Tripometer – 6845 mi
Gas Gauge – 538.989 gal
Location – Fort Camping, Fort Langley, BC, Canada
Lodging – $30 CAD
Cans of OFF – 4
Apparently we forgot to put the trash away last night before going to bed. This morning it was strewn wide across the campsite. Bear or racoon… someone had a nice meal.
Today we put 424mi on the odometer. This was by far our biggest drive day to date. This was done on purpose. We needed to drive through a cellular dead zone in mid British Columbia before Kelly goes back to work on Tuesday morning.
A fair bit of today’s drive was on the Coquihalla Highway between Kamloops and Hope, British Columbia. This section of highway is known for its extreme winter weather and steep grades. We happened to be going down the mountain on this trip. Our trailer is at the upper limit of the tow capacity for our truck. Going down a very steep grade for extended periods of time is pretty tough on the brakes and can honestly be quite scary, even in 1st gear from a dead stop. What a ride. We found the snow sheds along the highway to be very reminiscent of the same structures we found in the Austrian Alps. The snow sheds are like man made tunnels for the highway to pass through that keep avalanches and rock slides off of the road surface and prevent closure.
The Coquihalla was made somewhat famous by a television program on the Weather Channel called “Highway thru Hell”. The star of the show is a small towing company out of Hope, B.C. run by a Mr. Jamie Davis. Here’s why it matters… Kelly needs some kind of background noise to fall asleep to at night. She’s a huge weather watcher and historically has fallen asleep to the weather channel most evenings at home. Now, when Paul comes to bed a couple of hours later, long after Kelly has nodded off, the weather channel has switched to their reality show programming rather than the weather reports. Highway thru Hell is one of the most replayed programs on at that time of night. We simply had to drive by the Jamie Davis towing company as we drove through Hope. Sadly, they’re a smart group and haven’t put the main location for their business on Google Maps. We ended up taking a picture of their old lot (which still had a business sign), that’ll have to do.
We hit 70 F weather today! That has gone a long way to improve spirits. We rolled down the windows and basked in the warmth and sun. It’s been too long.
We pulled into a cute little campground in Fort Langley, B.C. late tonight. We positioned ourselves to be able to be able to easily tour Vancouver over the next couple of evenings. The name of the campground is “Fort Camping”. We both got a giggle over that.
Special Note: Ranger is adapting quite well to our travelling. In some cases we think he’s actually enjoying it. One of those cases is arriving in a new location. As soon as the car stops and he gets out on a leash, every bush needs to be olfactorily examined and most are judged as needing to be marked. He literally runs from bush-to-post-to-tree lifting his leg on everything. What we’ve been getting the biggest kick out of is that when he runs out of pee he is not dissuaded from marking. He simply lifts his leg and waives his junk at the object and moves on. Towards the end of the first walk in a new place he doesn’t even go through the motions of trying to pee on said object, he lifts his leg and runs on in far too little time to actually urinate on anything. Apparently it’s the thought that counts.