We had visited Victoria about 20 years ago and remember it as being a very pretty city. The harbor is beautiful, the flowers are always in bloom, much of the architecture is an homage to the Victorian Age, and the climate is moderate. We very much were looking forward to this visit. But we hit a series of missteps when we entered the city. First off, the long drive through the Cascades took us even longer than we expected and were forced to take a late ferry. By the time we hit land it was already dark and Joanne started sneezing and sniffling,  coming down with a cold. Second, the campground that we had selected from the Internet, the Fort Victoria RV Park, turned out to be our worst nightmare. Several hundred large rigs were jammed together, cheek to jowl, on small parcels with hardly a tree in sight. The one available space was littered with debris from the RV next to it. We turned tail and seeing an Indian restaurant nearby, stopped for dinner. Mitch had it in his head to dry camp in the restaurant parking lot. The waiter looked at him like he was crazy and recommended the EconoLodge down the street. Other than Mitch tripping over the bedspread on the floor and breaking his pinky (on his already gimpy right arm- Depuytren’s Contracture in the hand, carpal tunnel syndrome in the wrist and forearm, and tennis elbow), it turned out to be quite comfortable, clean, and had a great shower. And Apollo had his own couch to sleep on.

The next morning things were a lot better. Mitch, now officially on the DL, had a nice run along the Gorge Inlet and even though Joanne was still struggling with a cold she had a good night’s sleep. We headed out to do some sightseeing downtown. Victoria is still the beautiful city we remembered.