Week 14

 

Monday, July 1, 2002

Today is Canada Day.  There are celebrations all over the country.  Watching TV on Canadian stations, I am seeing the celebrations from Victoria to Newfoundland.  I left the Fort Victoria RV Park this morning and drove up the Trans Canada Highway TC-1 to Nanaimo about 80 miles through the Malahat pass.  I stopped several times to view the fantastic scenery.  I also stopped at an unusual town called Chemainus.  This little town has huge murals painted on the sides of most of the buildings.  There are 33 of these murals along a walking tour and they are really very pretty and interesting.  I had to cut this visit short in order to get to Nanaimo in time for the 12:45 ferry to Tsawwassen, just South of Vancouver.  The two hour ferry ride was as scenic as the drive up the Malahat.  The ferry loaded four lanes at a time with trucks, buses and RVs on the lower deck and cars only on the upper deck.  There were two decks above with lounges and eateries and lots of friendly people.  I arrived at Tsawwassen around 3:00 and drove to within sight of the U.S. Border at Bellingham, Washington.  From there I headed east to the town of Hope, BC in the Frazier valley.  I am staying at the Wild Rose RV Park in Hope.  It is a beautiful place surrounded by the Rocky Mountains and I am looking up at a huge waterfall called Bridal Falls which appears to be falling from 400 feet up in the mountains.  

 

Tuesday, July 2, 2002

Left Hope this morning and drove up the Frazier canyon on Trans-Canada 1.  It was a hilly curvy road but not as bad as some I’d seen in California and Oregon.  I was planning to stop at Hell’s gate to ride the Air Tram across the river and up the mountainside, but I passed it up before realizing it, and it was impractical to turn around and go back, so I just continued on to the town of Cache Creek.  I was planning to spend the night there, but it was early, so I decided to push on to a town called “100 Mile House”.  I thought this was going to be just a crossroads with maybe a tavern and gas station, but I was surprised to find that it was a pretty good size town.  I continued on to another town called Lac La Hache, where I spent the night at the KOA campground.  I didn’t really do anything today, but I enjoyed the drive through absolutely gorgeous mountain scenery.

 

Wednesday, July 3, 2002

I left the KOA this morning with an empty tank of gas.  I stopped at a Race Trac station in Lac La Hache and filled up with my first tank of Canadian gas.  233 liters @71.9 cents per liter for a total of $168.00.  This translates to 61.7 gallons @2.72 per gallon but when you figure the exchange rate of 1.6 Canadian dollars = 1 US Dollar, the price is $1.70 per gallon or $105.00 US.  Frankly there isn’t much difference.  More gorgeous scenery as I traveled north along Route 97 along side of the Frazier River and later the Thompson River.  I passed through the town of Quesnel, another town with a vibrant economy built on the logging industry.  I pushed on to the City of Prince George.  I stopped at the Bee Lazy Campground about 10 miles South of Prince George.  After registering, I drove on into town.  This city has a population of 75,000 and looks like any similar size town in the U.S.  I went to a shopping mall and a Sears store there, then to an automotive store attempting to buy a new house battery for the Princess.  I’m not really having a major problem but the RV has two house batteries, and one of them will not hold a charge.  It is only a problem if I spend a night with no hook ups, but I’ve only done this a couple of times.  But I thought I should replace the battery before I get too far into the back country.  There was only one kid at the battery store and he said he was not qualified to install a battery in an RV.  I will try again tomorrow.  I then went to the library to use their computer to get on the internet.  I’m afraid their system was not up to date.  They had obsolete browsers and Prodigy would not recognize it.  The campground also has an internet station, so I was able to log on and send Charlie my diary for week 13.

 

Thursday, July 4, 2002

 

This is the first time that I’ve ever spent the 4th of July outside of the U.S.  It feels a little strange.  I watched a little bit of the TV coverage of 4th of July activities in the U.S., then left the campground and went into Prince George.  I went to Canadian Tire, which is a large store that sells virtually everything, not just tires.  It is almost like a Sears without clothing.  I had two new house batteries installed in the princess.  A couple of times when I have spent the night with no hook-ups, I ran out of power during the night, and sometimes during the day I have some troubles with house power, so I had the batteries checked, and they appeared to be bad, so I figured I should replace them before going out into the more desolate areas of this trip.  By the time I got out of Canadian Tire, it was after noon, but I drove the 250 miles to Dawson Creek anyway and arrived around 6 or 7 o’clock.  I made a quick stop for lunch about 50 miles into the trip and then stopped again in the town on Chetwynd, which claims to be the chainsaw sculpture capital of the world.  They had a few neat statues, but they didn’t compare with the town of Hope which had beautiful chainsaw sculpture on every corner.  About half way into this days travel, my map said that I crossed back into the Mountain time zone, however when I arrived at Dawson Creek, I found that I was still in Pacific Time.  It seems that they moved the line at some point.  Two maps that I have show the line at the B.C./Alberta border and two other maps show it about 100 miles West of the border.  After checking into “Tubby’s” RV Park, I drove into the town of Dawson Creek (population 11,000).  I found the zero milepost of the Alaska Highway, and had someone take a picture of me there.  I then ate at a nice restaurant called the Alaska Café.  It was a very enjoyable evening, with lots of Alaskan ambience.  When I returned to the campground, I found that the park across the street was having an American 4th of July celebration complete with some pretty good fireworks.  There are two Alaska caravans parked here.  About 30 RVs belong to Adventure Caravans and another 20 belong with Woodall’s caravans.  These 50 RVs will be traveling to Alaska about the same time as me.  I hope that they don’t take all the campsites.

