July 7 we ferried across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Port Angeles Wa. to Victoria B.C.. Victoria is a thriving clean city on Vancouver Island, it not Vancouver is the capital of British Columbia. From the harbor we walked around the capital building then to Fisherman’s Wharf finally finishing with a drive through Beacon Hill park where the world’s highest totem pole is located.
The next morning we drove to Butchart Gardens. We’re fans of botanical gardens and have visited lots of them. This is one of the best for beauty. About 64 acres, the flowers were spectacular. Sunken garden was probably the best overall, it’s located in an old quarry. Notice the begonias with blooms bigger than roses…..
From Butchart it’s only a 30 minute drive to the ferry that crosses over to just south of Vancouver. We were lucky in that we had to wait only about 20 minutes to drive on. It took about 1 hr 20 min. to cross, slightly less that the ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria. We then began our drive through British Columbia. This view was on our right for most of the drive….
We planned to stay at a Harvest Host site, a brewery, but it was taken so we took a chance of a B.C. provincial park, E C Manning. With four campgrounds inside the park we shouldn’t have been concerned. The CG we picked had 100 sites, slightly less than half taken. The drive through British Columbia was better than I expected. Four lane, well maintained road, through mountains between which are lush valleys covered with fruit and berry orchards. It appeared very prosperous. We crossed into the US at a border crossing in an Indian reservation that gets an average of only 30 crossings a day. We drove past grand Coulee dam and made it to Missoula, MT. Cracker Barrel that evening despite heavy traffic in Spokane/Cour d’alene. July 9 we drove I94 along the Yellowstone river to Glendive, MT. where we stayed in a hotel, like each of the next two nights due to the “heat dome”. Temps were in the low 100’s, down only to mid 70’s at night.
July 11 was a visit to the Theodore Roosevelt Museum on the edge of TR National Park. The museum was even better than we expected. It blends with the landscape, the roof is covered with soil and planted with native prairie plants.
There were several interactive exhibits. The crowd enjoyed seeing themselves and their family photoshopped into photographs from Roosevelts’ life…..
Two more days of driving and we were home on Monday July 13 late afternoon.
Roses 1.0 Van Life 