NOTE: This trip occurred from Feb 21, 2022 through Feb 25, 2022 - but I didn't transcribe the trip until Aug 19, 2026. I chose to do a single posting rather than daily postings.
Planning
As this was mostly a repeat of the trip that I took with Robert five years ago I followed a familiar path for this one. Originally, Andrew wanted to include University of Oregon at Eugene on his list, which would have complicated the planning a great deal. Fortunately, after some further discussion it became clear that UO wasn’t a serious contender and we dropped it from the list of potential destinations. Having done this the trip planning was vastly simplified as getting to/from Eugene via Portland was going to be difficult, particularly if we had any hopes of returning to SJ by Friday. (Andrew was going to miss his Monday SJYS rehearsal and really did NOT want to also miss the Saturday rehearsal scheduled at the end of our trip.)
Once again, the trip would start in Seattle. However, unlike Robert we’d only be visiting UW and WWU in-state, so no need to drive to either Tacoma or Puget Sound this time. So we’d arrive at the airport and rent a car for another one-way trip SEA to Vancouver, with daily stops at UW, WWU (where we’d visit with Robert), then across the border in Vancouver, from which we’d visit University of Victoria and finally UBC. Due to COVID, UBC wasn’t offering campus tours at the time we booked so we’d have to do our own walk-around for this one. (On Saturday, two days before leaving for the trip we’d discover that UBC WAS offering tours but our day was filled. We decided to check again on Monday and see if we could get scheduled on the Friday we planned to be there.)
As usual, I used Kayak to plan flights for a multi-city journey. We’d fly Delta outbound – scoring Comfort+ seating for the trip to SEA and then flying Alaska back from Vancouver via SEA in order to arrive back in SJ late on Friday night. Flights were all pretty full – in fact, the YVR-SEA leg seat selection required us to sit in 3 different rows. After two years of flights being pretty empty due to COVID there were some mixed feelings on this one!
Rented a car one-way from SEA to YVR and, having learned the benefit of having full insurance from the trip with Robert, once again got full coverage on the car so there will be no concerns about any issues once we drop off in Vancouver at the airport. For lodging, chose a hotel immediately next to UW, booked our old standby of Holiday Inn Express in Bellingham (after considering and rejecting as too expensive the hotel right by Fred Meyer that was <1 mile from Robert’s apartment) and finally another Holiday Inn Express right by YVR airport, which placed it centrally located between UBC and the ferry to Victoria Island.
With the basic outline in place, next scheduled a round-trip car ferry to get us to Victoria Island for our Thursday University of Victoria visit. The trip itself was 90 minutes long, so had to setup one of the early morning departures and late afternoon returns. Even with that window, our time on the island would be pretty limited as travel to/from the ferry + the tour itself + lunch would leave us only about 45-60 minutes of “other” time available. So we wouldn’t get much – if any – sightseeing time.
Finally, since our return to SJC would be on a flight arriving at 11PM we decided that it would be easier to have our own car available to get home, so setup parking at the Martin Ave offsite vendor we’d used on our last trip. Only concern was going to be how quickly they’d pick us up from the airport post-arrival. Our flight would no doubt be one of the last – and perhaps even the LAST – arrival to SJC that evening and we were trusting that their on-call shuttle wouldn’t try to pack up and leave us stranded at the airport!
Prior to leaving, we began to consult weather reports. Robert’s trip had taken place in May. Going in February was going to be a whole different experience. Predictions called for COLD. The “Feels Like” temperatures for our various destinations were in the range of 20-35F! We decided to pack like we’d done for Stockholm, with hats, scarves, and gloves. When we first started checking, the predictions included potential snow in Seattle but as we got just a couple of days out it morphed into rain instead – phew! I did NOT want to have to deal with driving in snow.
The Day Before – Stupid Fire Drills
The day before leaving (a Sunday) we get an email from Alaska Airlines, a courtesy reminder regarding our return flight from Vancouver to the US. Turns out that I’ve missed a CRUCIAL planning step: crossing the border requires a negative COVID test no more than 72 hours old at time of the crossing. I had been under the impression that we only needed to provide our vax cards, but NO. We have to have tests! Ugh. So a semi-mad scramble ensued.
