Victoria, British Columbia - May 16th to 18th, 2022
We needed to kill some time before heading north. It was still a little early in the season and many campgrounds further north were not open yet. Spending some time on Vancouver Island seemed like the perfect solution. We started our tour of Vancouver Island with the city of Victoria.
On Monday, we moved from Derby Reach Regional Park in Langley to Goldstream Provincial Park on Vancouver Island. The day before, we reserved a ferry ride from Tsawassen to Swartz Bay. Our reservation was for 1 pm. We checked out of the campground around 9 am and had time to kill before our ferry. We were required to show up between 30 minutes and 1 hour before the scheduled sail time, but no earlier. There was a mall not too far from the ferry terminal, Tsawassen Mills, so we stopped there to have an early lunch in our Red Tail Lodge (our van) and use the mall washrooms.
We got in line at the ferry toll booth at exactly noon, one hour before our ferry. It took us 15 minutes to get through the line and past the toll booth. They directed us to a numbered lane for the boarding. We sat there for about half an hour. It looked like they started boarding the vehicles at 12:30 pm, but our lane did not board until about 12:45 pm. The ferry pulled away from the dock right on time at 1 pm.
The ferry was pretty large. The deck our van was loaded onto was deck 2. We were required to exit our vehicle and go up to one of the upper decks. Vehicles were on decks 2 and 4. Deck 5 had a lounge, a café, and a buffet. Deck 6 had another lounge and a coffee bar along with a sun deck where you could be outside along the sides of the ship. From the sun deck, you can go up a flight of stairs to yet another deck where you could be outside in a cut-out in the middle of the ship. From there, you had views out to both sides, and a little protection from the wind. However, there were good views out large windows from all three decks. The ferry ride was about one and half hours. Had we known what a great selection of food they had on board, we might have waited to eat lunch during the ferry passage.
During the ferry ride, Ann thought she spotted a spout from a whale a few times. It was too far away to get a good picture, but she’s pretty sure it was a whale. What else would spray water up into the air like that?
We arrived at Goldstream Campground at about 3:30 pm. When we turned onto the road to the campground, we entered a lush, thick forest. It is amazing that this park is in such a forest, being so close to town. It seemed like we were in a remote location. The campsites were large and generously spaced. When we were in our site, we could not see any of our neighbors. It was like we had the place to ourselves.
We needed to dump our gray water, so we stopped at the dump station in the campground. The dump required coins to pay $5 to dump. We had picked up Canadian currency, but we had no Canadian coins. We drove back to the campground gatehouse to see if they had any change. By luck, they had exactly $5 in coins. We also had a concern about how the dump worked. It said we had one minute to insert our hose. However, we don’t have a hose. We just pour our jerry cans into the hole. The ranger at the gatehouse assured us that we just needed to hold the cover open with a foot until we were done pouring everything. He was right. It wasn’t until we released the cover back down that it locked into place.
It was a little early for dinner, but we decided to go ahead and cook it anyway. We had eaten an early lunch, so we were hungry. After dinner, we decided to walk over to the Goldstream Falls. It was less than a mile from our campsite. However, we saw on AllTrails that the trail can be muddy, so we put our hiking boots on. We were glad we did. There were a few sloppy spots along the way. On our way to the falls, we passed some really large trees. The falls were nice. The sound of the waterfall and the stream were very relaxing. A great way to end the day.
Tuesday morning, we visited GoPower’s office in Victoria. GoPower is the company that made the 2000 Watt Inverter/Charger that is in our Red Tail Lodge. We had some issues with our upgrade to lithium batteries (Upgrading to Lithium Batteries: Part 1 and Part 2). The batteries we installed, Lion Safari UT 1300’s (paid link), were not entirely compatible with the old version of firmware (version 1902.1) we had in our GoPower! IC 2000 Inverter/Charger (paid link). Whenever we were plugged into shore power and running something that drew a lot of power, like our air conditioning, water heater, electric tea kettle (paid link), or Instant Pot (paid link), we would occasionally get errors such as OLP (Over Load Protection) or OTP (Over Temp Protection) and the inverter would shutdown. That was not fun when the air conditioner stops running in the middle of a hot night. Sometimes our batteries would be completely drained, something that shouldn’t happen when plugged into shore power. To get around those issues, we had changed our charge rate from 80% down to 30%. Also, whenever we were plugged in and using a high power appliance, we would turn the charger off (but leave the inverter on). This seemed to avoid the errors and shutdowns. However, that also meant that our batteries were slow to charge when we were plugged into shore power.
After exchanging some emails with GoPower customer support, the solution was to either disconnect the inverter/charger and ship it to them for a firmware upgrade, or stop by their office to have them do the upgrade with the inverter in place. Since we were planning on visiting Victoria on our way to Alaska, we chose the second option. After about an hour and a half, we not only had a firmware update (version 2036.1), but they also replaced our remote panel which seemed to be too old for the new inverter firmware. It was a little bit of a struggle to access the remote port and the power button on the inverter given the tight space it is installed in. Otherwise, the upgrade would have gone much faster and Keith wouldn’t have cut his hand open on the wires. A big shout out goes to Bob Lane at GoPower for all the time and effort he spent on our firmware upgrade! Unfortunately, we won’t have electrical hookups for a while to thoroughly test out the upgrade, but it is working fine so far.
