Today we are moving from our campground in Sidney, outside Victoria to Pender Island. Pender Island is where my mom lives and a large part of the reason for this trip. Our ferry isn’t until the afternoon. Since it is the ferry that the locals take when they just need to run into town to do some errands and it is a holiday on the following day it is going to be very busy.

We start our day taking down the campsite, burying the kids in the backseat. We need a bigger vehicle but that will have to wait. We went into Sidney which is this gorgeous little village on the ocean. It is an extremely walkable town and we traversed the entire main street. This is another place that I stop at frequently when I lived on Pender. It has a number of great new and used bookstores that I could spend hours in. We also stopped and picked up a picnic lunch to eat in the ferry terminal.

While we were on our walk we stopped outside the Ocean Discovery Center. We didn’t have time to go in but there was a pool outside with various local creatures in it. Ian made friends with a crab. In the picture Ian is walking like a crab and clicking his fingers. The crab followed him which was cute. We were debating between coincidence and learned behavior from tourist throwing food in.

We got to the ferry terminal about an hour and half before the sailing and had our lunch. We also met up with my mom in the line. She had been in town for some tests. We both got on the ferry but lots didn’t. They will have wait for the next sailing which will probably also fill up. At least they are now first in line but it is a 3+ hour wait. There used to be a hole in the fence that would allow you to sneak out and walk to a nearby pub for some good food while your car waited in line. The hole is long gone thanks to increased security. As you can see this is a much smaller ferry than the first one we were on and has much less in the way of amenities.

We got to Pender and set up our camp again. We then took the electronics to my mom’s place to be charged. We couldn’t stay long as she was tired from her day. We had an early dinner and read books for the rest of the evening.

Favorite Things…

Ian – Ferry to Pender
Margaret – Ferry to Pender
Philip – Sidney Bookstores
Mom – Used bookstore and finding some books by Monica Hughes that she had been looking for.

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