We quickly packed up from our restful indoor sleep, and headed down the hill to catch the 8:20 AM ferry to CANADA! It was quite full, and we were excited to see a few other tandems on the bike racks on the bow deck.

In the middle of the trip the boat suddenly rocked sharply to one side. Let’s just say that when a large boat does a sharp maneuver like that your heart is likely to skip a beat. But, we quickly recovered and suspected that the captain was altered the course to avoid whales. A couple humpback whales had surfaced right in front of the boat! The girls were delighted to have their first ever whale sighting.

In Victoria we went first to the floating house boats. I thought the kids would be excited about them, but in reality they didn’t care. They were a little interested in the wildlife growing off of the floaters under the houses though, haha. Victoria is absolutely amazing for cyclists. There are tons of separated bike lanes in the downtown area and the bike trails are also great. We stopped at a Whole Foods to grab some lunch items (sushi and blueberries!) and then headed north out of town on the Lochside trail. The trail felt like a bike super-highway that would make it easy to commute downtown.

The bike trail was quite flat and pleasant. We stopped for ice cream at a lovely little shopping center with stores circling a center courtyard. It was perfect for us. We stocked up on fresh veg and supplies for future meals.

At one point we got cooled off by an industrial “sprinkler” watering some crop in a farmer’s field. After turning towards the regional park we passed over a couple hundred foot climb before coming down towards the beach. It was quite windy so we felt thankful for the trees in camp.