2006-07-02 The Journey 2006-07-03 Orcas Island 2006-07-04 Orcas Island to Victoria 2006-07-05 Victoria to Olympic NP 2006-07-06 Olympic NP 2006-07-07 Olympic NP to Seattle 2006-07-08 Seattle CVS

Day 4 - Wednesday, July 5, 2006

The calories were starting to catch up with yesterday's relative lack of activity, so my attempt at summiting the breakfast buffet was half-hearted at best.  Our first stop on Wednesday was world-renowned Butchart Gardens, located on the western edge of the Saanich Peninsula about halfway between Victoria and Sidney.  Butchart Gardens was the brainchild of Jennie Butchart, wife of a turn-of-the-century Portland cement mogul.  Mrs. Butchart conceived of a sunken garden as a way to beautify a nearby limestone quarry abandoned by her husband's company, and with a ready supply of both money and manual labor available, she descended upon the quarry with a passion.  By the 1920's, the sunken garden was attracting 50,000 visitors a year and had expanded to include a Japanese and an Italian garden, celebrating the Butcharts' world travels.  Today, Butchart Gardens remains a family-run business, drawing over 1 million visitors every year from all points of the globe.  A full-time staff of 50 gardeners tend to over 1 million plants of 700 different species, which are strategically planted to assure continuous year-round blooms throughout the gardens.

We wandered in the garden for an hour and a half or so before returning to Victoria.  Eric, a Victoria-based Backroads guide (not the same Eric that was on our tour), had offered to take us on a walking tour of Victoria Harbour, so we grabbed a quick sandwich at the deli and started walking.  Victoria is a very unique city, a city which blends the Old World with the New like none other.  A large part of its character is due to the fact that it is the oldest major west coast city never to have been destroyed by earthquake or fire, so many of Victoria's original European-style buildings are still standing.  Until the railroads bypassed it in the late 19th Century, terminating instead at the mainland city of Vancouver, Victoria was the center of commerce for British Columbia, a thriving port, and the capital of the newly-established province.  While Victoria remains the capital of BC, its status as an industrial city has given way largely to a tourist-based economy, spurred on by its relatively mild climate.  The temperature in Victoria rarely dips below 25 (deg. F) in the winter (that's mild for Canada -- trust me), it rarely exceeds 85 (deg F) in the summer, and the average yearly precipitation is about the same as in Santa Barbara, California.

Our tour began on the far western edge of the harbour at the site of the historic Fort Victoria and Bastion Square, where can be seen the only remnants of the original fort that was dismantled in 1864.  We continued on through the alleys to Market Square and to Chinatown.  Victoria's Chinatown was the first in Canada, the second in the world, and until the 1940's, it boasted the largest Chinese population of any city in Canada.  Many of these immigrants were drawn to Vancouver Island in the mid 19th Century by the Gold Rush and, later, by the ready availability of jobs from the newly-opened Nanaimo coal mines to the north and from the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.  After the completion of the CPR, however, the Canadian government attempted to curb the influx of Chinese nationals by imposing a "head tax" of $50 for each one that stepped off the boat.  By the turn of the century, this tax had increased to $500 per immigrant (the equivalent of two years' salary), and Canadian citizenship was being denied to Chinese settlers altogether.  In 1923, the government went one step farther, excluding almost all Chinese immigration into Canada.  This left many wives and children effectively orphaned back in the old country.  The Chinese settlers in Victoria formed a very closed society to defend against this discrimination, and this can still be seen in the narrow streets (the ends of which could easily be cordoned off and defended from law enforcement) and in the eccentric design of the buildings.  During the Head Tax days, it was not uncommon for apartments to have hidden, windowless levels where many immigrant families would live just out of view of the law.

