Friday 10th Sept, was one of those days you get when travelling - up at 4.30am for a 6.30am flight from Anchorage to Seattle (3.5hrs) - sit around an airport lounge for 3hrs for a connecting flight to Victoria (30min) - pick up a rental car and drive 2.5hrs north to a place called Campbell River about half way up Vancouver Island. It would have been ok, but the drive was in pouring rain and poor visibility. Combine this with old sections of road that have well defined wheel ruts to pool water as well as rivers of water from poor cambers and run off and it was a tough job just keeping the pointy end of the car facing forward!! But we got there.

At Campbell River we spent 3 nights at the Riverhaven B&B (their website), nice room and house and the hosts were very good. We spent Saturday 11th Sept driving across the island to Gold River and Muchalat Inlet. The drive was another scenic one with lots of water falls next to the road way.
A view of Muchalat Inlet.
one of the waterfalls.

On the Sunday 12th Sept we caught the 10min ferry over to Quadra Island and spent a few hours exploring. We came to a place where we could walk along the coast near the Breton Islands. Michele was happy because we had found lots of starfish - and they just happened to be purple! WooHoo!! Guess who had to take a photo.
A relaxing spot.
Purple starfish???

Later in the day we drove up Mt Washington which is the big ski area of Vancouver Island - no skiers but lots of mountain bikes and great views back across the strait to the coastal mountains of mainland BC.

Monday 13th Sept saw us make a slow start on an overcast drizzly day. We were heading north to a place called Alert Bay. It was one time I hadn't done my homework properly and we missed the ferry by 10mins. As such we sat around for 2.5hrs waiting for the next one. It was a fairly quiet day overall. The view from our accommodation was pretty cool though.
The view from our deck.

The next day (14th) was Orca watching day (again!). We had booked a trip on a sailing boat to see Orca's (view website). The trip was a success, we managed to follow a large pod of "off shore" Orca's that had ventured into the protected waters of Johnstone Strait. There must have been 25 of them if not more, and they were fantastic to watch. On the boat we met Ash and Ginger (a kiwi and an aussie) who were backpacking in the area - and interesting travel stories were exchanged. We also saw a black bear with 2 cubs up on the beach and a lot of seals.
Orcas in action.
More Orcas.

After getting off the boat we caught the ferry (on time) back to Vancouver Island and drove up to Port Hardy. Along the way we saw another black bear with cub on the roadside.

We woke up early on the 15th Sept to catch the BC ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, this is a 15hr journey covering 520km through the Inside Passage. The weather was in our favour and the scenery was again superb. This was an area we had missed on the cruise because the ship was too big to navigate the channels. We arrived in Prince Rupert 10.30pm. It was a long day, but worth the effort.
Cruising calm waters.