OurTravels

This campground was Larry and Sue’s go-to overnight between Dawson Creek and Ft. Nelson.  Last time we had stayed at Charlie Lake Provincial Park as we hadn’t stayed in Dawson Creek.   We had stopped in Ft. St. John to get Dusty into the vet to get some medicine to fix his loose bowels from the night before.  None of the home remedies had worked this time.  He will turn 16 years old in Alaska this summer.

We got to Pink Mountain a couple hours after our traveling companions and when we pulled in, there were no signs indicating where to park the rig to register.   I pulled over toward the front of the store and the worker bee came out saying we couldn’t park there.  He pointed where we should park, and I suggested they put up a sign to indicate that… He laughed.   With that I knew this was going to be a fiasco.  And I was correct.

As we drove in to find our pull-thru site, we encountered freshly created washboard roads.   It seems they just graded the roads with a bulldozer and it was a tracked one so it created washboard as it graded the road.  (that is probably why you never see a tracked dozer grading roads.)

We made it to our site and hooked up the electric and started to deploy when I noticed we were inverting and not on shore power.   When I looked at my Power Watchdog EPO Surge Protector, I saw it was blocking the 94 volt power they were trying to supply to us.  Yikes, that is lower than I have ever seen, Anywhere.   I immediately called the office and told them what I found.  The same guy said they only have 30 amp power.  I explained that doesn’t matter, all the different  amperage’s outlets should have 120 volts.   Then he said they were working on the generator.  Oh Boy.   By about 7pm the power was up to 115 volts, which is good enough.

But of course it didn’t stay that way.  All night it was dropping below 100 volts if you tried to pull just 10 amps from that 30 amp supply.  I finally just pulled the plug and used our batteries to run anything that draws any power like the coffee pot, microwave or toaster.

That place was a bad joke.  Never again…

I have never been happier to leave a campground than I was that morning.

We drove to the Mile 0 Campground and checked in.   Another dirt campsite with only 30 amp service.  We drove over to the main sign to take some pictures and check out the gallery and gift store.  We got the picture part, but the gallery was closed Sunday and Monday.  Oh well, they missed out on some cash,  but I was happy 🙂

That evening we headed out to a local tap room for some burgers, and on the way Kathy had to take pictures of the real Mile 0 signpost, which is not the big sign near the circle and art gallery.  The tap room was called the Post & Row.  We got to try fries with brown gravy.  It was better than poutine in my opinion.

On the way back we stopped by the museum on the campground property as we saw what looked to be a car show going on.  It was an interesting museum and we got to talk to the locals from the car show.  Turns out this was just their dinner show and their big one is in July and takes up most of the town instead of the museum.   They were talking about 500 cars on display.

The next day we decided to drive to Chetwynd where they have a chainsaw carving competition.   It was about an hour’s drive west of Dawson and we found probably over a hundred carvings to look at.  They lined the roads for miles.  Based on the markings, folks come from all over the world to compete and make their carvings.   It was pretty cool, as in windy and cool.  The carvings were pretty incredible things to see.

We were very happy to leave Whitecourt Lions Campground with all the highway noise..  The roads so far have been pretty smooth till the last leg from Valley View to Grand Prairie.  Lots of unmarked frost heaves.  It was a bumpy road.

We headed south of town to Camp Tamarack.  It was a nice campground.   We took an extra day here to stock up on groceries, and on the day we left, we went to Costco for the best price on fuel so far on the trip, $3.50 per gallon.

We stopped at a Lions campground here for one night on the way to Grand Prairie.  We pulled into our spot and when I got out, I was bombarded by the sound of trucks without mufflers going uphill on the highway that was maybe 50 yards from our site.   Oh My, was that loud.   And it continued for hours and hours.  And actually the pickup trucks were the loudest.  One of the worst campsites that I can remember.  We sat outside at our picnic table and played some Yahtzee and were serenaded by the highway.   We were very glad to leave this noisy place early the next morning.

We drove for hours from Calgary to Diamond Grove RV outside of Edmonton in Thick Smoke.  I run the air purifier the whole time with it right up front with us and plugged into the 120v outlet at the bottom of the dash by the steps.   When we arrived at the campground the smoke was dissipating and by the next morning was gone.

We had been jones’n of pizza for at least a week and we decided to hit a Boston Pizza again.  We had been to one in Prince George the last time we were traveling thru Canada.  It didn’t disappoint.

The following morning we drove over to Stony Plain and looked for the Murals we read about,  there were a lot to see and took a few pics of the ones Kathy liked.

Then we headed over to find the Stony Plain & Parkland Pioneer Museum and spent a couple hours wandering around with a guide.  It was interesting.  On the way back from the Museum we stopped at a Grain Elevator museum but we ended up leaving without going in.   After that we all agreed to find ice cream, I found a place on google that had pretty good ratings.   We drove over and it turned out to be a trailer in the parking lot of a strip mall.   And true to their reviews the ice cream was delicious.

