Canada

The view from the front porch of our B&B in Port Townsend, looking out over the lower town and towards Puget Sound

We finally departed on our Autumn trip to Canada on August 11. Drove up to Port Townsend - a particularly pretty little town on the Strait of Juan de Fuca where we had spent a couple of days last year. It's about an hour's drive from there to the harbor at Port Angeles where we caught the ferry over to Victoria on Vancouver Island. From there we drove about half way up the island to another pretty little town called Qualicum Beach.



Another view.


We spent a couple of nights in Qualicum Beach - mainly to break up the drive - but have found it to be a neat destination in its own right. On our full day here (today) we got up early and drove to one of the Provincial Parks for a hike up into the surrounding hills. They do know something about parks here - all of them offer spectacular scenery and tidy grounds for camping or just an afternoon picnic.

After a shower we headed back down the road to Port Alberni where we had lunch and generally spent the afternoon. It's a fishing & logging town located on what is basically a Fjord - really deep water cutting thru the mountains down to the waters of the Pacific. The drive is supposed to be one of the prettiest in Canada - which is saying plenty - and it sure didn't disappoint. Couldn't have been a nicer day. Interestingly, the town was named for the skipper of a Spanish vessel that was exploring and mapping the coastline in 1771 - didn't know the Spanish made it this far north but they did. He missed British Captain Vancouver by about 20 years, and of course it was Vancouver's claim to the Pacific Northwest for Britain that stuck - the Spanish had to settle for California.

Walking around Port Alberni


Plan is to drive up to Port Hardy on the northern tip of Vancouver Island tomorrow, where we'll stay in another B&B for a couple of nights before we catch the BC ferry for the trip up the inside passage to Prince Rupert on the BC mainland...just across the border from Alaska actually. It's a 15 hour ferry ride, but we have a private, outside cabin to enjoy the passing scenery in some comfort while we work our way north...and maybe take a nap at some point to compensate for the early wakeup required to make the sailing.

Calling it a ferry is almost a misnomer - from the photos it looks more like a small cruise ship that happens to take vehicles. Anyway, we're looking forward to it - it's the start of the real adventure on this 7 week trip thru BC and Alberta. From Prince Rupert we drive down thru northern BC towards Jasper, Lake Louise and Banff National Parks, then swing back around to the west to eventually finish up in Vancouver (BC) the last of September. We're essentially making a giant circle thru Western Canada and plan to be home on Sept. 28.

So...we're off.

One note for the Kevin & Mike: our US cell phones don't seem to be working up here, but I swapped the chip in mine to convert it to international mode and it seems to work OK. So our phone number is the international number we've used on trips before, which is 358 5317 5967. Remember to dial the international access code (011) before starting the sequence. Other than that the best way to connect is probably via email, since most of the places we're staying on the trip seem to have wireless internet.