Leaving Chinatown, we crossed over the Johnson Street Bridge, a steel Bascule bridge designed by the same architect (Strauss) that would go on to design the Golden Gate in San Francisco.  What little industry that does still exist in the Victoria Harbour lies mostly to the north of the Johnson Street Bridge, in the Victoria Inner Harbour.  Beyond that lies the Gorge Waterway, which is navigable only by small craft..  We walked along the harbour and down to Songhees Park, immediately across the harbour from Laurel Point.  Eric explained that the Laurel Point Inn was in fact built on the site of an old Native American burial ground.  Huh.  I guess that explains the weird static on the television and the strange vortex in the closet.

Hearing our next ferry sound its entry into Victoria Harbour, we figured that it was about time to head over to the terminal.  We commandeered one of the many Victoria Harbour Taxis to shuttle us across to the western end of the harbour, where we'd started the tour.  The harbour taxis are wobbly but maneuverable little boats-- kind of like big whitewater kayaks with motors-- which were once used to push timber around the harbour before being re-commissioned as passenger vehicles.  Meanwhile, as we were enjoying our ride in the Weeble Boat, Abby was apparently being held up against the side of the van at gunpoint by U.S. Customs.  The rest of us hung out for a bit near the ferry terminal, said our goodbyes to Eric the Victorian, and then sauntered onto the ferry in Scooby Doo-like fashion.

The Coho Ferry between Victoria and Port Angeles, WA is not part of the Washington State Ferries fleet but is rather a private line, still owned and operated by a subsidiary of the same Black Ball Line that brought ferry service to Puget Sound in the 1920's.  Much of the original Black Ball ferry business was sold to the state of Washington in 1950 and to the British Columbian government in 1961.  Meanwhile, the Black Ball Freight Service spun off from the Black Ball Line in 1936 and made its own foray into the ferry business with the formation of Black Ball Transport in 1952.  It was Black Ball Transport who built the M.V. Coho in 1959 and who still operates it to this day.  The Coho is a large, ocean-going ferry with a completely enclosed lower vehicle deck, necessary because of the large swells in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  The Coho can carry as many as 1000 passengers and over 100 vehicles at a time, and unlike the ferries in the Washington State fleet, it is not bi-directional.  The ferry pulls alongside the terminal in Victoria, and cars leave and enter through a water-tight bay door in the side of the ship near the starboard bow.  In Port Angeles, the ferry backs into the terminal, and cars leave and enter through a similar bay door in the stern.

During the 90-minute voyage, I stepped outside a few times to enjoy the brisk ocean wind, have a couple of Leonardo DiCaprio "king of the world" moments at the bow, and (most importantly) to keep my eyes glued on the horizon so as to avoid blowing beets into the 5-10 foot waves.  The ferry pulled into Port A at around 4:30, and we disembarked in the van.  Breezing through Customs on this end, we were off toward Olympic National Park, a route that would take us down the 101 through some unfortunately clear-cut National Forest land and to Lake Crescent, on the park's northern boundary.

The Lake Crescent Lodge was originally known as Singer's Lake Crescent Tavern.  Built by Avery J. Singer between 1914 and 1916, the Tavern was then accessible only by ferry, as the road from Port Angeles terminated at the eastern end of the lake.  In the 1920's, the Olympic Highway (U.S. 101) was completed along the lake's southern shore, providing easy access to the lodge.  The property was sold by the Singers in 1927 and changed hands many times before being purchased by the National Park Service in 1951.  The original building remains to this day and is in active use as a hotel, gift shop, and restaurant, maintained by the same concessionaire that runs the Chisos Mountain Lodge in Big Bend   Additional structures, including the cabins in which we would be staying for the next two nights, were added onto the lodge after it was acquired by the Park Service.

We arrived at the lodge, checked in, and set off down the trail to nearby Marymere Falls.  This one-mile trail follows Barnes Creek through the Mirkwood-esque old growth forest, crosses under the 101, and climbs a bit before reaching the falls.  I was there and back again in less than an hour, leaving enough time to grab a shower before heading to dinner at the lodge.  I had the halibut.