Author: Paul

Tripometer – 7147

Gas Gauge – 552.910 gal

Location – Money Creek Campground, Skykomish, WA

Lodging – $22

Cans of OFF – 4

Today would have been an excellent day for Paul to get any number of things done, either chores or recreational, but if he wasn’t next to the broken trailer when the call came back from the dealership, nothing would be accomplished. Sadly, the RV dealership didn’t call back today and Paul spent most of the day catching up on some blog posts, bills, phone calls, and cleaning up the trailer. Kelly used the time a fair bit more wisely and got some serious work done.

Temperatures are higher here than what we experienced in Canada but they are far from being warm. Nights are in the 40s and the days are in the low 60s. Still not warm enough! To add insult to injury, it started to rain in the evening. Opting out of preparing dinner in a rainy campsite, we ventured to a recommended local pizza joint for dinner.

Tripometer – 7106

Gas Gauge – 552.910 gal

Location – Money Creek Campground, Skykomish, WA

Lodging – $22

Cans of OFF – 4

After speaking with a young technician at the RV dealership that we purchased the trailer from, Paul was able to gain access to the compartment that houses the broken motor. The cause of the problem seemed to be that the motor separated from the gear box. You can see the greased axle in the picture. That greasy axle should not be visible! By the time Paul gained access to and understood the problem a bit better it was well past the closing time of the RV dealer some 3 time zones away. Messages were left.

Today was a restocking day for the most part. After living in the national park for a week and travelling for most of the next we were low on everything from TP to soda. Ranger was also critically low on exercise and was making that known to everyone. This evening we made sure he was well exhausted from swimming in the river before cooking fajitas on the grill with Chris and Sam.

Special Note: $8.97 for a 12 pack of Coke??!?! Washington’s soda tax is stiff (even for diet).

Tripometer – 7078

Gas Gauge – 552.910 gal

Location – Money Creek Campground, Skykomish, WA

Lodging – $22

Cans of OFF – 4

After Kelly completed some work at the Blue Sky RV Park we moved our rig about 2 hours North to where Paul’s nephew Chris REALLY lives. We were targeting a small campground near Skykomish, WA. Our AT&T cellular coverage map is a little sketchy when it comes to outlying areas, making this campground a gamble largely due to the fact that this is a narrow little valley where you can have 4 bars of signal at one curve of the road and zero coverage on the other side of the hill. Progressing up the valley we were not pleased to see our cell coverage falter and then disappear but about a mile from the campsite the signal blazed up to three full bars at the entrance to the little campground – Jackpot! Some of the sites were strictly first-come, first served, meaning we can stay for as long as we like in the same spot, and we found a nice one right on the river.

While setting up camp the first real break-down of the trip occurred. The electric motor that moves the slide-out in and out of the trailer broke free of the gears after pushing the slide-out about an inch away from the camper body. Our functional living space just got cut by a third until this gets fixed. When installing some electrical work before the trip began, Paul was unable to figure out how to access the area beneath the sofa where the broken motor sits. After spending a half hour or so really digging into how to get at the issue, Paul gave up and called the dealership we purchased the RV from and an RV dealer in Seattle that sells the same line of trailer. Chris joined us at the site shorty after the disaster, so Paul proceeded to  ignore the break-down for the remainder of the evening.

A trip into town for beer & ice led to a visit to the local swill joint for a couple ciders. Located directly across from a very active train line and yard, the Whistling Post in Skykomish also caters to Pacific Crest Trail hikers who come in from the trail head about 5 miles away. While sipping ciders on the side porch of the Whistling Post, the gentleman above graced us with his presence. He was not just strikingly dressed, he was also strikingly drunk! We’re not sure which came first, the drinking or the decision to dress in those two prints.

Special Note: Moving every day sucks. This is the fourth day in a row that we have had to pack up the rig and move to a new location. To make this tedium easier and shave 15 to 30 minutes off of every pack-up, we tend to minimize the number of things we unpack every night. Living partially packed on top of on-the-road is a strain on both lifestyle and attitude. It’s really nice to know that we can stay here for a few days and relax.

Tripometer – 7001

Gas Gauge – 538.989 gal

Location – Blue Sky RV Park, Preston, WA

Lodging – $45

Cans of OFF – 4

We woke up this morning to disaster. Kelly couldn’t get a reliable internet connection on her laptop. We can surf the internet on our phones, but the tethering connection to her laptop was simply unusable. Neither of us had tried to use data tethering since entering this section of Canada and we can only assume the difficulties we were having we related to international arrangements between cellular providers. We have to move and move now. As Kelly went into town to find a wifi connection, Paul packed up the trailer and got ready to move AGAIN.

