Posts made in June, 2015
Recuperating
To continue on from the last post describing our hair raising experience on the Duffey Road, yesterday morning we were still quite stressed. You will see that we were partially recovered…We thought we would give our solar panels a try, since we had paid a lot for them and we were “dry camping”, and make our morning coffee in our electric coffee pot. The panel kept switching off and it was very frustrating. We could see that there was actually a draw on the batteries and there shouldn’t have been. Fortunately, we had wifi through my Rogers Netgear so I looked up the specs on the manufacturer’s site, GoPower by Carmanah Technology, but couldn’t find anything that made sense to us in this situation BUT I found a 1-800 number to their tech department! I called and the tech on the line told us to do a number of things to the inverter and then he concluded that it was defective. He fedexed a replacement to Quesnel to Chemo RV for arrival on Wednesday. Needless to say, we made our coffee old school by boiling water on our propane stove. 🙂 We mentally prepared ourselves for the further trek down the mountainside to Lillooet. It was only about 3km to go. Fingers crossed, crawling at a snail’s pace, we began. YES! we made it down without smoking brakes! Little did we know about what was to come ahead. Lillooet is in a valley. What goes down, as I always say to myself when hiking the Kludahk Trail, must go up. Yes, we had to go up and that meant that at some point we would have to go down again! Everything was crossed, fingers, toes, legs, arms and eyes, as we crept up a narrow steep incline with a long dropoff on the outside edge. Ahead of us with a sharp 90 degree blind corner, was a concrete “bridge” structure to go under and then the sharp turn. And we were starting downhill, too. As we were inching our way under, a motorhome comes up around the blind corner. There was just barely enough room for us to make our turn! I am sure they were just as surprised and frightened as we were. We continued on down. We could see where there must have been a landslide or collapse of the road below us, a rough gravel stretch...
Read MoreJune 13th
Smoked the brakes coming down to Langdale Ferry. Ferry workers kindly held 50 feet of space JUST big enough to hold the truck and trailer and not an inch to spare. We called Merlin while in the ferry lineup for advice on brakes and we/he did some research and thought we had the brakes readjusted properly. Off the ferry at Horseshoe Bay and headed merrily up the Sea to Sky Highway. We wound our way along to Pemberton where we bought diesel. Then we started our journey towards the Seton Recreation Area, a free BC Hydro campsite. We headed up, up and up and around switchbacks and then down. Boy, was it down. All was good till we hit the steepest 10km downhill to Lillooet. About 3km down, the brakes started smoking. We pulled over on the edge of a cliff to let the tires cool down. Bravely we set off again. It wasn’t long before the burnt brake smell started again and smoke poured out from the front tires. Fortunately there was a large pullout. We stopped, chucked the tires and sat, letting our fear subside. Before we had left on our trip, we had purchased two different roadside assistance plans so I wrote the details down and Don flagged down a nice young man to take him to the nearest cell reception. Of course the roadside plan is run through the US and they didn’t have a clue what to do or where we were. The young man, Paul, brought Don back up the hill. Our destination for the night was supposed to be Seton Recreational Area and it happened to be a 2 minute trek back down the hill. Should we risk it? It could be the last decision we made. We decided to risk it and had Paul follow us down so he could call 911 and report the accident. Luck was on our side after all. We were able to pull into a campsite and shut down for the night. Santa had to change his suit! Tomorrow the saga...
Read MoreThe Great Escape (well, almost)
I am just getting around to adding this little story about the Great Escape (well, almost). We arrived in Barkerville and set up our rig. Puttins was loose inside. She has never tried to escape but there she was, waiting innocently at the door for us to come inside. As soon as I opened the screen door, she shot out like a flash and raced off under the rig to the other side. I ran around and saw her at the same time she saw me. I called her and she started to come towards me. I slowly went towards her until I was almost within grabbing distance. That’s when she turned and ran again. I threw myself at her and managed to grab her tail with my broken left wrist/hand. Man did that hurt but there is no way I was going to let go. I grabbed her back leg with my good hand and scooped her up, hugging her tightly as she was scratching and trying to get loose. I rushed to the trailer and threw her back inside. Whew! Was that a close one. Now we put her in the bedroom and close the door whenever we go in and out. No point in taking any more...
Read MorePowell River
We had an uneventful trek up island to the Comox Ferry to Powell River and discovered one of the advantages and a couple of disadvantages of traveling a big rig. I had thought we were 45 feet long – truck and trailer – but turns out we are actually 50 feet long! That is a big disadvantage, of course, when it comes to pay. Ouch! When we were waiting to offload a fellow who is involved with Powell River tourism came up and asked us how much we had to pay. He said it is awful hard to promote tourism when people have to pay through the nose just to get there. He actually apologized to us! To add insult to injury, we are going down the Sunshine Coast to head up to Whistler and beyond and that means we will have to pay one more ferry fare. I am, however, looking forward to visiting Gibsons, the home of Molly’s Reach and revisit my childhood memories of watching the Beachcombers every Sunday and wondering what it was to be on the ocean. I’ve got to experience it first hand while living on Vancouver Island for the past 30 years. One advantage of being a “big rig” is that you get to board the ferry with the other big rigs and that means you get on first. The disadvantage of that is you may also be one of the last to unload. That could actually work in our favour, though, because maneuvering a big rig through ferry traffic is not necessarily a pleasant, stressfree experience. We are visiting an old friend who has parked himself in Powell River in the Cranberry Lake area. Nice walk down the hill in the morning and evening with the dog down to the lake. Puttins is settling in too, enjoying the view from the window and watching the traffic pass by. We will stay here a bit longer for a nice visit and then head out. I will be uploading photos as soon as I find a free wifi spot....
Read MoreAlmost gone…
Tomorrow evening there should be something on our SPOT page! We are almost packed. Just my electronics, the dog and cat to go into the rig tomorrow morning. Cleaning house and fridge tonight! And, guess what is coming along with me! Good excuse not to have to do any driving....
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