Travel Update 1

Well we're finally on the road. We left Seattle at about 6:30pm on Monday, August 12th. Our goal was to get to a pullout on Chuckanut drive that we’d stayed at in the Prius before near Bellingham for the night. We decided that we’ve seen enough of I-5, so we took some smaller roads. We went up Highway 9 to Marysville, then over to Marine Drive on the other side of the interstate and eventually up Chuckanut Drive. It took a little longer than we wanted, but we did eventually get to our pullout near milepost 12.

In the morning we went to Discount Tire and had the our tire pressure checked on all of our wheels. We ended up working on the website a bit until about 11 at Wood’s coffee while downloading a bunch of maps on Google maps for B.C., the Yukon Territories, and Alaska. We stayed til 11 so we could get brunch at Boomer’s drive in, one of Andreas’s favorite places to go in college. 

We finally hit the road, making a few more stops for propane, pet food, and a water flush for our tank. This got us to the Sumas border at around 1:30pm. We’re mostly driving as directly to Alaska as we can with only the occasional detours. Our fastest route takes us up Trans-Canada Highway 1, then highway 97 to Prince George before going West on 16, North on 36 into Yukon Territory and all the way into Alaska on highway 1. 

As we were trying to find a place to stay for the night, we decided to turn right at a sign for Green Lake. When we got there and got out of the RV by a stop near the lake, what we heard getting out is what we imagine deafening silence sounds like. There was nobody around. When we turned off the RV and stepped out there was such a quiet that our ears hurt. Maybe it had a little to do with the loud vehicle we’d been driving, but there were no sounds at all. No cars, no birds, no crickets, no moving water.

We went to check out the camp ground, but after seeing it was $18 (Canadian), we decided to try and find some place free, even though it was already after 8. Partially because we're cheap, and partially because we forgot to get any Canadian cash. We drove another 50 minutes or so to 150 Mile House, BC, before stopping at a pullout about ~1km off the road that we found on freecampsites.net. We did get AllStays Pro as a wedding present, but using it on cellular data is a bit tricky, as it takes a long time to load. We planned ahead a little more for tonight and foubnd an amazing place on AllStays while connected to WiFi.

Today was a mostly driving day. We woke up early at about 7:30 and drove about an hour before stopping for breakfast at a rest stop by McLeese Lake. 

We drove almost straight through to Houston, making only a few stops for gas, some snacks, and to duct tape down our front vent cover. Turns out it has slowly been losing the nuts on its bolts, and a car that drove past us made us aware of something being not quite right on our roof.

In Houston, we took some time to take a break and look up some things while we were on the free WiFi provided by the town’s visitor center. One of the things we did was look up where to spend the night. This time AllStays was quite handy in finding us a free campsite about an hour up the road, just outside of Smithers, called Twin Falls Recreational area. As we pulled in to settle for the night, we were lucky to find one spot still available. It is absolutely gorgeous, and relatively quiet with only four spots. We are slowly posting photos to Instagram as well, so if you want more pics check there. There’s a nice hike here that we might try to get around to doing in the morning, but for now, it’s bed time.