On the way south towards Seattle we passed a wildfire on the roadside. It’s so dry here that the slightest spark can ignite the dry grasses at the edge of the road.

We drove as quickly as we could toward Chris & Sam Walsh’s home near (what we thought was) Snoqualmie Pass. We were looking to secure a campsite for several days as we visit with Paul’s two nephews that live in the Seattle area. Paul made two rather large errors in planning today. 1) Check to make sure that the RV Park you’re trying to get into has availability before you arrive, and 2) Check with your hosts to make sure they haven’t moved in the past year. Finding a campsite this evening was by far the most difficulty we’ve had finding a place to park this beast yet this trip. At the end of the day we were able to find a campsite for the night at an RV park in Preston, WA – but only by luck and only for one night. Looks like we’ll have to move again tomorrow… Our fourth day of moving in a row.

The RV Park that we landed in this evening was more than a little odd (for us). The RV site we had for the evening had a full hookup but was so small that we couldn’t even extend our awning to its fullest extent without hitting our neighbor. More importantly, we spent the evening staring at the transparent elbow in our neighbor’s sewage pipe. Delightful… The residents in this RV park also deserve a description. Aside from the odd retiree, most of the RV owners got up at 7 or 8 and assumedly headed off to work. Most were men in their 40s or 50s. Kelly and I are going on the working assumption that most of these men are divorcees who separated from their wives and moved out with the RV and the truck. What a weird place to spend the night. (We wish we had taken a picture of this place).

Special Note: Ranger is not the most communicative dog we’ve had. It took him several months at home trying to ‘stare’ us into ‘knowing’ that he needed to go out before he figured out that whining might be a better method of communication. Well on this leg of the trip he figured out that the same whine works to let us know he wants to have his window down so he can stick his head out. We think having his head out the window might be the one and only reason he’s still sane after all of the driving we’ve been doing.

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.

Tripometer – 6421 mi

Gas Gauge – 498.040 gal

Location – Golden Golf Club RV Park, Golden, BC, Canada

Lodging – $30 CAD

Cans of OFF – 4

 

Time to warm up.

We left Jasper this morning with intention of getting through a cellular dead zone in the middle of British Columbia before Kelly was due to work again on Monday morning. The smoke was pretty bad today so the beautiful mountains were sadly not very photogenic. On the other hand, we did have to stop the rig to gawk at a black bear by the side of the road just south of the campground. That was a pleasant surprise.

We had lunch with a raven today. At a nice overlook on our way south along the Icefield Parkway we stopped for lunch from the trailer – a.k.a. “The Food Truck”. We took our chips and sandwiches to a picnic table overlooking a wide river valley. The view was spectacular. Mr. Raven decided we were his best chance at an easy lunch and he was not entirely wrong. This beast of a bird (he stood about 2’ high) pranced around our table ‘Qworking’ at us the entire time we ate. We had no choice but to feed him bits of sandwich bread filled with seeds and nuts. He was quite pleased with himself.

One of the more interesting things we’ve seen on our trip was at a much needed rest stop this afternoon. The map here was to explain the way in which the railroad goes through two spiral tunnels within mountains to take the train up the valley at a lesser grade than had been used in the past. Apparently this stretch of railway was known for its runaways and derailments prior to this change of course. We tried to grab a picture of the tunnel entrances but they were simply too far away and too covered by trees. The entrance and exit from the tunnel were both very close to one another on the mountainside, just at different heights.

The Par 3 golf course RV park that we stayed at several nights ago turned out to be very nice. With this in mind we decided to try our luck at another golf course RV park. When we pulled into our campsite tonight we were greeted by a fairly full campground, full of drunk 30-something golfers. We both got a big kick out of people watching until bedtime and everyone was looking forward to having their own bed to sleep in tonight (well, maybe not Ranger).

Special Note: All Canadian coinage has some iron content and is consequently attracted to magnets. Paul’s magnetic billfold becomes an all purpose bill and coin keeper in Canada!

Tripometer – 6215

Gas Gauge – 491.361 gal

Location – Whistlers Campground, Jasper National Park, AB, Canada

Lodging – $33 CAD

Cans of OFF – 4

We’ve been enjoying Jasper (just not the temperatures) so we decided to book an additional night in Whistlers Campground. This required us to move sites within the campground; however, we don’t have the tent beds out so moving the trailer is just a matter of hooking up the truck and moving the rig. Not too big of a deal. As a side note, this campground has street lights in each camping loop. The lights are relatively low power so they don’t illuminate the whole place or keep us up at night, but it’s still odd. We don’t think we’ve ever seen that in another campground before.

