November 2-4, 2014

On Sunday, we caught a local Victoria bus and took it into downtown and to the waterfront. As usual it drizzled rain the entire time we were out sightseeing. Victoria is much smaller than Vancouver and we liked it better. It didn’t have a big city feel to it at all. We checked out the Empress Hotel. Rob wouldn’t go for High Tea so we just observed it for a bit. We saw the Parliament Building where there was a memorial set up for the 2 recent fallen soldiers. We also went to Fisherman’s Wharf. It is a quaint little community of multi coloured floating houses and a few restaurants. It was pretty neat actually. Nothing like other “Fisherman’s Wharf’s we have seen before. We were amazed at how big some of the houses there were and many were nicely yet uniquely decorated.

On Monday, we left our RV campground and headed to Butchart Gardens, just north of Victoria. We spent a couple of hours wandering through their beautiful property. It was the best time of year to see the Japanese Gardens. The colours were amazing as you will see from the attached photos. Throughout all of the Gardens there are many different water feature areas and the entire property is extremely well kept. We could see an obvious difference between Butchart which is a privately owned Garden and the Royal Botanical Gardens which we are members of at home. RBG depends on donations and is a non profit organization whereas the Butchart Gardens are owned by the Butchart family. It has been open for over 100 years always owned by the Family. When it first opened it was a labour of love for a husband and wife back in the early 1900’s. It is classified as a National Historic Site of Canada and is in a league of it’s own when it comes to Gardens.

After leaving the Gardens, we drove further north on the Island and explored Saanich Peninsula which included the town of Sidney. From what we saw, Sidney would be a lovely place to live and we learned that Sidney has the best year round weather in the entire province of BC. So, if that means less rain than everywhere else in BC, then that would be the place we would go if we were ever to move west. Of course, it was raining quite hard as we drove through Sidney, so we‘re not sure we believe what they say about their weather.

Speaking of weather, we just realized that is has rained every day where we have been since October 20^th until yesterday when we finally had a dry day.

On Monday night we had planned to Boondock at Walmart in Victoria as we had to be on the road early to get to the Ferry Terminal by 9 am to take the Ferry to Washingon, U.S. Our GPS took us to the Walmart but unfortunately it was in a very compact area of box stores and only had covered parking which our Motorhome would not fit in. So, we had to quickly search other parking options as we had no campground to go to and there was no other Walmart nearby. We ended up discovering that the City of Victoria allows 24 hour parking on some of its city streets downtown and we were able to just park on the side of Menzies Street which was right beside the Parliament Building and only 1 block from the Ferry Terminal. We had a beautiful view of the Parliament Building which was brightly lit with white Christmas lights and also had a great view of the Empress Hotel which also was all lit up.

Tuesday morning, we pulled into the Ferry Terminal about 8:30 am and waited for the U.S. Custom and Border officials to drop by. It was an extremely easy process. All they asked us was if we had any fruit, vegetables or meat onboard the RV. We said “no”. They asked where we were going and for how long. And that was it! We were in the U.S. Easy Peasy!! No questions about Jazz or her food or anything.

The Ferry ride was 1 hour and 40 minutes long. Jazz was able to come up into the Passenger lounge with us for the trip. There were actually quite a few dogs on the trip and all were well behaved.

We arrived in Port Angeles, Washington between noon and 12:30 pm and from there we headed toward Gig Harbour, Washington where we plan to spend 2 or 3 nights. On the way, we stopped off at Best Buy to get a US Sim card for our Cell phone. Our Canadian phone number has now been disconnected so if you would like to communicate with us, please do so either by email, Skype or Facetime going forward or of course we always appreciate your comments on the Blog.

We’ll squawk to you again soon.