First priority is to get a test in order to allow us to make the land border crossing in 3 days – about 72 hours from this moment. We do this even though we’re still not 100% clear on what we need – all we know right now is that IF we need the test we need to get it NOW, while the testing place is still open. Fortunately, there’s a Carbon Health clinic over by our local Total Wine store that can not only do walk-up testing but will produce the results in (at most) 3 hours. So we hop into the car around 3:30P on a Sunday afternoon and go get our tests…at the low low low price of only $195. Per person. Ugh.
Returning home, now it is time to better understand our needs. I start completing the Canadian border crossing paperwork using the ArriveCAN system. I upload info about our passports, attached PDFs of our vax cards, and answer some questions. While I’m doing this our test results arrive in email, so I’m able to complete all the ArriveCAN stuff. (I don’t actually get asked to upload the test results – we’re just supposed to be able to produce them on-demand at the border.)
Meanwhile, E spends time locating walk-up testing in Bellingham in case we’re going to need ANOTHER round of testing in order to return on our flight back from Vancouver. Indeed, we WILL need another test, again administered less than 72 hours prior to our departure from Canada. We’re able to snag a test on the morning just prior to our WWU campus tour that will take place at the Bellingham airport. Even if it takes them the full 48 hours to process the results we’ll have them by Friday morning, in time for our Friday evening flight out of YVR. These tests are an absolute steal, at only $135. Per person. Ugh.
So this last minute hurdle takes about 2 hours of frenzied activity to put to rest, but we manage to get all arrangements made by about 5:30P and can focus now on putting our travel packet together and pack up our stuff after dinner.
Day 1: SJC to SEA
Honoring our long-standing tradition, we stopped and picked up donuts at Maple Leaf as we headed out for the airport. We actually managed to get our timing better than usual, meaning that we only arrived SOMEWHAT early rather than RIDICULOUSLY early. We’re still us! Parked the car offsite and their shuttle dropped us at the terminal around 9A. We were already checked in and had eBoarding passes so went directly through security and were at the gate by about 905A for our 10:25 flight on Delta (Skywest) to SEA onboard an Embrear 175. As is becoming my habit, I picked this over the larger jets due to having the best seating configuration. In particular, the 18.25” wide seats were the widest I could find on this route and by upgrading to Comfort+ we enjoyed 34” legroom rather than 31” – although 31” probably would have been just fine. Another benefit of Comfort+ was guaranteed overhead bin storage so we wouldn’t have to worry about carrying our bags onboard with us.
The flight itself was uneventful. The extra legroom of Comfort+ was nice, as was priority boarding which got us overhead bins without issue. We left on time and landed in Seattle right around 1230P. At the Rental Car Facility there wasn’t anything waiting for us at the FastBreak counter, so used the Avis window in the garage (as per Budget’s sign) and got things squared away in just a couple of minutes. Seems like they didn’t have any of the mid-range cars I had selected so they gave us a GMC <something>, a mini SUV. Tons more room and 4WD, so no complaints from me. I’m not sure if this was actually our “free size upgrade” as per the coupon I used or they were just out of midrange cars.
Next stop was a strategically selected Five Guys just a couple of minutes from SeaTac so we could get lunch ASAP and not totally throw off our meal schedule. When we indicated that we were dining in they asked to see our vax cards – unexpected, but turns out that’s the current rules in place here in King County. If you can’t show proof of vax you have to wait outside and take your food to go. Really wish we had a rule like this in Santa Clara for the last many months! Once done, Waze took us on a convoluted route to Silver Cloud Hotel – University, right at the NW corner of UW’s campus.
We killed a few hours just lounging around, reading and a little big of napping before heading out to eat. Dinner this night was pizza at a local joint called Valamos, which came with a 4.5 star rating on Google. We each got a 7” personal w/3 toppings of choice along with a side salad. It was mostly meh…but, once again, it was awesome to know that everyone around us had shown proof of vax in order to dine in! Back to the hotel room to once again veg – both Andrew and I had slept poorly last night and sitting around quietly reading w/a movie on in the background was nice.
