Seattle Day trip to Victoria
 

We will be in Seattle for 4 days October 20 to 24 and I think we might want to do a day trip to Victoria. What's the best, most reasonably priced way to get there? I had originally thought to do a day trip to Vancouver but I've pretty well ruled that out as taking too long. Am I right? Any other suggestions for day trips or would we be better off just staying in Seattle the whole time? Thanks for your guidance. My guidebook has been less than helpful on the distance/transport options thing and my search here seemed to turn up conflicting info.

Have you considered a day-trip to Victoria on the Victoria Clipper?

http://www.victoriaclipper.com/seattle-victoria_daytrip

The Victoria Clipper is the only way to reasonably day trip. The crossing takes almost three hours, plus the time you spend getting to the dock and checking in, which is about the same amount of time it takes to drive to Vancouver. So, a day trip to either takes about the same amount of time.

I think going to one or the other is a good idea, since late October isn't so good for the outdoor activities (ie visiting national parks) a lot of people might otherwise do based in Seattle.

Beg to differ - www.kenmoreair.com - fast, beautiful, no bumpy ocean.

Kenmore Air is more expensive than the Clipper, though, and the Clipper is pretty expensive, at that. Still, it you want to make it a day trip, it's the fastest way to go. Going on the Clipper is fun and hardly drudgery, but I think you'd want to spend the night in Victoria, if you did this. Ditto for the drive to Vancouver, which is a world class destination.

In Seattle, you can go to a performance for the Earshot Jazz Festival; more info at this website: http://seattle.about.com/gi/dynamic/...earshot.org%2F

Hmm. A day trip. Port Townsend would be a fun day trip and you would take the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island to get there.

Langley would be an even easier day trip, and you'd take a ferry there, too. It's an artsy town. You could drive around Whidbey Island and visit the forests and beaches there.

You could drive to Snoqualmie Pass to see the mountains. There's not much up there but scenic beauty, but you could visit Snoqualmie Falls on the way. (And stop at the outlet mall in North Bend if you want a bargain.)

Just some ideas. Not like Victoria, though.

We drove to Port Angeles, on the Olympic Peninsula, directly south of Victoria. From there we could take a people-only ferry that gets you to Victoria in about an hour (cheaper than the car ferry too). That gave us plenty of time in Victoria to go to Buchart Gardens (no point in going to Victoria if you don't go there!). Walk from the ferry to the visitors' center near the docks and someone will give you several options of how to get to Buchart Gardens. We took a regular city bus--cheap.

We spent two nights in Port Angeles, the day between in Victoria, got up the next morning and visited Olympic National Park (lots of snow up there for July!) and then continued on around the Olympic Peninsula toward Oregon. So this plan doesn't work out very well if your major point is to see Seattle. However, I just wanted to suggest an alternative travel possibility.

Thanks for all the helpful replies. I'll take this with me and we can decide when we're there how well we like Seattle itself or how much time w'ere willing to spend tripping out of it. Very useful stuff. Appreciate it.

Oh, geez..I'd totally forgotten about Kenmore Air. A very scenic option.