There was no rain in the forecast for Tuesday, so we spent the rest of the day wandering around Victoria. First we parked at the southern end of Beacon Hill Park and walked over to the Cook Street Village for lunch. Along the way, we past the world’s tallest free-standing totem pole and the Victoria Lawn Bowling Club. However, at the time, the people were not lawn bowling, but playing croquet. We ate lunch at the Village Taverna, a Greek restaurant. Ann’s lamb kebab was excellent!
To work off those lunch calories, we wandered around Beacon Hill Park. It is a beautiful place with gardens, ponds, ball fields, playgrounds, and a wonderful view from the flag pole up on top of the hill. We saw people playing mini golf and pickle ball, herons nesting in the tops of tall trees, and peacocks making a racket with their piercing calls. On our way up to the flag pole, we came across two deer. They didn’t seem too bothered by our presence.
At the southwest corner of the park is the Mile 0 Monument, marking the western end of the Trans-Canada Highway. Just across Dallas Road is an anchor and stairs down to a rocky beach. We ventured down to the small beach. Keith struggled to find a suitable rock to skip, but managed to skip one anyway. A short walk along the Dallas Road Waterfront Trail to the east brought us to Finlayson Point. We saw a few seals popping their heads above the water a few times. The view was pretty hazy. We could see vague outlines of mountains to the south across the water. From the map, we knew these mountains were part of Olympic National Park in Washington.
Since the parking area in Beacon Hill only allowed parking for three and a half hours, we moved our Red Tail Lodge closer to downtown Victoria. We found some on-street pay parking near the Christ Church Cathedral. We couldn’t get the pay stations to read our credit card, so we downloaded the phone app and paid for parking with it.
First we walked over to the Inner Harbor to admire the Hotel Fairmont Empress and the British Columbia Parliament Buildings. Then we strolled along the harbor up to Johnson Street. After taking a closer look at the interesting Johnson Street draw bridge, we made our way over to Chinatown. It is the oldest chinatown in Canada and the second oldest in North America. Of course we had to walk through Fan Tan Alley, a very narrow alley lined with shops. For dinner, we ducked into Fan Tan Cafe. We lucked out this time. The food was much better than the restaurant we chose in San Francisco’s Chinatown (California Zephyr: Denver to San Francisco - Jan 17th to 21st, 2022).
We finished our stroll through Victoria by walking down Government Street, past the historic buildings of the old downtown area, with lovely trees lining the sidewalks. We didn’t walk as many miles in Victoria as we did Vancouver, but we were ready to call it a day.
Wednesday started out as a rainy day. That was our cue to do laundry. We drove into the nearby town of Langford to a laundromat. The woman who ran the place was very friendly. She was able to get us some Canadian coins for the machines. That was good, because we didn’t have any coins. Some of the other customers were also very friendly and we had a wonderful conversation with one of the local ladies. Right next door to the laundromat was a grocery store, Fairway Market. While Keith kept an eye on the laundry, Ann picked up groceries for the coming week. We were getting low on Dove dark chocolate, but the store did not carry Dove. They did carry RitterSport dark chocolate. That’s even better! We love Ritter Sport ever since we lived in the town of Waldenbuch, Germany, where their chocolate factory is. We also managed to get all of our other errands done while doing laundry. The Fairway Market also contained a post office, so Ann mailed a birthday card. Then it was Keith’s turn to walk over to a liquor store to replenish his beer supply, after discovering that the grocery store only sells non-alcoholic beer and wine.
There was a bank across the street, so we picked up some more Canadian currency along with a roll of loonies and toonies. Loonies are what the Canadians call their one dollar coins and toonies are the two dollar coins. The rolls were smaller than what we were expecting. A roll of loonies is $25 and a roll of toonies is $50. That’s 25 coins each, about half the size of rolls of coins in the States, which contain 40 to 50 coins each (at least for pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters).
By the time our laundry was done, we had all of our other errands done as well. Yay! That left some time in the day to do some sight-seeing. The sun came out in the afternoon, but it still rained off and on, even with the sun still shining. We remarked how we’ve seen it rain more often while the sun was shining these past couple of weeks than ever before. What crazy weather! The locals keep telling us that it has been unusually cold for this time of year. It has been in the low 50’s F (10 degrees C) for the past couple of weeks. We’re ready for some warmer weather and less rain!
The Kinsol Trestle is about half an hour’s drive north of Goldstream Provincial Park, so we decided to drive up there and check it out. The Kinsol Trestle is one of the longest and tallest wooden trestles in the world. It was originally completed in 1920 for the railroad to cross the Koksilah River. The railroad stopped using it in 1979 and the bridge fell into disrepair. It was restored and reopened in 2011 as part of the Galloping Goose multi-use trail, part of the Trans-Canada Trail Network. Now hikers, cyclists, and horseback riders can enjoy the bridge. We drove to the Kinsol Trestle Parking Lot to the south of the trestle and walked the 1.2 km (less than a mile) along the trail to the trestle. There is also a parking lot not far to the north of the trestle. We walked across the trestle and took a path down to the bottom of it, so we could fully appreciate the size of it.
Victoria and the surrounding area were a start to visiting Vancouver Island. Victoria is a much smaller city than Vancouver, where we had just come from (Vancouver, British Columbia - May 12th to 15th, 2022). It has a much more laid back feel to it. The people were friendly and the atmosphere was very inviting. Now on to the rest of the island.
Check out our related video: Victoria, British Columbia
(Ann)