Day 2: University of Washington
Woke up to cold. There had been some snow overnight and by the time we finished breakfast and made our way to the car there were (very light) snow flurries. Nothing disruptive fortunately. Made the quick 6 minute drive to WU’s central parking garage where the garage guy vaguely pointed to a code we could use “with the parking app” that we didn’t have…or we could “use the kiosk”, which we never found. Anyway, we parked and went upstairs to a building on Red Square before (eventually) finding our way to the HUB building to be assigned to our tour group. The guides did a quick intro before we split up – three of the 5 were from Sunnyvale, Cupertino, and San Jose. So, of course, we got the guide from Seattle. Same basic tour as with Robert, skipping the dorm portion of the walkthrough. We skipped the West housing area entirely. The campus is as beautiful as usual.
Post-tour and post-preso by the Admissions guy we made our way back to the garage. At the exit booth let the (same) guy know we didn’t have the app and hadn’t found the payment kiosk, so I owned him money. He let me know that “today was my lucky day” and didn’t bother to collect anything from us. Nice! So we hit the road on the way to Bellingham, stopping at the same Burger King we’d hit during our last trip out here for lunch on the road.
We pulled into Bellingham just after 1P and tried to check-in, but there weren’t any rooms already made up so we stashed our bags with the front desk and went over to Target to get some Kleenix. Turns out that cool weather + warm breath trapped in face masks leads to runny noses. Yuck. We then killed more time by wandering around Barnes and Noble until a room was ready about 215P.
We agreed to meet Robert at his apartment around 330P in order to take him over to Fred Meyer for groceries and, hopefully, also a small stick vacuum. He has our old Roomba but that is just too random and generally ineffective for him. Ended up getting a medium stick vacuum.
Enjoyed sitting around his apartment until dinner time which was at D’Anna’s, the Italian place we’d been to back during our August visit and enjoyed so much. Tonight was another success, and we were able to drop Robert back at the apartment with leftovers for a couple of meals. Waaaaay too cold out to consider going to Malllard’s (ice cream), so back to the hotel w/o dessert. Sigh.
We’re slated to meet Robert on-campus tomorrow after our tour and heading for lunch before we leave on our way to Vancouver. Going to be interesting to see whether we can meet at the normal end-of-tour location. Throughout the day we’ve been seeing emails from WWU Security (not something we’d normally see as someone touring campus, but something we have access to since Robert is a student. Access to the Viking Common complex has been cut off due to anonymous gun threats received via email by two WWU department accounts. At dinner we got another update that VC will continue to be closed through tomorrow as a precaution. If that prevents the tours from ending at the scenic overlook outside VC we’re curious how this will be played off by the guides.
Day 3: Western Washington University
Woke up around 7A and ate the typical IHG breakfast, skipping their signature rubbery scrambled eggs in favor of oatmeal and bacon (me), English muffin and yogurt (E), and banana and blueberry muffin (A). Hard to believe, but there were people in the pool at breakfast time. For some reason there are a LOT of families with kids here.
After breakfast we drove over to the airport for our scheduled drive-through Covid tests, which we’ll need to return via Vancouver Airport. The nerve-wracking part of this is that the results are supposed to be delivered “within 48-72 hours” with 48 hours being average (as per the question I asked the testing folks). Given that we’ll need the result in no more than 55 hours in order to get on our plane is a bit of a concern, but fingers crossed we’ll have the results sometime early Friday AM for our Friday PM departure. I don’t want to think of the alternative!
We returned to the hotel for only about 30 minutes before checking out and making our way over to WWU for the tour. While Robert and I had started at the Rec Center (and, indeed, they still have signage in the Rec Center lobby showing them as the tour starting point), Andrew’s confirmation email indicated that we would instead meet across the flag pole plaza at the Academic West building. So we crossed to the other side and got ourselves checked in before sitting through the 20-25 minute admissions preso. Interestingly enough, it seemed like more of the attendees were newly admitted HS seniors about to start at WWU in Fall rather than HS juniors on tour, like us. (This might have been true when Robert and I toured, too. Not sure.)
