Friday - Today was our ferry trip to Victoria Island, and we had the
mistaken impression that our port city, Anacortes, was about 130 miles away,
instead of the 66 miles that it turned out to be. Marilyn corrected us last night, but we still
decided to get an early start (7:00 a.m.) since we didn’t have a
reservation. After we got off of I-5, we drove through some agricultural
country – maybe pumpkins, grapes, blueberries, something with lavender blooms,
and something else with white blooms (maybe potatoes), and some lumber yards of
course.
So we arrived in Anacortes
about 8:45 for our 2:40 ferry – a little downtime was in order. It only took about 5 minutes to get through town and we were
first in line for the “tall” vehicles.
One-way ticket for our rig (we stayed hooked up) was $210.90. We plan on coming back through Port Angeles
sometime next week. It was almost 3
hours before anyone got behind us in line, although the other lines moved
through boarding for ferries going to other islands.
We rested, walked up to the terminal, and I even had time to
gather some more rocks! I found one that may be petrified wood - I need to check with my new friend and rock expert, Ken Lawson, to verify that.
We had a view of the snow-capped mountain range here, I
don’t know if this is Mt. Baker or something else, but it is pretty.
I had a pretty good amount of rocks collected, so I sorted
them out to see if I could part with any duplicates. I discarded 2 and picked up on in place of
it.
We walked around the beach area a little. Looks like all the seabirds are home on their
perches. The posts had a nice reflection in this water
at this time of day.
After lunch in the RV, we walked back up to the terminal for
ice cream – wild blueberry for Joe, and rocky road for me.
Finally the announcement to get ready to board for our ferry
was broadcast, so Joe turned off the propane and we got in our seats. We were just about the last to board, and
they put us in pretty tight quarters.
We had about 3 inches between the mirror and the wall, and
they kept watching the awning. I thought
the mirror scraped once, but I haven’t checked, and we are really close to our
neighbor on the other side. We had to
get out through the driver’s door (which we never use, and which doesn’t close
well).
There was plenty of space on the ferry for passengers, and
there were a lot who walked on. They had
puzzles scattered around on some of the tables, people got on their computers,
some napped. There was also a snack bar
and drinks available.
We spent most of our time on deck, looking at the mountain,
the water, the beaches, looking for whales and dolphins.
We passed a few ferries going the other way, this is a busy
passageway. And they are supposed to put
the other boat back in service tomorrow so I assume they will begin their
normal ferry schedule then. Our ferry was the Elwha.
We could see some beaches in the distance, people use the
water here. This beach was literally
lined with driftwood.
We saw one small ferry loaded with a propane truck, so I
guess they don’t allow those kinds of trucks on these ferries – makes sense.
Our one stop was at Friday Harbor, and lots of people and
cars got off there. We watched the
smooth docking of the ferry – pretty impressive.
There was a Cheesecake Café and Bakery at this
terminal. Joe left me to go to the
restroom and I just knew he had gone over for cheesecake for us, but no, he
came back empty-handed.
Once the people and the cars deboarded, and the new ones got on, we were on the move
again.
It was my turn to look for whales and dolphins – we never
saw any. Just seagulls and ducks. But my binoculars work fine, so Joe was able to glue those 2 little plastic pieces in good enough.
We watched the mountain and finally the clouds cleared and
we got a good view.
Then I took a turn at the wheel.
Joe got this nice photo of the sun on the water as we got near our destination.
As we get close to Sidney, we were directed to go back to our
vehicles. The Purple Palace seems to
have made a safe crossing. You can see
by Joe’s hand just how close to the wall he had to park it.
I could not have done that.
We made it safely off the ferry and onto land about
5:45. We missed a turn on the
round-about and got to see a little more of town than probably necessary but we
found our way to our campground in Victoria and were I place by 6:30. Although we had a restful day, we were pretty
tired.
I asked at the office for a recommendation for dinner, and
she told me about a pub just down the street.
But I looked on the paperwork, and there was another pub a little
further that advertised “home cooking,” which sounded better than bar food, so
we decided to try that. Well, that was a
mistake. They were extremely busy. The waitress warned us that it would be about
45 minutes to get our food, but in reality it was about twice that. The menu was very English, hard to decide
what I might like. Joe ordered bangers
and mash, with a pint of some unknown kind of beer. I went with some kind of meatballs and
dumplings. Mine didn’t set too well – I
was up during the night getting rid of it! I ordered tea to drink, and what I
got was so nasty I sent it back. I asked
what kind of flavored tea that was, and she said it comes out of a gun, she
thought it was “coke tea.” Yuk! But they did give us a complimentary dessert
– we chose a lemon tart – because we had had such a long wait.
Canada, so I’m not sure how we are going to get that
resolved. I think our phones do work to
make and receive calls, so we can survive without data if necessary.
Saturday morning - after messing with the phone, the hot spot, and the laptop for way too long, I finally was able to come up with a phone number for Verizon Customer Service in the States, and my tech support person helped me resolve my problems. It turns out that our Hot Spot won't work in Canada, but my iPhone hotspot does, so I'm back in business. Thus, the blog is posted!
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