TRAVEL LOG FOR CANADA VICTORIA - BC

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: Having made the final decision to take the “car” ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria, British Columbia, spend the day there killer whale watching, and then “car” ferry it over to Anacortes, Washington for the drive into Northern Cascades National Park, we set out . . . at 5:00 a.m.!! Suffice to say, neither of us had seen that hour in . . . well, a really long time . . . not to mention, since we had watched the 10:30 p.m. showing of The Manchurian Candidate the night before, we were both a tad out of it while waiting for the ferry. The car ferry was cool, and a first for both of us, but Mike slept for most of it. Victoria looked pretty cool when we arrived, sort of European, and it definitely felt like another country, whereas, Vancouver does not. Everything seemed like smooth sailing until we got off of the ferry, and had our car was randomly selected to be searched by Canadian customs agents. They were nice enough, but ran all sorts of “Ion” sensor swabs (the same thing they run over your bag at the airport to test for explosives), which they apparently use in Canada to detect firearms and narcotics. Long story short, 45 minutes later, after a few swabs, and even a sniffing dog, we were finally told to enjoy our stay. Maybe it was the way we looked - or smelled (at that point, we had not showered in at least three days!!). Whale watching was excellent. Thanks for the suggestion Rick! We went on a little rubber speed boat – a zodiac boat - with 8 other people about 20 miles out at warp speed in these big red water suits. We felt like we just got off of the space shuttle once it was over. We saw some smaller dolphins and tons of orcas (also part of the dolphin family) – mommas and calves carving and diving in and out of the water, a few young ones showing off doing all sorts of breaches and flips, and a large male that stuck its head way up out of the water. Since the boat cannot get closer than 100 yards to the whales, it was hard to get any great pictures (we don’t have a great zoom feature on our digital camera), but it was an amazing experience to be out there in the water with them swimming all around you. And, we also got to see two mated bald eagles, who were perched on a pier in Oak Bay looking for fish, a bird sanctuary (a big rock island) with at least twenty different kinds of birds that we could see, and some seals and their pups. We also checked out Government Street and the “BC Day” music festival in the center of town, which was fun because there was a bunch of great shopping, live music on a barge, and people camped out on all the boats in the “harbour” as they spell it in Canada. As we cruised through the San Juan Islands on the ferry towards Anacortes, Washington, we pictured Pam and Rush sailing their fancy new “yacht” through the islands and throwing their anchor down in one of the “harbours” or inlets, never to return to LA.

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