Finally, our two guides (acting as a team) gave us the official tour. I don’t really recall the details from five years ago so not sure how much of the script was the same, although I assume it was probably close to identical. WWU’s tour doesn’t flow as well as UW’s. Physically, due to campus layout, WWU’s tour isn’t like UW’s closed loop. Instead, it is very much a one-way West to East line, meaning that at the end of the tour you have to independently walk all the way back through campus. It also seems to be much more a catalog of building function (“that is Blah Hall, home to History, English and Lit”; “over here is Foo Hall, home to Biology and Chemistry”) whereas UW blends bits and pieces of history, student life, building function, etc into more stops than WWU. WWU ultimately touches on the same themes and points…but not as elegantly, IMO.
One thing BOTH campuses are doing that is new since Robert and I toured is that both tours started off by immediately recognizing that the schools stood on land of the native <whoever> tribe and each basically paid lip service to the fact that someone owned the land before the University did. Frankly, seemed like an overly self-aware bit of political correctness.
Surprisingly in these Covid times we DID get to see a dorm room. A two BR/4 student suite in Hutchins Hall was set aside as a sort of showroom that they opened up and everyone filed through the door of BR1, through the bathroom, and then out the door of BR2. E mentioned that the layout was basically the kind of setup Robert had had his freshman year.
And, no, we didn’t get taken over to see either Viking Common or the scenic overlook, as VC was “closed today”.
Following the tour, Andrew said he wanted to see the Music building, so instead of meeting Robert at either the overlook or Red Square (out backup plan if the tour route got changed) we instead met him outside of Music – which was, coincidentally, the building Robert had just left a few minutes earlier from his Survey of World Music class. We ran downstairs and popped our heads into an unused practice room and then headed back across campus to the parking lot. From there we headed downtime for Robert (and Andrew’s) favorite: dumplings at P’elmini’s. With lunch under our belts we dropped Robert back off at campus for his 2P class and we got on the road and headed up to Vancouver.
At the border crossing, following a short wait which still was annoying because we clearly picked the SLOW LANE, I first handed over the ArriveCAN paperwork, figuring this would ease us through quickly. Of course, the guard appeared to have zero interest in it and handed it back and we had the more traditional trading of passports, questions about our reasons for being there, and finally showing our proof of negative test results before we were waved through. About 15 minutes later we were pulling up to the Holiday Inn Express Vancouver Airport where we’d spend the next two nights of our tour. Sadly, our room didn’t have the nice 2-seat couch of the Bellingham hotel so had to make back pillows out of bed pillows and lounge on the beds. (Well, E actually took a nap when we arrived…)
For dinner, we decided on Japanese, but where? It seemed like every 4th restaurant was a Japanese one. Using Google Maps to find those “near me” yielded a couple of dozen choices within just a few miles, and on our way to our chosen option we passed a few that hadn’t come up on the search. The density of food choices in the Richmond area around the airport is pretty impressive, too. Streets and parking lots just lined with places, each with its own bright sign (typically in both English and Japanese or Chinese or other langages). Extremely vibrant.
The place we picked (called Matsuyama) was a hit with all of us. I’d selected it because they offered a wide assortment of Bento boxes, which turns out to be less common here than back home. Needed to avoid the places that serve nothing but sushi or Roboto (BBQ) since those don’t appeal to E. We even tried an appetizer that both A and I liked: Spicy Fried Tofu.
On the way back from dinner we stopped at Great Canadian Superstore, which is a huge grocery + a small Target-ish department store, and picked up some chocolate bakery cookies to enjoy back in our room. We turned it early, knowing we were going to have to wake up at 630A the next day.
Day 4: University of Victoria
This was University of Victoria day. We were up at 630A so we could have breakfast and head out by 745 to catch the 9A BCFerry from Twassessen to Schwarz Bay (Victoria). The morning news was grim, with the reports arriving that Russia had begun its invasion of Ukraine. The trip to the ferry terminal is supposed to take about 30 minutes, but took us 45 due to bad traffic.
