please help me with my itinerary
 

Hi, we plan on spending 10 days in the vancouver/seattle area in the end of aug./ begining of Sept.We are flying into seattle, and thought that we'd drive to Vancouver 1st for a few days, go to whistler for a couple of days ,then go to victoria for 2 days, and then 3 days in seattle. I'm not sure if this is a good way to do it. Also, does anyone have any suggestions on where to stay, and things to do in all places?

We stayed three nights in Vancouver (which we flew into) and we were in a Marriott Renaissance that was right on the bay across from Stanley Park. We took a day trip to Whistler but it would be nice to spend a night or two there and you could experience more.
Here are some things we did
Vancouver- Trolly tour of the whole city which took all day if you wanted too. You picked it up at the area where all the cruise ships take off. (We also could see every ship leave from our room at the Marriott as well as the plane tours that take off and land in the water). You can get off of the Trolley at various stops and explore the area as you like. I believe it also went to the huge open air Market area (can't remember the name but you will know it by the description). That was a fun place to find lunch and look at all of the fruits, vegetables, food court, wines, etc. We bought a bottle of ice wine for our daughter and her husband who had it when they went there.
Go to Stanley Park, it is huge and there are lots of gardens, trails etc.
Whistler: We went to a neat waterfall trail on the way there that took about 30-40 minutes total to walk to. It was right off the road to Whistler. In Whistler, we went took the gondola to the top of the mountain, shopped and had lunch. The ski village is very nice, beautiful with the European feel. The gondola ride was great!
Victoria- We toured the big Parliament building and the Empress hotel that are both lit up at night. We also took a whalewatching boat ride and we did see some!
Victoria is wonderful to just walk around, shop, lots of little street vendors and street performers. We stayed at the Laurel Point Inn which is right on the water and is very nice. They had a great breakfast buffet every morning and you could walk to everything.
Don't miss Butchart Gardens in Victoria.

Here is another idea but you should do some research. We took the ferry that I think is south of Vancouver over to Victoria and then we drove north on the from Victoria and across the island to the Pacific Rim near Tofino. that is actually where we took the whale watching trip. It is pretty remote but beautiful with nice beaches right on the Pacific. We stayed at a very nice lodge right on the water run by college kids. They made breakfast and dinner every night so you could eat those meals right there. We met lots of nice people. They had a big deck you could sit on outside on the water, trails to the beach and a very nice indoor living area in the lobby to sit and read a book. The rooms were quaint but nice with balconys. Wish I could remember the name!
It is a long drive over there from Victoria, I think about four -six hours but when we came back we were able to take a ferry back to the Vancouver area that actually was north of Vancouver. So you could easily continue from the ferry station north of Vancouver to Whistler. Even if you don't do the Tofino part, you could still take the ferry farther north of Victoria and you would be within easy access to Whistler instead of going directly from the city of Vancouver. Traffic over the bridge to and from Vancouver could get backed up at times.

Do some research and planning and this might work pretty well. If you plan carefully, you will be able to avoid backtracking depending on the order of how you do each area and which ferries you take.
Good luck.

Thanks for the great advice. I'm going to do some research. If you think of anything else, please let me know.

If you're going to Victoria straight from Whistler you should consider taking the ferry at Horseshoe Bay over to Naniamo and driving down the Island. That will save you the drive all the way through metro Vancouver to the Tawwassen ferry.

sgorces provided the names that I couldn't remember for the two ferries that we took. That was what I was trying to remember in my post!

If I were making this trip I would go Seattle, Olympic National Park, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle.

I would skip Whistler in favor of ONP or I would drive to Whistler as a day trip from Vancouver (stopping at Horseshoe Bay for lunch). The drive to Whistler is beautiful, but, in my view, Whistler is a pretty hectic place.