2017-7-28 Ferry Crossing to Canada

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.

Our newest problem is that we can’t get our Verizon cell service to work, although we had checked in the states and told we were all set.  We can’t get connected to data, on our phones or our hotspot.  My phone keeps saying “Data Roaming is turned off,” but it is turned on.  They don’t have Verizon here in

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!

7/27/2017 - Driving the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest

Thursday - We slept in a little this morning after yesterday's marathon day, and had a pretty easy morning.  I spent an hour or so on yesterday's blog, and Joe did a little maintenance in preparation of tomorrow's departure and ferry ride over to Vancouver Island.  He's still messing with the air conditioner, trying to limp it along until we get home, although we are not having to use it much up here.  He also washed the windshield on both the RV and the car.

Of course, he wanted to go for a drive, so we took off about noon for the little town over on the freeway, which I finally figured out is named Smokey Point.  If we run out of money before we get home, he found a job opportunity here.

After going around in circles trying to find the post office, we headed north toward Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.  He had picked out a loop road that would circle back to I-5, but then he found a loop road off the loop road, and of course he HAD to take that one.  It had nice views of the mountains and of the forest

but then we ran out of pavement.

We caught glimpses of the pretty, emerald-colored Sauk River through the trees and finally found a pull-off with a trail.  I walked down a few feet for a picture,

but Joe tried out a different trail.  He climbed down on all fours and scooted down partway to get a view, and I caught him clawing his way back to the top.  And I had the better view anyway.

Our next stop was at a bridge crossing this pretty river, right next to the Peek-a-Boo trail where part of the road had washed out a few miles in (we weren't in to hiking today anyhow).  But we crossed places on our road that had washed out recently and had been repaired already.

 

This river was beautiful, rushing over stones and around boulders.  I even found a rock I needed, but Joe wouldn't go get it for me.  It had some nice markings on it that I could see through the water.

We saw a few waterfalls next to the road, and one way up at the top of the mountain.  And, the river had waterfall drops every once in a while.

 Although we were on a gravel road, it wasn't too bad, just really dusty.  But we were surrounded by forest again.

When we left the campground, it was 66 degrees and overcast, but as we got further north and east, the sun came out and it got up to 71 or so.  But it was hard to drive through the sun-dappled forest, especially through the dust.  We even got a sun-dappled picture of us!

and our dusty car.

 

We got back to the campground about 6:30, and it was 66 degrees and overcast.  We drove a little over 100 miles in our loop drive, but it took a long time.  We missed a turn once and had to turn around and go back to town to find the right road, but we finally worked our way home, "worked" being the operative word here.  After a quick dinner, we played our final card game for a while.  The girls have been on a winning streak, and it still held tonight but the games are getting closer.  We only won by 90 points.  Collins and Marilyn are staying in this area for 3 more nights, then heading back around the bottom of the Seattle/Tacoma area and over to the Olympia Peninsula where we will catch up with them again sometime next week.  We are off to catch the ferry tomorrow!