The ferry is really efficient. They load on (best guess) about 200 cars on Deck 3 and some number of larger trucks, etc on Deck 2. Loading was quick and efficient. You can exit your car to the passenger decks on levels 4-6, with tons of seating options. There’s even a full cafeteria serving hot food, a shop, play areas, and some fancier lounges (which were closed due to Covid). The trip takes about 90 minutes and you end up about 30 minutes away from Victoria, or 30 minutes from UVic via a slightly different route.
We headed off to UVic, stopping to take on some gas along the way as we were down to just before a 1/4 tank. Prices at every station were identical, which makes me wonder whether Canada sets gas prices at the national level. The tap chip readers don’t work with my WFB card here, so had to go inside where I could insert my card into the chip reader, so had them set me up for “20 litres” <g>
We arrived at UVic about 90 minutes before the scheduled tour, so parked and went over to the student union in order to get some lunch. We went to the Grill where I had a mundane burger, but E had a black bean burrito and A had a falafel with dahl and both enjoyed the food. Post lunch we cruised through the student bookstore to kill some more time before going back to the visitor center and meeting our tour.
E and I thought the tour process was REALLY poor. First, no one from the Admissions Office appeared (despite having a slot on the schedule), so implies that they aren’t serious about recruiting. (We think there’s a large commuter population here and that Admissions might simply rely on that group.) Second, the tour guide, a 4th year math major, possessed almost zero information designed to excite prospective students and their families with details about campus life (his info about housing was laughably spare – only offered after a direct question – and out of date). The tour was really nothing more than running into and out of lots of buildings – and lots of staircases – mostly to hear “this is the library” (walk in, walk up stairs silently, walk to another down silently, and down stairs”. Finally, this week is “Reading Week” – an unexplained phrase from the guide – but essentially, school isn’t in session this week so campus was mostly DEAD, which doesn’t help sell the experience.
Curiously, A actually had a reasonably positive response to the campus despite these things, and he was impressed by downtown Victoria. However, DT is a 25 minute bus ride away from campus and he recognizes that the campus is kind of in the middle of nowhere, and for that reason he’s not seriously considering UVic. OK by us.
As we were booked on the 5P return ferry which would arrive back at 630P we had some concerns that we were going to end up eating dinner sometime well past 7P and then trying to go to bed too early to really digest. So on our way back to the Ferry we stopped at a SavOn grocery outside Victoria and bought food from the deli to eat in our room once we got back to the hotel. We figured this would allow us to finish dinner around 715P. However, arriving at the Ferry terminal at 350P we were given the option of trying to get on the 4P ferry on standby rather than waiting for out booked 5P slot. I didn’t realize that there was even a 4P sailing…but we rolled the dice and were directed to the standby line. We managed to make it (3 more cars go on behind us, so we just made it!). We got parked on the deck normally meant for larger vehicles, but that didn’t delay us in any way during the offloading. So, as a result of this, we got back to our hotel by about 615P and had a relaxing dinner in our room close to our normal time. Dessert was cookies from last night’s grocery run.
Day 5: University of British Columbia
This day started a bit more relaxed as we didn’t have a scheduled tour. When the trip was originally booked a few weeks before today UBC was still offering only virtual tours. At some point they once again started scheduling in-person live tours, but we didn’t discover this until just prior to starting our trip and by that time the Friday tours were already booked. Instead, we intended to do a self-guided walk and then meet with Michael Stahl, who is enrolled as a grad student working on Choral Conducting.
We had breakfast and I took the opportunity to print our the Covid test results we’d had done in Bellingham with the expectation that they’d fulfill the requirements to show negative testing results at the YVR airport. We then packed up the car and headed over to UBC, arriving about 10:30A and started our walking tour. Andrew was working from something he downloaded which looked like it was geared more to a general audience interested in interesting public art and other things around campus and not so much about being a student. Unfortunately, E’s foot was acting up so she had to sit out the 2nd half of the places I went with Andrew, most notably the Music building (which was under renovation, so we never found the Department office). We did hear a lot of sounds coming from tons of practice studios, however. We also quickly checked out the student bookstore before heading over to meet Michael near the bus loop at the Aquatic Center.
