Travels With A Duck: Duckie visits Victoria BC (July 2012)

Friday, November 16, 2012

Duckie visits Victoria BC (July 2012)

Our first stop on Vancouver Island in July was Victoria, the capital of British Columbia (not to be confused with Ottawa, the capital of Canada!).

Beautiful sunny day to enjoy a beautiful city.

Looking out over Victoria Harbor.

The famous Empress Hotel overlooks the harbor.

The harbor is full of charter and private boats & yachts.

Glancing back along the sea wall of the inner harbor. A very popular tourist destination, the inner harbor sea wall is always bustling with people, vendors, musicians and entertainers like this cowgirl painted to look like a statute. She was hilarious in her antics!!

The British Columbia parliament buildings, which house our provincial government, overlook the harbor. That's the building in the distance with the green dome roof.

An amazing hedge trimming artwork of a mother and baby orca whale. There are lots of orcas (also known as killer whales) in the waters around Vancouver Island.

A closer look at the Empress Hotel. Lots of famous people have stayed at this hotel. The hotel serves a very classy British style high tea in the afternoons (but we didn’t have the time nor money for that today!)

A favorite way for tourists to see Victoria is with the horse & buggy rides.

Queen Victoria, the namesake of the city.

The British Columbia provincial parliament buildings. Whenever there are protests or anything significant where the people are opposing or supporting the provincial government, people come here to the lawns of the legislature and march. One year they set up their tents and camped here for most of the summer to protest something.

Thinking about going for a swim in the fountain out front

of the parliament buildings.

Enjoying the sunshine with Marilyn on the lawns

out front of the parliament buildings.

We stayed at a motel on the far side of the inner harbor. This morning we got to see the floatplane arriving. Lots of business people fly regularly between downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria for a day’s work. It’s about a ½ hour flight.

Enjoying our last morning view of the harbor before setting off to head up the island to our destination of Tofino.

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Friendly Floatees

During a Pacific storm on January 10, 1992, three 40-foot containers holding 29,000 Friendly Floatees plastic bath toys from a Chinese factory were washed off a ship. Two-thirds of the ducks floated south and landed three months later on the shores of Indonesia, Australia, and South America. The remaining 10,000 ducks headed north to Alaska and then completed a full circle back near Japan, caught up in the North Pacific Gyre current as the so called Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Many of the ducks then entered the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia and were trapped in the Arctic ice. They moved through the ice at a rate of one mile per day, and in 2000 they were sighted in the North Atlantic. The movement of the ducks had been monitored by American oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer.

Frequency

I will put some things "up," so to speak, on some days, and on other days, I will not put things up. Whether or not I put things up will depend largely on whether, on a particular day, the duck is traveling. For example, let's say that on Monday I have something which I want to put up. On that day, I will put that thing up. On Tuesday, though, I might not have anything to put up. I will worry for a moment about not having anything to put up. "Oh no," I might say, "another day has come, and I have nothing to put up. What will happen if someone visits this site and there is nothing new to look at? Will people be angry?" But then I will realize that, chances are, people will not be angry -- that, chances are, people will understand. Most people are pretty understanding. Then again....