Travel Update 2

After flushing our water in New Hazelton on Friday, we eventually got back on our way. We drove until it got late and we eventually settled at a pullout on Eddontenajon Lake, just south of Iskut, BC. It was a gorgeous still lake. We met a couple there from Belgium who had been traveling for eight months, through Mexico, Guatemala, and now Canada. It was a really peaceful place to stay for the night.

We drove 317 miles that day.


On Saturday we stopped for breakfast at a Cafe in Iskut, but the cafe wasn't actually open. Just the convince store which we thought was the cafe. It was confusing. They didn’t know the password for the WiFi that was advertised on the side of the building, which was half of why we stopped but at that point we were committed. We also got a kick out of the fact that the convenience store was playing a country radio station from Spokane, WA over the internet.


As we continued, we were excited to make the transition from Highway 37 to the Alaskan Highway. Unfortunately, about 10 km from the junction, we heard a pop and pulled over. We had blown our first tire! The outside tire on the rear driver side was completely worn down and had split. We decided we could make it to the junction on the bad tire. When we got there we ended up just give GoodSam roadside a call. We had a jack and a spare but we didn't really trust our jack and weren't sure about how to jack up the back of the RV. They found someone in Watson Lake, YT for us to come out and put on our spare, which was nice because shortly after we got there it started raining. We got our tire changed out and followed the guy into Watson Lake for a new spare. On the drive to Watson Lake, the rain started turning to snow and we were thankful for the luck involved in where we blew the tire. Any further out and we may have needed to hitchhike our way to the closest payphone. We spent some time putzing around Watson Lake, which was a cute little town with one main street, trying to figure out why the tire blew and wondering about whether we’re causing uneven tire wear because of our load, or if we needed another tire to replace the one next to the one that blew out. Those two are the oldest tires we have from the receipts we received from Darlegne when we bought the vehicle. We decided to drive a little further to Moreley Lake, BC — the road dips back into BC for a bit going west. There we had to share a camp spot with a couple in a van who also had a dog that Aiden didn’t really get along with, so we did not get much of a chance to talk with them. We tallied 363 miles, including a 21 km detour each way to Watson Lake.


On Sunday, we set out to make Whitehorse, which we did pretty easily. Whitehorse is the capital of Yukon, with a population of about 25,000 people. It’s pretty clearly run on tourism and the RV parks have a pretty heavy influence on the politics there. Everywhere in town had a no camping or overnight parking sign. Even the Walmart enforced this no camping policy. The town itself was quite cute though. It’s right along the Yukon River and had a cute downtown area that reminded us a lot of Bend, OR. We ate at a bar called the Dirty Northern and were happy for some meaty burgers after a week of pasta or beans and rice. If it weren’t for the blistery winds, we may have payed up for a campground too, but we decided to push on. We bought a new jack in town and we wanted to replace the other tire that was getting low on tread the people in Watson Lake thought we would be fine until Fairbanks and all of the tire places were closed since it was Sunday. We settled at a pullout along the Alaskan Highway next to Marshall Creek. The long stop in Whitehorse means we only drive 227 miles.

Monday morning, as we were eating breakfast and getting ready for the day, an older gentleman, John, and his grandson showed up at the creek to try their luck at fishing the creek. Turns out John has a son who lives in Eugene, so we shared a short chat before they decided to try another fishing spot up the creek. He offered us a cup of coffee if we decided to come back that way and stop by their house just around the corner from where we stayed. Hopefully we'll get a chance to take him up on it. We headed out shortly after they did and made it to Haines Junction before our first stop. There we saw signs for the Village Bakery, which seemed like a quaint place to stop and have a bite to eat. We stopped and worked on the blog for a little bit before continuing on to Alaska! It was an adorable shop but unfortunately their internet was really poor.

We made the border in the early evening and got to add a new sticker to the RV map! At the border, we did unfortunately lose 5 oranges that we had bought at a Walmart along the road, but we did get a dog treat from the border guard, so Aiden came out on top on that one.

We drove a little bit further before stopping at the Tetlin National Wildlife Reserve campground for the night. It was another very peaceful and free site that had about 6 sites, a lake and a photography blind. It was a very peaceful night and a lovely morning walking to the blind and just watching the wildlife for about 20 minutes.

On Tuesday we woke up and drove another 277 miles to Fairbanks, which deserves a whole post of its own.

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.