 

Friday, July 5, 2002

I slept in late this morning.  This is not a travel day.  The campground here advertises that they have a shop for oil change and lube.  When I asked about it, they said that they no longer do that, but referred me to another place down the street.  I went there; they took me right away; they finished the job very quickly and charged me only $57.00 CDN which is $35.00 U.S. Then I went to the Dawson’s Creek Visitor’s Center and art gallery.  I then took a driving tour around the town followed by a trip to the Safeway for groceries, then filled up with gas and returned to the campground.  I chatted with some of my neighbors for a while.  There is a third caravan checked in here. It is the Airstream travel club.  They are embarking on a trip to Alaska too.  They told me that they had one cancellation because someone’s rig had burned up in Seattle.  They invited me to join them for only $2,000.  It was tempting, but they are not leaving here until July 11 and they will not be finished their tour until after August 20 and that’s after I have my ferry reservations from Haines.  So I passed up on the idea.  After this little conversation, I went across the street to the Walter Wright Pioneer Village.  This is a small re-creation of a village.  They have taken 14 historic buildings from the Dawson Creek area and moved them all to this one place.  There were several homesteads, church, school and stores as well as a café.  I had dinner at the café, then returned to the campground, went on the internet for a few minutes and called it a night.  Tomorrow morning I start up the Alaska Highway.

 

Saturday, July 6, 2002

I slept in a little late this morning.  By the time I left Tubby’s RV Park, most of the Adventure Tour Caravan had left.  The park was kind of empty.  The Alaska Highway is a better road than I had expected.  It is pretty much like any other two lane road in the lower 48.  Because of my late start, there were very few other vehicles on the road.  What vehicles I did see were almost always RVs.  The automobile is definitely a minority up here unless it is towed on the back of an RV.  The road started out fairly flat, but as the miles clicked away it started getting more and more hilly.  I am entering the Northern extent of the Rocky Mountains.  One place I came to was called Suicide Hill.  It was a long, very steep, curvy hill.  As I got near the bottom, I saw that an RV had lost his tow vehicle and it had rolled over and completely totaled.  The RV was nowhere around, but the car was sitting on the side of the road still connected to its tow dolly.  I didn’t see it happen and there was no one around when I got there.  Later, I saw one deer and one bear cross the road.  I am hoping to see more wildlife as I get further up.  I spent the night at the Westend Campground in the small town of Fort Nelson (population 4400).  Many of the people that I have met along the way were staying there and someone said that the person who lost the tow vehicle was also staying there, but I never did confirm this.  The Fort Nelson Museum was next door to the campground, but it closed a half hour after I arrived, so I didn’t get a chance to see it.  The manager of the campground was a trapper and had his own museum in the living room of his house.  He invited everyone to come in and take a look at his stuffed animals: Wolves, Foxes, Bear, Cougar, Eagles, Wolverine, Stone Sheep, Caribou head.  At 11:00 at night, the sky was still bright.  I had to force myself to go to bed.

 

Sunday, July 7, 2002 

I slept in a little late again this morning, even though the sun rises around 3:30 AM.  Some time ago I bought three aluminum sun visors that fit into my three bedroom windows.  They do a great job of keeping the morning sun out.  My plan today was to drive to Muncho Lake.  It is only about 130 miles, but it is mountainous driving and I figured I would spend some time at this very scenic lake.  I saw another bear today and dozens of stone sheep and 3 or 4 caribou.  The manager of the campground in Fort Nelson suggested that I take the scenic boat ride on the lake.  I stopped at the Northern Rockies Lodge and campground.  I was assigned a fantastic site right at the edge of the lake.  I washed the thousands of bugs off of the princess, and then took the 5:30 boat tour around the lake.  It was a small boat, but it was a nice relaxing little cruise.  When I returned from the cruise, I walked over to the lodge and had a great Weiner Schnitzel dinner.  The lodge is a beautiful place as is all of this Muncho Lake area.  See their web site at www.northern-rockies-lodge.com