Fairmont–Hotel Vancouver, BC

OMG. We’ve arrived. Looking like a pack of Okanagan Hill Billies, in desperate need of a shower, clean clothes and one diaper change. Only to have to wait for too long for the hotel to prepare our room. Roughing it in the wild island bush for a week with three children is interesting and exhausting. And we were roughing it: toilet a five minute walk from our tent as were arctic ice cold showers. I literally developed the early stages of hypothermia on the two days I actually showered. My hair took so long to dry under the tall, full canopy of trees in our camp site. All my fingers went totally numb–I had no feeling in them at all. Not until a trip in the van into Victoria when they started to thaw out and the pain was considerable.
Aside from the heroic details of our survival, it was an awesome trip full of amazing adventures. The last one being a pod of orca’s beside the ferry this morning–three adults and two babies. I have so much to tell and so many cool pictures to share but I will wait until we return home this weekend. But to give an overview, our trip included: secluded waterfalls and swimming holes, ocean beach combing, historic mansion tours, Imax film, critters outside our tent at night,legislature tour, BC’s 150th B day celebrations, Pip and I as trivia stars on stage at the camp ground naturalist presentation, running through the forest with Pip to catch site of the passenger train every morning, swimming to the rock island in the Sooke potholes.