Monarchs, and planning to leave Thursday

A few days ago I noticed a Monarch around some milkweed plants in our birdfeeder area. Later I saw what I thought were Monarch eggs on the underside of several of the leaves. I guess they were, because we found 2 Monarch caterpillars on the plants this morning, chowing down. It's likely hard to tell from the pictures, but the one in the first picture is twice the size of the other already. They must grow really fast.

Note the dark clumps to the right of the lower caterpillar. I think this is their excretion, rather large for their size. They must pretty much eat, poop and grow fulltime. 

In years gone by this would not likely be too exciting, but it's been a rare sight around here for several years now. 

Also exciting to us - we expect to be leaving on Thursday morning, heading out to southern British Columbia. Sounds like we may be dodging forest fires as we go, but we'll pay attention to the news. We expect to be blogging periodically as we go.