Rick & Carol's Journey (DL)

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This installment covers Friday (August 22) through Tuesday (August 26).

Friday was a sunny travel day. We started by taking the 1-1/2 hour ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, Washington. Leaving Victoria, we saw some pretty fancy houseboats tied up at docks in the harbor.


After running errands in Port Angeles, we drove down the Washington coast to the southern-most of the region’s three rainforests – the Quinault Rain Forest. We stayed in a surprisingly nice RV park located about 200 feet from the largest Sitka Spruce tree in the world.

Saturday was another sunny day. With a late check-out time, and a short driving day, we began by walking two nature trails around Lake Quinault and another path to the largest Western Red Cedar in the world. The inside of the cedar is hollow, so it is only expected to survive for another couple of hundred years.






Although we searched for the resident elk, we never could find any. After lunch in the RV, we drove to Cape Disappointment State Park in extreme southwest Washington. It is so named because early explorers wanted to sail into the mouth of the Columbia River, hoping to find good fishing and Indian traders, but due to weeks of bad weather, they never were able to make it past the sand bars that guard the entrance. We are staying for three nights in a state park. Our site is just behind low dunes and this evening we walked for a while on the driftwood filled beach.



Sunday was a rainy sightseeing day. We drove across the long bridge from Washington into Astoria, Oregon to visit Fort Clatsop, the site where Lewis and Clark spent the winter after completing their cross-country journey. The fort is the second reconstruction, the first having burned to the ground in 2005. The second reconstruction was completed the following year. It is supposed to be more authentic than the first, because all the logs used in the construction were stripped and cut by hand. Of coures, the original construction was quicker -- the party arrived at the site on December 7th and the outside walls and roofs were in place by Christmas.


Because of the rain, we decided to close down our sightseeing for the day. We did a little shipping and then called our kids.

Monday was a sunny to overcast day. We did some more sightseeing, starting at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center located just south of the RV park. According to the ranger at Fort Clatsop, it is the second best Lewis and Clark Museum, after the one in Great Falls, Montana. After seeing the museum, we walked up and downhill to the Cape Disappointment Light House.


We then went back to the RV for lunch, before driving up to the north end of the peninsula. En route we saw the claimed longest beach in the world (25 miles up the west side of the peninsula), stopped at an antique store, and walked to the shore at the National Wildlife Refuge located at the extreme north end of the peninsula. On the way back to the RV, we made a quick stop to walk to the North Head Lighthouse. We got a voice mail from Auntie Jude (who is watching our house) which said that we got a lot of rain, but no damage to the house as Tropical Storm Fay moved across Tallahassee last weekend.

Back at the RV, I listened to a couple of hours of the Democratic National Convention on XM Radio.

Tuesday was a driving day down curvy Highway 101 from Cape Disappointment to Florence, Oregon, located at the north end of the Oregon dunes, about halfway down the Oregon coast. It was sunny but cool. Our first stop was at the Tillamook Cheese Factory where we saw cheese being cut and packaged down the assembly line. After buying some of their wares, we had lunch in the attached café.

The Oregon coast has both rocky coast and sandy beaches, and we saw some of both.



Late in the day we stopped at the Sea Lion Caves, where we were able to get photos of California Sea Lions.


The RV park tonight has both cable TV and WiFi access, so in addition to watching Hillary’s convention speech, I will try to update the blog.

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This installment covers Wednesday (August 20) and Thursday (August 21).

Wednesday started out sunny, but changed to a light drizzle by late afternoon. We again caught a bus downtown for another day of sightseeing. We started at Craigdarroch Castle, the house built by a Victoria coal baron. He died before the house was completed, and his widow and daughters lived in the home for many years. It later served as a hospital, school, and administration building before it was restored as a historic site.




Looking Up 4 Flights of Stairs


We spent the afternoon visiting the Royal BC Museum. The museum had exhibits on war brides, the people of British Columbia, the native peoples, natural history, and BC history.



Thursday was a mostly sunny day. This morning we drove to Betschart Gardens, a large complex of gardens started by the wife of a limestone mine owner. The present gardens include a sunken garden in the old limestone pit, a rose garden, a Japanese garden, and a Mediterranean garden.






We then drove across town to visit Fort Rodd Hill, the site of a series of coastal defense batteries. Although they were manned from the late 1800s to the mid-1950s, they never saw action.




There is also a working lighthouse located adjacent to the fort.


Today is our last day in Canada – tomorrow we catch the ferry to Port Angeles, Washington. After eating lunch, we bought gas for the car with the last of our Canadian dollars.

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This installment covers Sunday (August 17) through Tuesday (August 19).

Sunday was a driving day from Port Hardy to Qualicum Beach.

On Monday, we drove about 100 miles to Victoria. The last half of the trip was on increasingly crowded roads. We have a nice, pull-through site at a large campground. In the early afternoon we went out for lunch and minor shopping. Later we napped, surfed the Internet, and watched TV – more Olympics.

Tuesday started out overcast with a light drizzle, but turned sunny for most of the day. Carol and I caught a bus to go downtown for a full day of sightseeing. We started at the Miniature World Museum and saw a host of miniature scenes, ranging from war, to historic views of British Columbia, fairy tales, doll houses, and a circus that took over 7000 man hours to construct.





