West Coast Road Trip Part 1: Nanaimo, Victoria, Aberdeen

My dear friends from Toronto, Kurtis and Sarah, visit once again this year and this time we decided to take a road trip down the west coast.  Last year we had a pretty awesome time exploring Vancouver together, so they decided to come back.  This time they travelled right through to Nanaimo via ferry and I met them for a quick night out in Nanaimo.  In the morning we head south for Victoria and spent some time first exploring the city then one of the hidden beaches of Victoria.

The plan was to take the Black Ball Ferry to Port Angeles the following day, but because we did not have a reservation we had to park our car in the queue overnight to ensure a spot on the ferry.  Next time i’ll plan for a reservation to avoid having to do this!  Before boarding we went through US customs and then we were on our way.  This was my first inter-country passage by ship (I had an inter-country ferry crossing from Botswana to Zambia which was aborted for safety reasons)

In Washington we explored the Olympic National Park stopping at the Sol Duc Hot Springs and the Hoh Rain Forest.  The hot springs were not quite as nice as we were expecting but the rain forest was gorgeous.

We pushed on stopping at an awesome mountain diner to have our first American meal at the Hungry Bear Diner then pulling into Aberdeen late on Saturday evening.