A Journey
We got back from our journey up north late on Friday night. Despite the somewhat harried, last-minute nature of the trip, it wound up being incredible. In the span of four days, we managed to go through Portland, Victoria, Vancouver (briefly), and Seattle, along with many of the surrounding areas. Victoria, where we spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday, was easily the best part of the trip. Located on Vancouver Island just off the coast from the rest of British Columbia, it’s only accessible by ferry from northwestern Washington or Vancouver. Getting off the ferry in Victoria felt like stepping into another world: the city is incredibly proud of its British heritage, and it’s reflected in the strong “old world” atmosphere. We spent most of our time in Victoria just walking around the city and taking it all in, sort of like we did in Avalon (on Catalina Island) last year. An incredibly refreshing experience overall.
While on Vancouver Island, we also managed to go to the Butchart Gardens, which are located just north of Victoria. This gave me my first real opportunity to play around with macro photography, and the results were surprisingly good. My general-purpose zoom lens made focusing a bit of a pain, so I may have to invest in an actual macro lens for my Digital Rebel when I get a little bit more money. Still, it was amazingly easy to get good photographs (I suppose that’s generally the case with flowers). I’ll try to put the photos up some time soon.
With the amount of time we spent in Victoria, we sort of had to breeze through Vancouver and Seattle, but we did manage to spend some more time exploring Portland while winding our way back home. Heading through the Cascades on the way back provided for another incredible experience. I had planned on taking some pictures of Mount Shasta, but my plans were thwarted by the massive snowstorm (yes, it does snow in California) that managed to move in just as we were passing through. The blizzard conditions made driving tricky, but combined with the surrounding forest and mountains, it made for some incredible sights. Yet another reason to move up there…