The Inside Passage

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The ferry was to leave at 7:30 in the morning. But in order to get the ship properly balanced and know who should be placed where, check-in was at 5:30. Yikes!!! I had managed to find a campground that was three or four minutes from the ferry terminal. And as I pulled in, the sky was clearing. I debated whether or not to set up the tent. Maybe it would be better to sleep in the car and then just be able to go. But with the nice weather, I decided that I would set up the tent. If it rained overnight, I could just quickly stuff everything in the car and figure out how to get it dried later. But the weather held and I had a good sleep. I had three alarms on my watch set and three on my phone as well. I wasn't going to be missing this one! It turned out that I didn't need any of them. I woke up about 4:50 and turned them off. Then I packed up and headed off down the road. Camping is turning out to be quite a cool way to do this.



At the ferry terminal, I got checked in and then settled down for the long wait. I started by wanting to get a photo of the ferry. When I wandered up to the front of the cars, the woman who was managing the staging area told me where I could walk to get a good side on view of the ferry. I have been finding the BC Ferries staff to be really good with customer service. I'm very impressed.



We boarded the ferry at about 7:00, but then there was some sort of technical difficulty and we didn't actually leave the terminal at Bear Cove until 8:30. But the morning was beautiful. The passage is very nice. However, as we proceeded up the coast, the weather got cloudier and cloudier, then the rain started and got heavier and heavier. By the time we reached the most scenic part of the passage (from all accounts), it was raining quite hard. It made it hard to get many good photos, dodging the rain as I was.



The best part of it all though were the two whales. The first one I saw briefly, but I was only able to get a photo of its tail. The second one stayed up on the surface for a few breaths though, and I was able to get a couple of very nice photos. I guess I didn't need to do a whale watching tour after all.



It is a very beautiful area. I'm not sure I would ever do it again, certainly not with a car, but I would recommend it to anyone.



Now to find a place to stay after arriving at 11:30 at night...

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