The alarm goes off at 0430, we manage to shut it off after the 1st ring and are doing quite well keeping down the noise – that is until the car alarm goes off. Sorry guys. Sorry campsite. Ouch! We bid our retreat just before 0500. It’s about a five hour drive and we want to get an early morning ferry to Vancouver Island so we’re not too late getting to Nathan and Donna’s.

The trip is pretty smooth, apart from when we stop for fuel, wifi and sort brekkie – it’s a bit hairy negotiating the traffic lanes trying to get back to the motorway; the burgers we cooked but didn’t eat last night and earmarked for brekkie are horrid and we realise we’ll be hard pushed to get the 1015 ferry.

Hhmmm… We get back on the road and settle for a cheese and relish roll for sustenance and cross our fingers on the border queues being small allowing us to catch the ferry… The border IS swift and we get excited when we arrive at the ferry terminal 20 minutes before the ferry is due to leave.

We get tickets and join the queue, but sadly it fills up part way down our lane. 🙁 The next one isn’t till 1245. Not fair!!!

We console ourselves with a coffee and sticky bun and find stuff to do on the blog…. the terminal is pretty busy as there seems to be loads of different ferries leaving for different destinations… the weather is nice and it warms up more and more as the morning passes, although there is a fair breeze on the ferry when we finally get on. We were only worried for a wee while that we weren´t going to even make this next one – too many reservations getting on before us…

Once off the ferry we follow trusty google maps (think we said – we have no satnav coverage for Canada), which takes us right to Nathan and Donna´s door, some 2 hours later… It´s great to see them, Nathan is home from his month stint on his Coastguard duty (he works one month on, month off) but what we didn´t plan for was Donna having to work… she´s a nurse and with nurses shifts 🙁 so we´ll just have to make the most of the evenings with her while we´re here… starting with a great dinner of smoked salmon, salmon and potatoes, salad, corn yummy 🙂

After we´ve finished eating some of their friends show up – Chris, Michelle and Gary – and we have cake (Chris´s birthday cake from yesterday) and retire to the garden fire pit, a proper stone-walled pit in the ground surrounded by logs and chairs to sit on 🙂 where we sit chatting into the wee small hours.