Leon Turnbull Photography

Don’t pay the ferryman … until he gets you to the other side. (Chris Deburgh)

We had a boat ride and two ferries and a border crossing. We would not arrive in Seattle until 10PM at night. Best case scenario. It was not the best case scenario.

Thanks to Roger stopping for 15 minutes at the seal factory on the way back (mentioned on a prior post), we barely made it onto the first ferry in time. I was more worried about the second one because it is a bigger crossing, but we made that one easily. I was super tired so I stayed in the vehicle hoping to get a snooze. Normally BC Ferries does not allow you to stay in your vehicle for the crossing but this time they did. I thought it was because of a safety issue. So why is it not a safety issue for the crossing this time? Hmmmm … Well I could not sleep because of a dog barking and two car alarms going off and all the announcements they were making over the PA system. When my family returned to the car and tried to open the door OUR car alarm went off. It is a new car and I could not figure out how to turn the alarm off. It took a long time. Now I was thoroughly embarrassed!

Well … the ferry docked and we waited and waited and waited for our lane to start moving. Usually it is very quick. None of the lanes were moving. What the heck? We learned soon enough that a big semi truck had broken down and was blocking most of the exit lanes. Oh my gosh! They had to back us out in reverse down a very tight narrow lane so then we could exit on the second level ramp. It was pure craziness! Don’t pay the ferryman until he gets you to the other side! (I wish)

We ate dinner at Boston Pizza and then continued to the border crossing. That took a long time. They had just one lane open! This is a major crossing and only one lane is open. Oh come on for Pete’s sake. Immediately after getting across the border we got on I-5 and promptly came to a complete stand still. There was a major accident blocking all lanes of the freeway. We were stuck for almost an hour. Well this is going just great so far. Not! We would not arrive at our motel in Seattle (Issaquah) until well after midnight.

We had just four hours of sleep then we had to get up and go. We had a very long drive ahead of us, but also Tara and I both wanted to stop at Snoqualmie Falls on the way back home. We have never been to this waterfall before and have wanted to go for a long time. It is a very gorgeous 268 ft. high plunge. It was a great ending to our awesome vacation.