The wife has always wanted me to see the Butchart Gardens near Victoria, on Vancouver Island. We flew to Seattle on Thursday night, drove across the border and took a ferry to the island on Friday afternoon, did the two and a half hour walking tour of Butchart Gardens late in the afternoon before driving down to Victoria. Spent the night in a very nice B&B, cruised around Victoria by foot on Saturday, one more night in the B&B and then, on Sunday, took the ferry to Port Angeles, WA, drove to SeaTac and flew home on Sunday evening.
All in all, a very nice trip, but the driving time ratio was a bit too high, and Sunday was a pain in the ass because we were never quite sure if we would be late for our flight. Sorry I don't have any fishing pictures. Didn't go fishing.
Getting on the ferry at Tsawwassen. That's right, Tsawwassen. I think maybe they went to AP for naming rights.
The ferry had two vehicle decks and must have held about 3,000 cars or so.
The ferry goes across this big body of water, then it winds between some islands, and then it goes across some more water.
Must have taken 30 pictures on the crossing but, looking back, the most interesting thing in most of them was the clouds.
The Butchart Gardens must be about 50 acres in several themes - Italian, Japanese, roses, etc. It was built on the site of a former cement plant by the wife of the former cement plant owner. Apparently it's world renowned, though I had never heard of it before the wife suggested we go there. The sunken garden here was once a limestone quarry.
These were growing on top of a trash can.
This is the Japanese garden. Apparently pretty spectacular in the fall.
Mrs. Mikey taking a picture of Mr. Mikey
This is the B&B we stayed at, taken from across the street. Our room was second floor on the left, with the open window.
Here's the view out that window. Snow capped mountains on the Olympic Peninsula across the Strait of Juan de Fucka.
The path in front of the hedge was a very popular place for running and walking the dogs. With the thousands of dogs we saw go by there was never one piece of crap over there. Canadians are very conscientiously clean like that.
Lot of bike riders on the road too. They didn't leave any shit either.
]
Here's the beach down below. Great for walking and skipping stones. Not so much for swimming.
The other side of our room looked out over a park. The row of four windows on the second floor.
Ferris's Oyster Bar. We ate there twice. Best ersters evah. The salmon was pretty good too, though I'm not sure it was fresh.
Port Angeles Ferry, coming into the inner harbor...err...harbour.
Notice the subtly artistic way I framed the ship in the picture.
The view from the bow of the ferry was pretty much the same as the view from our room, just closer to Washington. And it looked like we were heading for a bank of fog or something...
They made us clear the bow when we hit the fog.
Coming into Port Angeles. Bringing in a couple of ...well not really anything.
I did finally learn to use the panorama option on my iPhone.
