Weekend Warriors- Episode 3

Moving right along- following our camping trip we took the following weekend to visit Canada, specifically beautiful Victoria.  

We had to take a ferry to get there and since much of the trip was planned in the two weeks prior to going we had to take whatever ferries were still available.  We spent Thursday night with family of the Morris'. It was funny because in the middle of the night a little 2 year old boy came walking into the room where we were sleeping and he was crying so I asked him if he wanted to lay down by me and he did for about an hour before going back to his bed. It was really weird, but I never really know why I do the things I do in the middle of the night.

Our ferry left early Friday morning from Anacortes WA. We looked at the views, napped, and played games.

Cameron was the Rook champion for the trip.

When we got to Victoria we were browsing around and found these stellar hats (or maybe just hair accessories). Very retro, which I love!

Here's their beautiful Parliament building, which we toured.

This is in one of the old original cabins (Ann's School for Girls) that's right near the parliament. 

Here's a view inside the parliament building.

Lovely whale greenery

I'm infamous for blinking during pictures, but I loved this one and the view of the boats with the parliament building and hopefully most of you can't even tell I'm blinking. We ended the night by eating at the Old Spaghetti Factory and watching an IMAX.

Day 2, Saturday, started with a walk to a nearby fair. We browsed and just rubbed shoulders with the locals.

The small island behind us is where the First Nations used to bury their dead.

After the fair we drove to this cool and beautiful castle for lots of pictures of the building, and JUMPING...

Right near the castle we came across some government building that have some massive gardens which we explored.

And drove back near downtown and walked along the coast to get to the heart of Victoria and Fisherman's Wharf.  The walk took much longer than we expected and we were all famished when we finally arrived but there's nothing like fresh fish and chips.

There were a couple of blind seals that people were feeding off the wharf; I like seals, I like the way they swim and I think they're cute.

I'm just now realizing how much we did... then we drove to a state park and hiked around until we finally found the lake we were looking for.

Here's a couple of pictures of the team:

Note: This picture was taken on a timer as our camera precariously sat on a small branch jutting out over some water.

After getting back to the hotel, swimming and showering we wanted some dinner and ice cream. We found a pizza place and then went to the Cold Stone that I had seen earlier just to be turned away as we opened the door because they were closed.  This was the 3rd place that day that had turned us away because they were 'just closing' or we didn't have time to 'get through' everything.  We ended up at a pretty cool waffle place that had an awesome variety of waffles from 'dinner' types to 'sweet' types and we had yummy yummy frozen yogurt.

This is the parliament building lit up at night, they light it up every night! 

Day 3, Sunday, we went to church and then visited went to Butchart Gardens. This is a view from a small harbor near there where we ate our lunch, isn't Cameron a wonderful photographer?!

I loved the gardens, because I just love gardens and flowers

After the gardens we went back to Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse that had turned us away the day before.  

It was pretty windy when we went out to the lighthouse.

Isn't this a funny picture?! It's a little scary too :)

I always love to get pictures at things like this... this one was randomly stuffed into a tiny room with candy and pop machines.

And that was pretty much the day.  We rode the ferry back early on Memorial Day and took a different route through Vancouver to get home. The state ferries they have are really nice, I felt like I was on a cruise ship.

So that, my friends, was our pretty snazzy Memorial Day weekend. Thank you to the Morris' for putting up with us all weekend long and taking this adventure with us!