Victoria, Canada

Over Memorial Day weekend, we went to Victoria, Canada for a long weekend. (Brent got Friday off too so we had 4 days.)

Day 1

We decided to take our car to Canada, so we drove about 2 hours north of here to Port Angeles to take the Coho Ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was a cloudy day, but still a lot of fun to take the ferry. This is our suggestion...if you are taking the ferry, go all the way to the top and sit under the cover to stay out of the wind. It's A LOT quieter up there and beautiful!The mountains are the Olympic Mountains - America. Kind of a foggy/cloudy day!We don't seem to be worrying about the weather though. Just happy to be going on vacation.

This isn't a really good picture, but I hope you can see it. This is a semi on the ferry. We take ferries across the sound all the time. There are always semi's on the ferries, but they can just pull in straight. The Coho is totally enclosed, so the semi had to turn a little bit, then back up, then turn a little bit, then back up... It took quite a while for them to get out, but really interesting to watch.

Once we had checked into our hotel, we went over to Goldstream Provincial Park. As the name suggests, there is gold in the river here. Brent thought I was just kidding about panning for gold, so we decided to just hike instead.

When we were leaving, we needed to go left, but there was a lot of traffic. So, we turned right instead, thinking that we would be able to turn around after a little bit. Well, it was a 20 mile detour through beautiful mountains until we could turn around. It was quite funny!

Day 2

Butchart Gardens. As you can probably guess, this is a very fun place for me. Brent made a point of saying that I took too many pictures of flowers and that my arm shakes when I take the pictures. Thanks for that Brent.

I don't think this is the best time of year to go because the spring flowers are on the way out and the summer flowers aren't in yet, but it was still fun. Although, one thing that was in bloom was this wisteria. (Ok, I think it was wisteria. The flower looked like wisteria, but I've never seen it in yellow before. Normally it's purple.) I love this picture of Brent. He doesn't always look great in pictures, but this is good!

This is the sunken garden. The azaleas and rhododendrons are out, but the summer plants had just been planted out so you can only see the dirt. It was nice seeing the azaleas in bloom though. They are VERY pretty!

We got there just after they opened. It was kind of chilly still, but it did warm up by the time we were done.

You know I always have to put in some pictures of flowers. This is a Blue Poppy. Pretty descriptive name. Isn't it GORGEOUS! We are going to get some for our yard. They did have seeds there, but they were REALLY expensive and said that they were for "expert gardeners". I'm trying to decide if I'm an "expert" or not. I really want them though...hmmm...

Butchart is always fun for me. This was Brent's first time there. If you're ever in the area, I would definitely suggest going the one time.

After that, we found a really pretty beach where we could sit and listen to the waves for a little while. Brent's ulterior motive was that he was hoping it would be windy so he could fly his kite, but it wasn't.

When we were in Hawaii, there was this place on the northeast side of the island where the Japanese tourists would stack stones. We found out that they are called "safe journey stones". It's an Asian tradition. We thought that was awesome, so we decided to make our own safe journey stones. Mine is the shorter one, but I think the prettiest!

Day 3

I love to read about where we're going on vacation and find fun things to do that most people have probably never hear of. That's how we travel. So, getting ready for this trip, I read about this BEAUTIFUL drive along the west side of the island. We decided to do that today.

Well, this beautiful drive was mostly just HUGE trees so you couldn't see anything but the trees. I love trees, but that's what it's like at home. I thought we were going to see the ocean and the mountains, but nope, just trees. Then we get to the "quaint fishing village" of Port Renfrew. Hmm...how to describe it...dilapidated? Nothing like what it said in the book. So, we turned back around and went back to Victoria. I hate it when the books let you down!

So, trying to salvage our day of vacation, we found a park to go and fly our kites. Last winter, Brent designed and made a kite. We haven't had a chance to fly it yet.

Yeah, it works! Flies great! Flies so great that it flies right into a tree. Brent gets it out of that tree just as another gust of wind comes up and slams it into another tree. And now it's stuck.

It's about 20' up. Brent's first thought is to pull it out. That looks like it might work until the string breaks. Then he thinks he's going to climb the tree to get it out. I then nicely reminded him that he wasn't 10 anymore, so no, he wasn't going to climb the tree. At this point, I'm thinking we might have to leave this homemade kite in a tree. Then, Brent finds a half full water bottle and starts throwing it up at the kite. After about 20 minutes of this, the kites is out of the tree. HOOORAY!

After this, we feel it may be time to move to Australia. (This is in reference to one of my favorite books - Alexander and the No Good Very Bad Day.) We decided to go back to the hotel instead.

Day 4

Our last day in Victoria. We decided to shop that morning since the boat didn't leave until 3p. Victoria is a great walking city. It's pretty, flat and there are a lot of cute shops and stuff.

We had lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory and then said good bye to Canada...

Quite a bit nicer day, wasn't it?

We had a great time in Victoria. We would definitely suggest you go there. Just not to Port Renfrew.