The route to Vancouver was to be paved with water. As opposed to heading north to the border overland I decided to take the scenic route via the network of ferries. The first took me west from wharf 52 in downtown Seattle to Bainbridge Island. From here I connected with the highway heading north to the Olympic Peninsula. I ducked off the main route full of summer traffic to hug the coastline visiting Port Ludlow, Port Hastings, Port Townsend and finally Port Angeles. It is this sea-side town that acts as the main access point to both the beautiful Olympic National Park and Canada via the ferry to Victoria, BC.
On arrival into Port Angeles I attempted to bike the 17 miles uphill to Hurricane Ridge, the main view-point for the Olympics mountain range. However, I was running out of light and so I turned back down the hill to the camp-site. My legs were pretty shot so I decided to hitch a ride up the next day. Kevin pulled over in a beautiful Mustang GT convertible - a 2001 model he scored from a guy for a mere $9,000 (the dude needed nine grand to pay for the paint-job on a new car and had to keep his wife sweet by offloading one car to make space for the new one). It turned out that Kevin had grown up in Port Angeles. Like a lot of kids who grow up in small towns, he left as soon as he finished school. This was mostly due to the fact that jobs were thin on the ground as commercial logging activity and fishing were more or less shut down by a more environmentally sensitive government. In addition there were no universities in the area so it was common for kids his age to leave town to go to college. Of course, in the back of his head he believed that life offered more excitement and opportunity elsewhere.
Somehow he ended up in the tornado state of Missouri. A messy divorce had left him with sentiments for home and so he returned for a two-week vacation to visit family and old friends. It had been twenty years since he was last in Port Angeles. I stuck around with Kevin as he was familiar with the park and wildlife. As a kid he and his friends would disappear into the park for stretches of up to three weeks at a time during the summer holidays. A parent would drive them in and then they would hang rations to last them the trip. Once there they would camp, hike, climb, explore, swim and fish until at some point they made their way back to civilisation. It seems remarkable that parents would allow their kids to spend that much time in the back-country unsupervised (without mobile-phones) in the presence of bears, cougars and other wildlife. Of course, this was a time when parents had not been disarmed by fear and so did not have to wrestle with guilty feelings of irresponsible parenting - a recent invention by all accounts. The park itself is beautiful although I did not have time to explore it the way Kevin did in his youth. It had been great to catch a ride up with Kevin, the guided tour and return-trip were a bonus.
I free-wheeled down the mountain to the ferry port. It was time to put the States on ice until I cross the border again in Montana. While I was not greeted with hostility it was the first time on my trip that I had been grilled at a port of entry. I was prepared for it on arrival to the US but pulling the Irish passport out of the back-pocket worked a treat there so I felt very welcome. In the absence of a return ticket Canadian border patrol were rightly doing their job ... either that or they were just curious to see what the heck I planned to do with all the stuff on my bike. Eventually I was on Canadian soil, albeit not the mainland. I had arrived in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia situated at the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The place totally caught me off guard. I did not expect that I would arrive into little Britain. The name Victoria should have been a give-away but it is very unnerving to arrive in a town that still bows to a Queen thousands of miles away. As nice as tea and scones in the Empress Hotel would have been it was certainly not the Canada I expected. I was totally stunned to find a Paddy-whackery shop full of the usual Irish charms on the main-street of what is a colonial town. I realise that a lot of the people who moved to Canada came from Britain (and Ireland) quite recently and so I don't disrespect their affinity to their roots. However, it was all a bit much for me and so I hatched plans to skip town as quick as I could. Unfortunately it meant a night in the worst hostel of my trip so far - $34 to stay a night in a 42 bed dorm where the door inevitably clicked all night between the comings and goings of so many people. They even tortured us sleepless souls with a huge sky-light that plied our eyes wide open at 6am as the sun bounced up for the day.
I hummed and hawed the next morning wondering what to do. The whole reason for my coming to the Island was because I had met people who told me how amazing the scenery and marine-life is. I wanted to go west but that side of the island has no roads and so I more or less would end up where I started. The only option out of town was to join up with Highway one after taking a ferry across to Mill Bay. Highway one is the Trans-Canada Highway that starts in Victoria and finishes in St Johns' in Newfoundland. It was a nightmare for bikes. Although America has a big car culture I was able to avoid it in Washington State. Plus, they tend to sweep the shoulders in the States so they are safe for bikes. The ride to Nanaimo was far from the island experience I was hoping for. I had to muscle it on a shoulder sprayed with gravel and shrapnel and which dangerously disappeared at points. Having to bike uphill at 10kph without a shoulder while trucks screamed past on the limit was no fun. Once on the island I realised how big Canada is. The island is not made for bikes but for cars. If this is an island then what would the mainland be like? Vancouver 'Island' is in fact a huge chunk of land about half the size of Ireland - another island granted but a country in its own right. In contrast with Eire, Canada is in fact the third largest country in the world. My bike and I started to feel very small.
I decided to get off the island. Biking to Tofino and back for some surfing would have taken me days and so I decided to skip the whole experience altogether. The fourth and final ferry would take me from Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay; the quieter of Vancouver's two ports. Stay tuned - this city is next up for review.
I trust the form is mighty
Marco
Port Townsend
the quality bike-path network in WA
Olympic National Park
Kevin takes it all back in
the ferry to Victoria, BC