Across Water to Another Country

Popped over to Victoria to visit W. on Friday. The M.V. Coho, fresh out of her annual drydock and back at home at the ferry dock in downtown Port Angeles, was looking very jaunty, with fresh paint all over, seats repaired, etc.
Looking past town and up to Klahane Ridge as the ferry pulls away.

We drove west along the Vancouver Island shore as far as Jordan River, wanting to look back across the Strait at the mountains behind the Olympic Peninsula shore (home!), but it was gray and rainy and mostly cloudy. No pix. Dawdled out there watching the surfers bobbing on the small surf of the Strait on a grey calm day.

Then came back, one eye on the clock to make the return ferry. At the end of the day we detoured to Esquimalt Lagoon, and the ducks were wonderfully plentiful, and paddling around right up to our feet. It made me so happy to have them dabbling and murmuring and squeeking right there in my arms (so to speak), so close you didn't need binoculars to see what they were like. Best ducks I ever had. Then ferried home again. "Where do you live?" asked the passport man. "Here," I said.

Esquimalt Lagoon, ducks, geese, swans ; click for larger imageGoldeneyes (and a couple of scaup); click for larger imagePintails and wigeons