Canada — Vancouver Island

We left Vancouver and drove north to catch the ferry at Horseshoe Bay, which turned out to be a lovely hamlet with a restaurant called Trolls, where I had a delicious seafood lunch at a reasonable price. (Recommended).

The Ferry

If you've never ridden a ferry, it's fun. On foot or bicycle, it's easy and cheap. In a vehicle, you have to line up and pay a lot of money, then line up again and wait until it's time to get on the ferry. When the vehicles in front of you start moving, you follow them across a ramp and onto the ship and park where they tell you to. Then you can leave your vehicle and wander around, admiring the view, buying something to eat, or going out on the deck to feel the wind in your face. When the voyage is over, you follow the vehicle ahead of you and drive off the ferry back onto land. We saw cars, motorcycles, pickups pulling vacation trailers, RVs of all sizes, even a big truck with semi trailer. The cost is based on the size of the vehicle and the length of the trip. For an ordinary car, it's about thirty cents a minute, but for Cruisemaster it was more like a dollar, because of extra height and length.

Vancouver Island

The ferry took us to Nanaimo, on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Although we had hoped to immediately discover a Garden of Eden, Nanaimo was a busy port town, so we headed north up the coast in search of smaller towns and bucolic beauty. We spent a few days meandering through Parksville, Courtenay, and Campbell River up into the wilderness of Sayward and Telegraph Cove. It was a lovely drive through deeply green mountainous countryside with cool, damp sea air. We had wanted to drive over to the west coast of the island to see the Pacific Ocean and maybe spot some whales, but cold, rainy weather there deterred us. Instead we headed south to Duncan, where I took a tour of the Merridale Apple Cider Mill, a small operation that grows its own special apples (varieties grown in England especially for making cider) and turning them into specialty apple cider. The tasting at the end of the tour was well worth the price of admission (free, recommended). Finally we arrived at Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, at the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

Victoria is the San Francisco of Canada. It has history, class, charm, fine old buildings, bracing sea air, a wharf, lots of tourists, and plenty of good restaurants. You could spend days walking the streets, admiring the buildings, and visiting the museums and gardens.

I'm always delighted to find a neat small town on the outskirts of a large one, and I'm glad I found Sidney, a northern suburb of Victoria and a gem of a place. It's really small, just the right size for strolling around, yet has half a dozen little bookstores, delicious restaurants, and good chocolate. I had a fine dinner at Beacon Landing (recommended) and found artisan chocolate ice cream in a little chocolate shop on Beacon St. (recommended).

The time had come

We had been in Canada for more than two months, wending our way in a circuitous route from Ontario to British Columbia. Now the time had come for us to return to the United States. Passport in hand, we headed for a different ferry, one that would take us from Vancouver Island to Washington state.