Thursday - Ferry ride to Victoria (Vancouver Island)

On Thursday we thought it would be a great idea to take the British Columbia ferry over to Vancouver Island (most American's incorrectly call it Victoria Island.....us included!)
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First we drove across the border to the Tsawassen Port.

Once there, we boarded the largest ferry we'd ever ever seen! As we were waiting to load - we saw the 14 semis, at least two buses & numerous RV's, cars, trucks and vans coming off of the same ferry we were getting ready to load onto!!

Here's a picture as we were loading onto the ferry. Those are full size semi's!

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There were three lanes on each side of the mid-section. They parked us right in the middle there - in front of the elevators (lucky! - because it is a 7 floor high ferry!!!

Once inside the ferry - we found that there were two play rooms for kids (Amie had a ball!), they also had a gift shop, a cafeteria, a coffee shop, and a couple of other eating places. They also had a business class area & a VIP area. We stayed by the two play areas (one on the 5th level and one on the 6th level). Amie met a little boy & played pretty much exclusively with him!

We went out on the 7th floor sun decks for a while too.

We weaved in and around numerous little islands to get to Victoria.

Time to unload at the Swartz Bay port. Mind you there was at least one other level that had nothing but cars on it!

Let me introduce you to the worlds youngest & pushiest back seat driver!! We heard numerous times, "Go Daddy" - "Green light Daddy" - "Go Daddy"

The thing that looks like a "roof" or overhang in this picture is actually the ramp that takes the cars from the next level off of the ferry!

The ferry ride was fun - the trip around the island not so much! In fact it was pretty much a bust! We drove down to Victoria - and it was a zoo! It was almost as bad as Chicago driving! We purposely went over to Victoria to visit the Victoria Harley store & when we got there it had closed down!! We ate lunch & high tailed it back to the ferry dock, as everyone's nerves were about shot!

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I know there were areas of the Island that would have been enjoyable...but it will have to wait for another time!

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While waiting for our ferry - Amie got a little more playing in!

This is a fairly good view of us being unloaded off of the ferry.

The other thing we did manage to get done was to get some Canadian money & to mail a postcard to Kylee for her stamp collection!