. There was a miniature railway which came rumbling past us on the trail, and she seemed to want to hitch a ride. All of the passengers were smiling at her. Bender had his own things to investigate.
He ended up dragging me down a steep bank, which was slippery mud from the recent rains. I landed on my arm and ended up with a sore shoulder, elbow and wrist. I also hurt my knee on a separate occasion as he tried to drag me to another spot.
He started to calm down a bit, after I had a very loud whinge at him I think he realised what he had done.
All our camping paid off with Barbie finding a sandy spot to lie down. She didn't sit down at all last time we were in this spot, two years ago! Bender followed suit and we had quite a relaxing time watching the boats paddle past. I did wish I had a pack of frozen peas to put on my elbow though!
There were kids on the other side of the river who had started their own little campfires, and there was quite a lot of smoke. Barbie seems to have gotten over her smoke phobia as she didn't even seem to notice it.
She did notice the sun when it came out though. She decided she would use N's shadow to keep her face out of it.
Barbie also asked if we could get this boat, so N and I could be at the front and back to paddle, and her Highness could curl up in the middle hole, rest her chin on the boat, and enjoy the ride.
