San Francisco to Vancoucer, June 2008

[benny21077]

Dear all,
We are planning to get married in San Franciso in June and are planning to spent our honymoon on a road trip from SF to Vanouver. We are looking for suggestions on what to see on the trip and how to spent our time. Your help is very appreciated. Heres what we are planning to do:

We will fly to San Francisco from Germany on June 18th and spent five days in San Francisco. We will leaveSF on June 23rd and drive up north. We wont book a Motel or anything betwwen SF and Vancouver, since we ewant to be free and stay as long on a place as we want to.

We have about six days to drive from SF ton Vancouver. Then we will stay in Vancouver for four days, drive back to Seattle, stay there for two days and then back to Germany from Seattle.

I know SF pretty well since I live there for a year. But I dont know the route to Vancouver, the Vancouver Area and the Seattle area. What are your suggestions what we should absolutely do considered the time we have? Is it worth to go to Vancover by Ferry?

I appreciate your help very much. I want this to be the road trip of a lifetime and are looking forward to a great vacation.

Thank you very much,
Regards,
Ben

[PNW Judy]

And welcome to the Roadtrip America forums.

Six days gives you a nice amount of time to make this drive. It is a popular trip and we have a lot of posts here about it. You might want to check out this post that has links to other posts about this general route.

And check out:
Mainly Olympic Peninsula ideas but some route ideas as well
This terrific roadtrip report offers ideas from the Northern CA Redwoods to Seattle

Post #5 in this thread discusses some of the ferry options. This map shows all the Washington state and British Columbia ferries. None go directly from Washington to Vancouver BC. However, some go to Vancouver Island and, from there, you can take a ferry to Vancouver BC. Or you can take a ferry to Bellingham, WA, in northern Washington and then take the short drive to Vancouver BC from there (about an hour, not counting time to cross the border).

So poke around. Also check out the bottom of this page for links at the bottom that should take you to some helpful information. While we love to help people plan trips, we also encourage you to do some of your own planning....or at least gather together ideas of things that interest you...and then we can help you tweak things to create a fantastic roadtrip fory ourself. So continue to come back with further questions during your planning. Have fun!

[W. Larrison]

[ ... ] some of the ferry options. This map shows all the Washington state and British Columbia ferries. None go directly from Washington to Vancouver BC. However, some go to Vancouver Island and, from there, you can take a ferry to Vancouver BC. Or you can take a ferry to Bellingham, WA, in northern Washington and then take the short drive to Vancouver BC from there (about an hour, not counting time to cross the border). [ ... ]

Hmm.. you can go from Olympic Penninsula (Port Townsend) to Whidby Island (Keystone?) via ferry, and then up through Anacortes to catch I-5 north through Bellingham to Vancouver. That's about the fastest route, but you miss Victoria BC on Vancouver Island.

From Vancouver Island, I'd take the ferry over to near Vancouver if possible. From Sidney (near Victoria) you can take a car ferry back to Anacortes (south of Bellingham by about 45 minutes or so), and then catch I-5 north to Vancouver. But its significant backtracking -- and unless you're getting off at Friday Harbor or Orcas or somewhere, you'd probably be better off going to Vancouver. There is no car ferry between Bellingham and Victoria -- there are a couple of companies which do passenger ferries in the summer, but you can't take a car on them.

[PNW Judy]

I meant that from Olympic Peninsula you could take ferries over to the west side of Puget Sound from/to various points and then driving up via Bellingham. Yes, none of these would take you through Vancouver Island. I was in a rush and apologize for not being clear. Thanks for the catch, Larrison.

Ben, if you do take a ferry from Vancouver Island to Vancouver BC, I encourage you to take the one that lands at Horseshoe Bay. It's gorgeous there and puts you on the road to Whistler...the Sea to Sky Highway. It's worth doing.

And the best way to take a car ferry to Vancouver Island is the one from Port Angeles. But if you decide to skip Vancouver Island, the many choices I listed are all interesting but I would probably take any of the ones that land north of Seattle since you'll be ending your trip in Seattle.

Sorry if I confused things in my original post.