Cars

As usual we were up before most people and headed into downtown Victoria. After finding a place to park not too far from the ferry entrance, we next found a place for breakfast. Ended up at a chain, probably the equivalent to our Denny?s, called Smitty?s which had a location on the ground floor of an office building.

Hunger satisfied, we wandered the downtown and the inner harbor looking for a real estate book for a friend who hopes to retire to this area in a few years. We had a dickens of a time finding one, unlike in Aiken where these books are in nearly every business and you are never out of sight of a stand-alone kiosk full of them (not unlike gift shops at a Disney theme park) here in Victoria we had to ask a half-dozen folks before we got a hold of one.

A couple of people we know, who have been here before us raved about the Inner Harbor area, with it?s interesting mix of old, stately hotels & government buildings and the presence of an excellent provincial museum. But to counter balance all that there are lots of tacky touristy stuff like bright yellow zodiac boats from whale watching companies zipping about, souvenir shops and a wax museum. For us the best part was watching a steady stream of seaplanes arrive and leave, bringing people right into downtown from Vancouver & other places.

We were so entertained that we almost screwed up our ferry ride back to Washington. The reservation for the Vancouver to Victoria ferry yesterday told us we needed to arrive no sooner than 60 minutes prior and no later than 30 minutes prior to departure, so we were going on the assumption that the one from Victoria, BC to Port Angeles, WA would be the same. Wrongo! At about 50 minutes to the departure time we noticed that there were a lot of cars queued up at the ferry loading area. We had a reservation, so we weren?t too worried about getting on, but decided we should get the car and head over. When we pulled in to the line and paid we were near the very back of the line. It was then that we looked on the reservation sheet I had printed from the Internet and noticed in big bold letters that we should have been in line 90 minutes prior to the scheduled launch because of customs. Luckily it is not high season, because they could have given away our spot on the boat. At about the 5 minute mark of the 90 minute crossing we entered a fog bank and didn?t emerge from it until we were nearly ashore at the end.

Our first stop back in the US, other than filling up with gas, was Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park about 18 miles south of Port Angeles. Spectacular. Unfortunately the bright sun was high in the sky behind the ridge making an exposure that showed the bright blue sky with a sprinkling of high white clouds set against the gray/green peaks, some still covered in white snow, with dark green evergreen trees in the foreground impossible. You are just going to have to fly out here and see for yourselves. At an overlook on the way down we said hello to a guy who had just pulled in and he launched into a 15-minute spiel on how the logging companies, American greed and Bush have nearly destroyed the planet. At one point I had the car in reverse, but couldn?t go anywhere for fear of running over his feet. When he saw our National Park map he calmed enough to give us a couple of tips being as he is from the area, 1) the road to one of the rainforest trails we had planned on seeing was washed out about halfway to the end, rending that section of the park unreachable and 2) we should stop at Ruby Beach instead of the three others because it was the most scenic because it had several sea stacks along it.

He was right on the beach; Ruby was reminiscent of the Oregon coast we visited last fall and well worth the stop. We won?t even test his other tip and will just head back north up the coast to take in the other rainforest area in the park. There are also a couple other places to see back that way that we bypassed on the way to tonight?s bedding down spot, Kalaloch Lodge.

Donna and I were going to meet everyone downtown for lunch and then do some walking to see a few things. You know us, we went down early.

First, even though it was lightly raining, we took a nice walk from Donna’s book. On the way into Seattle we visited North Creek Park in the town of Mill Creek. It is about a mile round trip and all on boardwalk through a small wetlands.Very interesting walk, but I called it off after about 2/3’s of it because I was getting soaked.

From there we ended up parked not too far from where we were to meet at, the Olympic Sculpture Garden. After we had covered almost all of it we stopped inside the pavilion to warm up and dry off. While we both found the pieces interesting and the park itself very nice, we agreed that we really didn’t get art. The only one we both could “understand” was a giant eraser (another of which we had seen before.)

At noon we met brother Jim, wife Linda and daughter Jennifer next to the entrance to the sculpture Garden, but instead of going to view the “art” we headed down the water front to see Sylvester and Sylvia Mummy at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Now that’s entertainment. After gawking at, but not buying any, curiosities we walked whence we came to meet brother Scott, wife Beth and evil-eyed baby James for lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory.

After lunch Jim, Linda and Jen headed off to see an old teacher of Jennifer’s and the rest of us walked up the hill to Seattle Center to check out the Folk Like Festival. Think music, arts and crafts, multiply that by 10, toss in a dallop of free spiritry and you get lots of very strange characters (and I guess that includes us.) I think if you enjoyed a particular style of music and could plan your visit around that it might be a very entertaining way to spend a day.

By three thirty in the afternoon Donna and I were toast so we all walked back to the cars where Scott, Beth and stare down king, James went their way and we went ours.

And boy are my arms tired. Bada-boom.

Good to be home. On the 60 mile drive home from the airport this evening we saw maybe a couple dozen cars, in the northeast if you go 6 miles you see a couple thousand cars.

Just realized that last Sunday I forgot to change the the top count, I didn’t leave the top down all week while the car was at the airport, it actually went up before last Sunday’s drive to Columbia. Tonight when we landed back in South Carolina it was just about as cold as it was when we left Jersey this morning, so although we wanted to ride home with the top down, we didn’t want to that bad. It stayed up.