Today we decided to revisit the Athabasca Glacier in hopes that the weather would be better today. On our trip from Jasper back to the Glacier site (about a 1 hour drive) we came upon an elk by the side of the road. Now, we’ve all read stories about tourists getting too close to wildlife in National Parks, but this was by far the most outrageous example of this we’ve ever seen personally. Not only were people getting within about 10’ of the (male) elk to take pictures, the parents were allowing their children to run up and down the shoulder of the road with traffic jockeying to get by stopped tourists in a 50 mph zone. We held our breath the entire time we watched the scene. We left after grabbing the picture above. It was just too stressful to watch for too long.

Arriving back at the glacier we found the weather conditions were similar to two days ago – cold and windy. We were to later learn that the icefield and glacier conspire to keep these weather conditions fairly steady from day to day, but today we were dressed for the weather! The Columbia Icefield, located at the top of the glacier measures at 125 sq mi of ice and 1200 ft deep at its deepest point. The Athabasca Glacier flows three miles down off of the icefield plateau down to the valley floor where the Icefield Parkway runs.

We hiked up and on to the Glacier from the parking lot. At the moment his feet hit the glacier, Ranger seemed to know exactly what this was. One of his favorite treats at home is an ice cube, so naturally as soon as he realized what we were standing on he started to avidly consume said glacier with a voracity that was absolutely comical. Once he had consumed several mouthfuls of glacier he puppy danced around the glacier for at least the next 5 minutes, much to Kelly’s delight.

The smoke started to invade the area again as we drove back towards camp. We enjoyed the ‘Purple Mountain’s Majesty’ immensely as the sun set this evening.

Special Note: We’ve gone too far. We both decided at the start of this trip that we were going to target an average temperature of 70 F. The cold in Banff / Jasper has really been wearing on our spirits. When we packed for this trip we simply did not plan on near freezing temperatures. We are both excited to get down out of this altitude and back to normal September weather (really just warmer weather).

Tripometer – 6070

Gas Gauge – 476.551 gal

Location – Whistlers Campground, Jasper National Park, AB, Canada

Lodging – $33 CAD

Cans of OFF – 4

Between Paul’s coughing, the dog trying to share the one small bed with us, and the 36 degree temps outside, no one got much sleep last night. We’ve grown so accustomed to sleeping in separate beds (or a king bed at home) that sleeping in such close quarters is a no-go. We’re going to set up Paul to sleep in the aisleway of the trailer tonight.

No break in the cold weather today. Temps have been hovering in the mid 50s during the day and dropping into the 30s almost every night since we arrived in the Canadian National Parks. The little furnace in the trailer has been keeping our toes from falling off in the night, but at the same time our trailer isn’t insulated and we don’t want to heat the whole forest so we keep the thermostat at its lowest setting, somewhere in the mid 40s.

Today we took a hike around the Five Lakes trail in Jasper N.P. Aside from the glut of tourists on the trail, it was a beautiful walk through a very different forest than we are used to. We’re still stunned by the clarity of the lakes and streams in the area. You may be able to tell from the image above that you can see straight to the bottom of all five lakes we walked to today. It was astonishing.

We both got a kick out of the ‘Danger: Rutting Season” rubber stamp on the campground map. The Elk rut invariably leads to bad interactions between tourists and the Elk. We just found it funny that they have a rubber stamp for it. What else does someone have a rubber stamp for that we’d find amusing? That’s probably not a healthy thing to contemplate.

We topped off the day with very expensive beers purchased in the town of Jasper. We’re not sure if it’s the tourist location or taxes but we paid $13 CAD for one six-pack of kind of crappy beer. Probably both.

Tripometer – 6040 mi

Gas Gauge – 476.551 gal

Location – Whistlers Campground, Jasper National Park, AB, Canada

Lodging – $33 CAD

Cans of OFF – 4

Banff and Jasper are connected by the ‘Icefields Parkway’. A scenic route that takes you as close to the Columbia Icefields as you can get by car (more on those icefields later). The route follows a series of valleys north to the little town of Jasper. The weather was fairly cloudy and drizzly for most of the way up the parkway and we found ourselves skipping a few destinations knowing that we would return when the weather was a bit nicer. The most striking aspect of this drive is the severity of the mountains themselves. We have been told all of our lives about continental shelf collision, about the overlapping and upward thrust of continental plates and how this forms mountain ranges. This park demonstrates that with the shape of the mountains in a way that we thought very impressive. The mountains themselves retain the shape of fragmented sea beds so well that they look like jagged knife blades thrust into the air.