Michael had graciously come onto campus specifically to meet us. To minimize the stress on E’s foot we took Michael to lunch in the Student Union and chattered for an hour or so about a bunch of stuff, with stress, of course, on life at UBC and music-related things. Michael could only respond from the POV of a grad student, but he still had some good stuff to impart. Post-lunch he took us to a nice scenic point on campus between a couple of the libraries and then helped us find our way back to the parking garage before we said our grateful goodbyes and drove off to the airport.
We turned in the car and then got ourselves into the terminal – a very quick walk as the rental return is directly across the street from the terminal - where we sat around for about an hour waiting for Alaska Airlines’s check-in desks to open up. After waiting in line for about 20 minutes to get to the front I handed over our passports and Bellingham test results…at which point we discovered that the US demanded test results that were <24 hours old, and therefore the <48 hour results we had were no good. AARRGH! We were directed to the on-site testing vendor (just about 100 yards away from where we were) where we had to register for our THIRD Covid tests of the last 5 days. Ironically, these were the least expensive – only about $50/person – and the results were emailed to us within about 35 minutes. This still gave us ample time to get through check-in (where we decided to check our bags all the way through to SJC so we didn’t have to deal with them in Seattle), drop our bags, get through Customs, and finally get boarded. Our flight was delayed about 15 minutes, so rather than just walking on to the plane as expected we instead had to wait 15 minutes for boarding to start.
Despite the late departure we still arrived in Seattle on time. We had a 2:20 layover, but immediately boarded the train to go to the N terminal from which our flight to SJC would depart. Once at the terminal we then looked at our (limited) food options and ended up at the Tequila Taqueria, where we had over-priced Mexican food. It was too expensive, but we were all famished so we were happy with the food. Once done we walked the very short distance to our gate and waited for boarding. Our flight was about 10 minutes late to leave, but we still arrived back at SJC prior to the “official” 10:59P scheduled arrival.
Alaska’s flights arrive at Terminal 1, but their baggage claim is at Terminal 2, so we had to make the LONG walk from our arrival gate (which I think was something like #4) to the baggage claim exit (which was down near gate #34 or so). Our bags were already on the carousel when we got there so A and I grabbed them, and as I walked out of the terminal I called the parking shuttle and told them we were ready for pickup. There was one other person at the pickup when we arrived, and together we all waited about 15 minutes before the shuttle finally got there. That was an annoying wait…but there may have been a reason….
Shuttle driver dropped us back at our car at the Martin St. storage area and we headed out onto De la Cruz to get onto 101 and then to 87…but road construction had the 101 on-ramp closed, so we had to go another ½ mile or so beyond that ramp in order to U-turn and them grab the on-ramp on the other side. (So shuttle guy probably had to take the longer route to get to us, which might be why he seemed to take so long to get to us.) Once we got onto 87, we came across a huge accident filed with flashing lights and flares…and all traffic was forced to exit at Taylor St…so yet another round of going and doing a U-turn in order to get back onto 87 at Taylor, just past the accident. We finally arrived home right around 12:15AM, having taken almost one-and-a-half hours to arrive home after landing.
Final Thoughts
1. Car pickup via FastBreak at SEA is easy. You take a shuttle to the offsite rental car facility. Car drop-off at YVR is easy and you walk to the US terminal – about 2-3 minutes at an easy pace. There’s really only one option to gas up the rental car prior to drop-off at YVR, and that’s on-site at the airport. I drove past it while paying attention to all the signage pointing to the car return, but it was on the left side of the road. If you don’t want to do it onsite find some place a few miles away.
2. At YVR, you present passport + boarding pass at check-in gate and checked luggage is tagged there. You then are ushered through the check-in, carrying your own luggage, which you drop off at Baggage Drop. You then go through and enter the Security/X-Ray line (showing passport and boarding pass again), and then finally you go through Customs (showing both docs again). From there you walk to your gate. IF FILLING A WATER BOTTLE DO THAT IMMEDIATELY AFTER CUSTOMS. Once you start walking to the gate you won’t find any other place to do it. At the gate, they again want to see both passport and boarding pass as you board.
3. Flying YVR to SEA is only about 28 minutes in the air. We took a DHC-8-400 propjet which is a little cramped, but fine.