Next we went into the Empress Hotel, a Victoria landmark for over 100 years. At the nearby Royal BC Museum (which we plan to visit tomorrow) we saw our first solar powered trash can.



We checked out the ferry terminal, to see how we will get the RV there when we return to the U.S. on Friday morning. We then had a nice lunch at a small restaurant near the waterfront.

After lunch we visited the wax museum. In addition to the typical wax figures, including many British royalty (e.g. Henry VII and his many wives), the museum had replicas of British crowns and scepters.



We then took a short guided tour of the 111-year-old Parliament Building. In addition to the rotunda and parliament chambers, we saw the commemorative stain glass windows for Queen Victoria’s 60th Jubilee and Queen Elizabeth’s 50th.




Finally we toured the British Columbia Maritime Museum before catching a bus back to the RV park.



The museum is housed in what was the original justice building in Victoria. The upper floor is a reconstructed courtroom and the building contains the oldest cage elevator still in operation in British Columbia.

I have just added a link to "Travels With Keith and Kathy," a blog by two of the members of our Alaska Caravan who were part of the group that continued with the post-caravan trip across the Top of the World Highway and down the Cassiar Highway. Their blog has some good photos and some very informative text. We first met Keith and Kathy on our Nova Scotia/Newfoundland Caravan and were happy to have the opportunity to travel with them again.

[Note: This is the second post today. Be sure to read the prior post.]

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This installment covers Tuesday (August 12) through Saturday (August 16).

Tuesday was a warm, overcast sightseeing day. We started by driving to the Gastown area of downtown. There we saw the statue of the original Gassy Jack (after whom the town was named) and a famous steam powered clock.


We also walked through some souvenir shops, one of which had a nice collection of native arts and crafts. Because of the high density of homeless people, we turned back without walking to Chinatown.

We next took an exterior elevator to the observation deck on the top of the Heritage Center. After taking some photos of the town, we walked down to the cruise ship dock / convention center.




We then drove to Chinatown and went on a tour of Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen gardens and house. The guide to the house was very informative, and we learned a lot about how the upper class lived during the Ming Dynasty. When you know what to look for, examples of Yin and Yang pervade the house. Leaving the house and gardens, we walked a couple of blocks for photos of the gate that marks the entry to Chinatown.



We had lunch on the waterfront at a nice restaurant, where we took advantage of a buy-one, get-one entrée deal that came with our tickets to the observation deck.

After lunch we drove to Stanley Park where we visited the Vancouver Aquarium. In addition to fish, jellyfish, sea lions and seals, the aquarium has several Beluga whales, including a mom and young whale.


Wednesday we went sightseeing in the car up the Sunshine Coast. This trip involves taking two ferry trips northbound to Powell River, then returning on the same route with two ferry trips southbound. The scenery along the way was pretty, but it ultimately did not seem worth the long driving day.


We visited a small, local museum in Powell River, then drove up to Lund, which marks the end of Highway 101 – coast highway from Canada, through the US and Mexico, to South America. Between Lund and Powell River we saw a small informational road sign which said “Nuclear Weapons Free Zone,” but we didn’t get a photo.

Powell River was build around a paper mill, and the harbor for the mill is surrounded by WWI vintage concrete ship hulls. Due to a steel shortage during the war, some ships were constructed of concrete. They were abandoned after the war, because the weight of the concrete adversely impacted their cargo carrying capacity.


We had a nice lunch at Rene’s Italian restaurant in Powell River, and supper in the RV. Tonight was more Olympics on TV. In general, the Canadian coverage on CBC is better than the U.S. coverage on NBC.

Thursday was another sunny sightseeing day in Vancouver. In the late morning, we went to the Burnaby Village Museum, which represents the village restored to the way it would have looked during 1925. In the afternoon we visited the Telus Science Museum in downtown Vancouver. This was a hands-on science museum, and although it was geared toward children, we enjoyed the visit.

This evening we walked a few blocks from the RV park to a nearby shopping center, where we had gyros for supper. Tonight was more Olympics on TV.

On Friday we moved (by ferry) from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. Once on the island, we headed north to Campbell River, where we dry camped at the Elk Falls Provincial Park. We arrived shortly after 1:00 p.m. After lunch, we headed west in the car to visit a couple of waterfalls. Supper was in the RV, and with no electricity for TV, we turned in early.


Saturday was a drive north through mostly forest land and nearby coast to Port Hardy, on the northern end of Vancouver Island. After checking into the Sunny Sanctuary Campground around noon, we went sightseeing in the car again this afternoon. We visited Port McNeill, where the town was celebrating Orca Fest. Besides a few craft tents, the main attractions were a display of old cars, including some that had been modified for drag racing, and free canoe paddling.



We then took a scenic drive to Port Alice, and finished by visiting Fort Rupert, a native village which featured a couple of totem poles.

We had supper in the RV and (again) watched some of the Olympics. We finally have Internet access again, so I also took the opportunity to update our travel blog.