Twin Falls

We decided to deviate slightly from our plan and spend a whole day at the Twin Falls campsite. It was beautiful and it was a good to remind ourselves that even though we want to get to Alaska so that we can see as much as possible before the weather starts to turn and we need to head back south, we should still enjoy BC a bit on the way up too. 

There was one major trail out of the camp site called the Glacier Gulch trail. There were lots of signs at the bottom about it being steep and difficult and there being an avalanche hazard. Luckily there was no snow to avalanche at this time of year, but boy were they serious about the steep and difficult part. 

The hike started out with some steep switchbacks through the forest. There were places were the trail was washed out, and despite signs about the fact that the trail wasn’t maintained there were ropes drilled into the side of the wall to help you cross. 

Fairly quickly the forest gave way to a rock field which is where the hiking got really hard. It was hard to get footing and at times it was difficult to locate the trail markers to identify where to go next. We thought Aiden would have a hard time with that but she was a champ. We got very close to the stop of the rock field but decided it was time to turn around. One factor was that it was looking a lot like it might start to rain. We are true Pacific Northwesterners (even if Andreas wasn’t born there) and hiking in the rain isn’t normally a problem. However the rock field was treacherous enough when it was dry and we were worried that things might start sliding more. That and there was absolutely no cover on the rock field in case it turned into a real storm. We also had no idea how close we were to the actual glacier we were trying to go see. However turning around wasn’t the end of the world, even the view from the rock field was absolutely amazing. We were also woefully underprepared for this hike, between the elevation and the fact that we haven’t been doing a lot of hiking this summer we were pretty winded. And boy are our legs feeling that hike today. 

 

After heading back down to camp we went to get some water from the stream and tested out our new water filter. Our fresh water tank has been out of commission so we only have two big jugs of fresh drinkable water on us at any time. They can last us about 48 hours when used sparingly but we always need to thinking about how much water we have. Luckily we are working to clean out the fresh water tank as I type this. But yesterday we filled two big buckets of water in the river and carried them back to the camper. We filtered enough water fill our drinking water and then heated up one kettle worth on the stove for a bucket bath. (Turns out bucket baths are more pleasant in Guinea than in Canada. Who knew.) Then the rest of the water was used to do our first load of hand washing. It was a small batch of laundry but since we had the water we figured it was probably a good idea. 

Kathleen forgot to factor in the fact that Canada is not as hot and dry as Guinea again when doing laundry and it had a hard time drying. Next time we do laundry we will need to start earlier in the day and make sure we have a sunny camp site. We make our first camp fire of the trip though and cooked dinner on it as well as moving the drying rack closer to make use of the heat. All of our clothes smell very strongly of camp fire but there are worse things. At the end of the night we came up with a great new method of clothes drying. We put our baking sheet on the fire and put clothes on for a little bit to heat them up and get them steaming. We didn’t use that method to finish any of them off, but we did get them significantly drier. Today we are driving with the laundry rack bungeed into the bathroom area… so maybe next time we’ll make sure we’re at a site we’ll stay for a little bit. 

Yesterday was also our first “Deutscher Donnerstag” in which we set out to only speak German for the day. We knew the first on was going to be rough because Kathleen’s German is still pretty bad. We didn’t stick to it all day because it was hard to when things really needed to be said, but we got a few hours in and it was a good start.  

At the moment we’re at the visitor center in New Hazelton where they have a free dump site. We bought a water flush in Bellingham before heading north so we’re running that through the tank to hopefully make the water drinkable again. We also ordered a water “refresher” off Amazon before leaving. Over time that additive got the water from “I don’t want to run that in the RV because the smell is so bad” to “Yeah, I’ll use it for dishes.” We have high hopes that this stronger one will do the trick and we’ll be able to actually drink the water that comes out of the sink. 

Our water flow is very, very slow so we’re working on the flush while also sitting at a picnic table working on the blog and letting some of the wetter clothes dry. We also keep letting people go in front of us because we feel bad about how long this cycling process takes us. We may not be making a lot of progress north again today but we’re doing things that need to be done and the whole point of this trip is to not be in a rush. 

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.

Getting Ready

We’ve had a year to think about this trip in the background while we’ve finished up school and jobs as well as plan our wedding. Those things have taken so much of our time that there isn’t much in the way of a plan yet. Although part of our plan is not have too much of a plan. 

The RV needed a few repairs: we removed the A.C. off the roof because we were worried that the roof can’t support it (maybe we’ll write another post about that), we replaced the fresh water tank, an air hose and some belts in the engine. We purchased new freshwater and blackwater hoses and a 2.5 gallon gas can. We also put a few things for the RV on our wedding registry, including collapsible food storage, organizers, camping chairs, a hammock, a road atlas, bungees, a water filter and more. The last thing we did before loading up was to have a new radio and speakers installed so that we had a sound system and radio that worked. Of course, we want some tunes and podcasts for the trip, but also having a working radio for road information seemed useful. It was really a quality of life as well as a safety investments. 

We’d been working on doing all of those preparations as well as getting ready to move out of our apartment for most of the summer, however wedding planning was also taking a lot of our time. We had a week between the wedding and when we needed to move out of the apartment and it was a bit of a whirlwind. Kathleen’s parents have kindly given us space in a very large closet to store some of our possessions, especially some of our wedding gifts that were very much not intended for RV life. All summer we were making piles for wedding, Eugene, RV, Craigslist and Goodwill. It was much harder than we thought. There were a lot of things that it seemed silly to drive 5 hours and store but it also seemed silly to buy them again when we got back. Somehow we eventually got it done. We’ll see when we get back if we made the right choices… 

After moving out of the apartment Andreas’s mom let us stay with her for a few nights so that we could pack up the RV. We used the RV to haul a lot of stuff as we moved out and had been stashing RV pile things through out the RV wherever they fit. We used the entirety of Andreas’s mom’s garage and some of her driveway to completely unpack everything, make some more decisions about things that we wanted to leave behind, and then pack things into logical places back in the RV. If people are interested in how this all fit in, we can do another "RV tour" type blog. Let us know! 

As for our plan: we know we want to go to Alaska first and we want to hit all the national parks. Other than that, our plan is to relax, enjoy ourselves, and see how long we can go.