6/9/02 4:25 PM Pacific

I'm going to try to be as brief in writing about Friday as I can. Fortunately I already mentioned a bit about Vancouver in a past entry, so I can concentrate on the trip there.

We got up way too early on Friday morning. There are only three ferries per day from Port Angeles to Victoria (our first destination), and we had to be on the earliest one (8:20 AM) if we wanted anything to go right the rest of the day. Now you may not think that 8:20 is all that early, but you need to line up for the ferry early if you want to make sure that you get a spot. What is early, you ask? Try 6:40 AM. Yeah, that's early. So we had to get up at 5:50 in order to shower and get ourselves down there. We made it on time, of course, and we were out on the waters of the Straight of Juan de Fuca by 9:00 AM.

I spent most of the crossing on the outside observation decks getting buffeted by the cold, cold winds. The crossing time was 95 minutes and I was hoping for whales... I didn't get whales. I did get a lot of other good pictures, though.

We landed in Victoria on time and made our way quickly through customs. Wow. My first time in a country other than the United States. Weird. We stopped for about 15 minutes in Victoria to take some pictures for my mother before hopping back in the car for the drive North to Swartz Bay where we would be catching the ferry to mainland B.C. The drive didn't take very long and within 30-40 minutes we were sitting in our car, in line at another ferry terminal.

That ride was also pretty uneventful, and I spent it in much the same location as the previous one. Though we didn't get any whales this trip either, we did get to see a bald eagle. That was very exciting and made us very happy. As for whales, we still have the ferry rides to and from the San Juans...

Then we were landing in Tsawassen and driving North towards Vancouver (the city, not the island). I think it was about a 37 km distance, but I'm not positive. Entering Vancouver was easy enough, though we got a bit turned around when streets moved, changed lanes, or suddenly became busses only. Some while later we found our way to the hotel and checked in. The buildings and complex were very nice and very modern, but our room was quite small and had an awful view out the window. I think we paid too much for a name and location, but that's just me. I've already mentioned my impressions of walking around so I won't go into them again. I found the retail area we perused to be interesting and diverse, but not all that unique or exciting. Seattle was much nicer, as was Estes Park in Colorado. We certainly didn't find anything to spend any money on. All in all I think we'll probably visit again, but I am more interested in spending some time in Victoria. We had dinner that night at the in-house grille and then walked around the marina area talking about boats. Then it was bed time. And that was Friday.