Day 1 - London to Seattle
We started the trip with a drive down to Heathrow Airport, those contingency minutes we always allow came in handy when we were held up on the M40 for 20 minutes due to an accident.
At Heathrow, we parked our car in the long stay parking, transferred by bus to the terminal and then checked-in for the flight exactly 3 hours before the flight.
There was no queue to go through priority security and we went straight to South Galleries Lounge where we were told our gate would be next to the less busy B-gate lounge, so we spent our waiting time there instead.
We boarded our flight on time and were offered welcome champagne or water. I asked for Diet Coke and was told the usual “the bar isn’t open yet” and I said my usual “I’ve never been declined one yet”. The steward was adamant I wasn’t having one, tried to convince me to have champagne to which of course I declined. He disappeared and came back with my Diet Coke and told me to hide it... works every time, lol. Alan knocked over his first glass of champagne and was given a second one, this is becoming a bit of a habit.
The flight left the gate ahead of schedule and the onslaught of food and drinks that comes with flying in BA Club World started! It wasn’t one of the best meals flying out of the UK, in fact it was probably my least favourite meals in Club World. The smoked salmon was ok but the beef was tough, the sponge pudding was probably the best part of the dinner. Later on the trip Alan read BA had sacked their catering company, based on this meal I can’t say I was surprised.
Afternoon tea’s sandwiches were not the ones on the menu. I mentioned it to our flight attendant and he went down to 1st to get me the right ones. Certainly can’t complain about the service.
Arrived on time to gate near to runway. At border control we went straight to the ‘X’ queue and explained to the officer my shared namesake was on a watch list. He raised his eyebrows, smiled and said umm yes. For the first time we were asked if we were meeting anyone, for once we weren’t.
Bags came out much quicker than the last time we fly to Seattle and we went straight to the taxi rank where there was no queue. We had some fun with trying to find the hotel... apparently taxi drivers don’t use zip codes! Slight diversion while we worked out which road the hotel was on. Seriously, whatever happened to taxi drivers knowing their own turf, especially where hotels are!?!
Finally checked in at our hotel, we watched a bit of TV and went to bed.
Day 2
Seattle to Vancouver Island
We were awake just after 1am. Got ready really slowly and took the 5am free shuttle to the airport and asked if we could be dropped off at the rental pickup. Great, he was happy to do that for us, bad, he threw our camera bag into the back of the bus! For some reason we thought we would take our two small trolley bags (which has our camera gear in) with us to collect the car. It felt like a good idea at the time, but not so good when we heard the bag bounce off the bottom of the bus! Fortunately no damage was done… note to us “keep fragile bags with you or leave behind or tell the bag handler it has fragile contents”. Lesson Learned.
We were allocated a Ford Explorer (free upgrade) and as it was white we decided to call it ‘Spirit Car’ (we thought Kermode car wasn’t such a good name). We arrived back at the hotel for 6am as the free breakfast service opened.
Once we had checked-out, loaded Spirit Car with our copious amounts of luggage, which Spirit took with ease, we started our drive at 6:45am towards Tsawwassen.
We had a good laugh when Alan tried to set up cruise control, he was attempting to set it at 80mph but the number kept going up but the speed of the car didn’t. It took us a few moments to work out it was because it had adaptive cruise control and it was going slower than 80mph because the car in front was… it was a good job the car in front didn’t change lanes as we would have zipped up and over 120mph!!!
Our route was along I-5N, BC-99N & BC-17W and we arrived at the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal at 9:45am. Our reservation was for 3:15pm, fortunately there was space for us to join the 10:15am sailing.
For the 2018 season, BC ferries had a new Partnership with Parks Canada and Coastal Naturalist Joe was on the ferry giving a wildlife presentation on the local wildlife which focussed mostly on whales. Didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know but it helped pass the time.
We arrived at Nanaimo at 12:15pm and drove along BC-19 to our hotel, checked in and went shopping for supplies at Walmart and bought bear spray from Cabela’s (Dickinson’s Crossing). We weren’t very hungry so we had a MacDonalds at Walmart where I chatted to a lonely lady from Chile.
We got back to the hotel at 3pm and Alan was asleep at 4pm! I kept poking him but gave up at 5:30pm and went to sleep too!
Miles 279km 173miles
Day 3
Nanaimo to Campbell River
No big surprise, we awoke very early, and planned our drive (with diversions) to Campbell River. A straight drive would be 1 hour 22 mins (90 miles), but we were going to divert off to several salmon hatcheries.
The plan was...
1. Robertson Creek Hatchery near port alberni
2. Stamp Falls Fishway - Stamp River Provincial Park.
3. Puntledge River Hatchery
4. Tsolum River
5. Quinsam River
We had breakfast at the hotel at 6am, packed the car and commenced our days planned activities only to be stopped at the first hurdle access to Robert Creek Hatchery was closed. Plan change straight away we instead started our day at Sproat Lake.
We left the lake around 8:15 and spotted a deer near to Beaver Creek alongside the road, it was not a safe spot to stop so we left the deer peacefully grazing.
Planned stop number 2 was much more productive, no bears but several salmon were jumping up Stamp Falls at Stamp River Provincial Park. This park has some nice hiking trails with lookout points along the river, you can watch the salmon (Coho & Chinook) fighting their way up the falls and fish ladders. The salmon continue to run here into December! Where there is fish there are eagles and there were several bald eagles strategically sat along the river ready to fly down and grab a meal.
We continued to Comox Valley visitors centre where we called in to see if Glenn (TA contact) was about, sadly not, but we were told there were very little sighting of bears due to the lack of rain. As a result of this news we revised our plans and headed to Campbell River a little earlier than planned and checked-in to our hotel.
After consulting with the TA app, I decided we would eat at Dockside Fish & Chips (no surprises it was at the dockside) for a leisurely late lunch. Luckily, we had plenty of time as it was quite busy, but they found us a nice table with some shade from the very warm sun. The service was slow (we watched one family get up and leave having given up waiting for their meal), but it was fine with us as we were enjoying watching the seals swim under the dock. Fortunately, the meal was worth the wait.
After we watched a cheeky seal swim under the floating dock and then try to splash people because they had no food.
We then walked down to the pier and watched fisherman avoid casting their line into the unsuspecting tourists’ hair! Alan decided to have ice cream, but the young lads working in the kiosk were very disorganised and missed his order (along with a few others) they commented it was like waiting for the cows to be milked first!
We returned to the hotel to pack for the Knight Inlet trip, we would be leaving a lot of our luggage behind.
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