TODAY WE SAW MOUNTAIN GOATS! Being stark white against a mountainside of greyish brown, these guys were fairly easy to spot with the naked eye and then zoom in on with binoculars. Their more well disguised cousins, the Big Horn Sheep, still elude us.

The Athabasca Glacier and Canadian Glacier Discovery Center were high on our list of things to see on this leg of the trip and we even stopped at the glacier to make the ½ mile walk out to the observation area. We bundled up in all of our cold weather gear, leashed up the dog and headed out. I think we made it about 50 feet before we decided this too would wait. The temperature gauge on the truck said it was a balmy 36 degrees and the wind was blowing a mean 25-35 MPH, making the idea of walking up to the glacier somewhat less than appealing. Honestly, since we entered Kootenay National Park we find that we have exhausted the limits of our cold weather gear. We flat out didn’t pack much for this kind of weather.

We did take a walk down to Athabasca falls. A quick google search will show you pictures of the somewhat unimpressive falls themselves; however, the canyon area on the down stream side of the falls was spectacular. Paul says he can’t remember a more beautiful sight in all his years. The foliage on the sides of the complex canyon walls were amazingly lush for the area and in such a state of continual new growth that the canyon walls looked staged or planted. The picture above does not do it justice.

We arrived at Whistlers Campground in Jasper National park (we have two nights reservation) in the early evening. All of the Canadian parks we have stayed in to date have very restrictive times for generator usage. Most of the sites we’ve stayed at do not have electrical hookups and consequently we are relying on our generator to keep the batteries topped up. All of the Canadian parks we’ve stayed at the past few days have restricted generator usage to 8-9:30am and 5-7pm. We missed the window today and broke the rules to top off our power. Will have to do better tomorrow.

Due to dire warnings about grizzly bears, tonight will be the first night we try sleeping together on the dinette bed with the tent ends of the trailer closed…

Tripometer – 5880 mi

Gas Gauge – 463.001 gal

Location – Lake Louise Campground, Banff National Park, AB, Canada

Lodging – $33 CAD

Cans of OFF – 4

Kelly & Paul’s 20th Anniversary

Again with the 8 o’clock noise ordinances. This morning right at 8am a helicopter buzzed the campground to ensure everyone was awake. We had planned to grab breakfast at a local hikers hostel just down the street from the campground. As Kelly prepped to go to the restaurant Paul had a Disney Princess moment while finishing his coffee and reading his phone at the picnic table. A small bird perhaps the size of a wren landed on Paul’s shoulder ever so briefly before realizing he was actually alive and flew off in a flurry of feathers. Trail magic can sometimes happen in camp!

The hostel restaurant turned out to be a highlight of Lake Louise. We were pleasantly surprised with our best and least expensive hot breakfast in weeks. We asked the two local police officers at the table next to us at breakfast to recommend some restaurants in Lake Louise to celebrate our anniversary. They were pleased to help. We made dinner reservations at the Station Restaurant for that evening.

After breakfast we visited Lake Louise itself. Talk about crowded. Lake Louise is the crown jewel in Banff’s crown. It has a historic hotel on the shores of the lake that costs close to a thousand dollars a night to stay. It’s a beautiful old place, but lends an unpleasant air of exclusivity and pretentiousness to an otherwise completely pristine location. We sat on a bench and admired the view for quite a while as we watched what we assume to be the same helicopter that woke us up this morning ferrying some kind of cargo to a destination way back in the mountains at the back of the lake. The throngs of tourists on the little path around the lake encouraged us to find somewhere else to walk the dog today.

In the afternoon we walked the river trail from our campground down into the little town of Lake Louise to visit a little book store in town and, more importantly to take a little of Ranger’s edge off before we leave him in the car for dinner. The color of the water in most rivers and lakes in the park is the beautiful greenish blue color that you can see in both pictures above. From many placards by roadside and trailside we know this to be the result of rock flour, very fine grain rock powder created when glaciers slowly erode the rocks that they pass across.

Dinner was lovely. The Station Restaurant was built by the Canadian Pacific rail company in 1909 as the rail station for Lake Louise and is still in use today but only for fancy passenger trains on touring trips through the national parks. They have two restored 19th century railway dining cars in the back of the restaurant for special events – we thought that was especially creative.