Vancouver Island, and Goodbye Canada!

So, I wrote the last entry outside of a place called Tim Hortons. Canadian’s know it well and love it, for good reason. Great donuts, great coffee, and probably the only place where you can get a sandwich combo that includes a sandwich, a donut, and a coffee. For lunch. Internet was provided by a sit-down jive called Earl’s that (probably accidentally) managed to broadcast WiFi across the street.

After having a donut and a cup of Throat Coat, we rode about 60km through Vancouver down to Tsawassan to catch the ferry to Vancouver Island. The ferry took about an hour and a half and landed us just north of a town called Syndey. Incidentally, about half of the ride to Tsawassan was on Hwy 17, which ended at the ferry and miraculously continued onto Vancouver Island. It was our first of surely many times of riding along the highway.

Once on Vancouver Island, we rode to the first Visitor Information centre to figure out campgrounds for the night. We wound up staying in a quaint little state-owned campground just south of where we landed on the island (just north of the visitor centre), but only after we rode the 10km into Sydney to pick up food and Canadian money.

The campground was peaceful and quiet, a stark difference from the crowded, noisy routine they were running in North Vancouver. Peace and quiet comes at a cost, though. Somewhere in the early morning hours, it started to rain. Coincidentally (or not?), I woke up in time to hear drizzling and in time to bring our shoes into the tent to prevent them from getting soaked. All in all, the rain wasn’t too bad, but it certainly motivated us to stay in the tent longer than we should have (about 8:30). By the time we were packed up and on the road this morning, the rain had ceased and most of our goods were still wet.

Since we got a late start, we nixed our plan to go to the Safeway in Sydney with free WiFi and blog, instead choosing to truck it to Victoria. It was a good choice. We had a nice stop at our last Tim Horton’s before the states, looked at parliament, rode around the city for half an hour, and then caught the ferry into Port Angeles. I would’ve liked to stop to get a picture or two of arriving in the US, but it was 5pm and we were on our bikes and more interested in figuring out where we would be staying for the night.

We wound up heading west towards the coast, along the Olympic peninsula to an RV park on the Elwha Dam. Conveniently, they also have WiFi, and they’re letting us stay in their BBQ pavillion (basically a picnic area) which is conveniently covered. Considering the clouds and weather forecasts, sleeping on concrete is a pittance to pay for a guaranteed dry night. Especially given our route for tomorrow, a hefty 85 miles.

Tonight we’ll be (ab)using the WiFi to upload the handful of videos that Jas has taken with the Flip. I still haven’t had time to write code to incorporate photo posting as I’d like, so I don’t yet have any photos to share. When we take a day off from riding I’ll sit down and work it out.

Right now I’m giving the computer to Jas so he can do his thing.

-k

P.S. – The google map that documents our journey is updated as well. Have a look!