Pre-Trip Nonsense

In what is completely unprecedented behaviour for me, I didn’t finish packing for this trip until the night before I was leaving. That was Thursday night. Did I have a big pile of stuff already set aside? Yes. Had I already acquired all the extra stuff I needed to purchase? Yes. Am I taking my big suitcase so all I needed to do was stuff everything inside? Also yes.

This is not how I usually pack, which is considered and careful and done the weekend before a trip, if not earlier. My excuse for the timing this time is that I didn’t get around to it until Thursday. My excuse for not being as particular with what I’m taking with me is that a) I’m using my big suitcase so I can just take everything; and I’m using that because b) I’m on a cruise so don’t have to carry all my possessions around with me from city city.

Today is Saturday, so a day has been missed but I’m leaving for Vancouver via Duncan –> Departure Bay with my Mum so I spent Friday getting myself to Duncan, napping, and eating roast beef dinner.

Back Story

Mum and I went on a road trip to Campbell River during the first week of July. While there, we found ourselves on an ocean-front patio with sangrias. As we sat, sipping and chatting, and enjoying the light breeze on an otherwise hot evening, a cruise ship was passing. We got to recollecting when we had been on the same route on our way to Alaska almost exactly a year before.

My original plan for travel this year was going to be a month in Thailand. I booked a tour last Black Friday for this November. However as 2023 progressed, I found myself less and less interested in going. Partly this was to do with the price and duration of the flights to get there – it seemed that direct Canada to Thailand flights weren’t starting up yet (or direct-ish) and those on offer were annoyingly long and way more than I wanted to pay. More than that, though, is that I wasn’t getting excited to plan the trip, never mind pack and go. So I was already thinking about changing my destination.

While drinking in Campbell River, Mum reminded me that she was ready to do another cruise anytime, and going anywhere. Just let her know and she’ll be packed. I thought that would be nice, as we had just been remembering what a nice time we had going to Alaska. I was like Hay! I need somewhere to go this year since I’m cancelling Thailand: where else can we cruise from Vancouver? Mum suggested going down the coast: Seattle, Sam Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego. She’s been before, but she’s been to Alaska a few times, too. That sounded good to me: ending up somewhere warm; and I started a mental list of people who have been to Sam Diego to ask what to do there.

This was all hypothesizing over sangria, of course. But when I got home I started searching for fall cruises. My first search was to look at Vancouver to California cruises. Those looked nice and ran around 7 days.

My second search was to see where else we might travel that both started and ended in Vancouver. This was the itinerary for our Alaska trip and we liked that. The one of these I liked best runs Vancouver to Vancouver via Hawaii and is 17 days. Seventeen days sounded a lot better than 7 days. That includes 10 days at sea (there and back) and 5 days around Hawaii. I emailed the link to Mum ” How about this or is it too long?” and managed to twist her rubber arm. And that’s what we’re starting off on today.

Note: the itinerary originally included a day in Lahaina, but now we have two days in Honolulu instead.

Note 2: the very original itinerary also included a stop Victoria instead of Astoria, but that changed before we even booked. That would have been hilarious.