We were at the campground a few days and it turns out or campsites were unfortunately right across from the playground.  The issue was that from about 9am till around 8 pm there were Screaming Kids there and lots of them.  It was amazing how loud they could be and it seemed to never stop.  I don’t know how they could scream so much, I was amazed how long they could scream, I would have thought they would have been horse after just a short while.  If I was their parents, I would have sent them away too.  We were happy to leave that campsite and head for Whitecort… till we got there.  We will let you know what happened there on the next post.

We arrived at Waterton Lakes campground to 72+ degrees, blue skies and a light breeze.   Heavenly!  This next picture is the view to the hotel from our campsite.   The next afternoon you could barely see it.

Took a walk over to the Red Chairs — it’s a Canada   thing — and sat down to look at the beautiful view.  It was nothing less than spectacular!  I could have sat there all day.

The following afternoon the smoke arrived and depending on the wind, it made seeing the mountains a blur!    Larry & Sue arrived a little after 5 pm the day after we arrived, leaving Billings, MT, around 7:30 in the morning.  That’s a really LONG drive!   He mentioned that was the longest he’d ever driven any of his RV’s, and would not do that again if possible.   They started full-timing in the early 2000’s.

That evening we all were very hungry and Larry had spotted a pub on his way in, so we drove over there.  We went into the “Pub” but the only food they served were nachos.   There was a restaurant just down the hallway, so we went down there.  As we got to the host table, I said to our group, “We might be under dressed for this place.”  It was beautifully set up.

Lucky for us, they didn’t care about our attire.   It was one of the better meals I’ve had on the road.   My potato soup was to die for.  I had never tasted anything that good before that I can recall.   I had the curry chicken on rice, which was good too; but the soup, wow, I will never forget that.  Everyone else loved their dinner too.  A really surprise fancy dinner!

We drove over to the Prince of Wales Hotel, which turns out wasn’t open yet. They were still removing the boards from the winter closure.  They wouldn’t let us inside, but we got to check out the view, and what a view it was! (even with the smoke)  Gorgeous.  The hotel was set to open up the afternoon we were leaving.  We looked into staying for an extra day or two, but it was Victoria Day long weekend and the campground was fully booked.

We left there and headed out to Cameron Lake, a 22-mile winding mountain road.  Beautiful day use area.  The lake still had lots of ice.  We wandered around there for about an hour.  It was a beautiful spot.   While driving out we passed the first oil well in Western Canada.  There was a replica just off the road.   Some waterfalls and Caribou grazing on the side of the road.  There were also a herd of Big Horn Sheep right at the turnoff to Cameron Lake.  There were a few of these large metal grates built up next to the road which may help prevent ice from hitting the roadway.  Not sure if that is what they are for.

On the way back, we stopped at a fairly large waterfall not far from our campsite.  I had been hearing it for a couple of days, so we decided to check it out.  It was a spectacular roaring falls.  Lots of water crashing down.  Took some pics and headed back to the campground to make lunch.

The next morning we headed out another small road, which was much shorter, not as beautiful as the prior day, but very nice nonetheless.   After we got back to the main road, we headed over to Haybarn.  Sadly, there was no Haybarn out there that we cold find.   But there was some camping areas and a small building that looked like toilets.   That one was a pretty smooth dirt road, and along the way out we stopped to watch a couple Grouse which seemed to be courting.

We hitched up the cars and headed out Friday morning to a campground outside of Calgary in a small town called Cochrane, AB.

We had stopped in Milk River on our last trip to Alaska and figured we would do it this time also.  It was a convenient place to get Canadian cash from an ATM there so we could pay for campgrounds that do not take cards, usually due to lack of internet service along the Alcan which prevents card processing.

This year was a bit of a fiasco.  I took my credit union’s ATM card to the same place that it worked the last time and this time it did not work, as that payment kiosk required a chip, and my card did not have one.   No issue, I had another ATM card from another bank and it had a chip.  But it too did not work!!  Only later I noticed that card had expired a few months before.

Now things were getting interesting.   I went back to the coach to see if I could find out the PINs for my usual credit cards, figuring I would get a cash advance; but when I checked, I had never set them up with a PIN.   I went online to set them up, and guess what?  That bank will only send a “new” PIN out by regular mail… to our house in San Diego, not to where we were, in Canada.  Now things were starting to seem serious to me.

Luckily for us, our friends Tami & Scott had decided to stay with us for one night in Milk River and Tami was able to get cash and really helped us out.  We wrote her a check and she did a mobile deposit.   Phew!  This really showed us how things can go wrong when traveling.  Seemingly innocuous things can really throw a wrench into your plans.

I guess we could have paid with our US cash to that particular campground, but I calculated I needed about $1,000 Canadian for the rest of the trip in Canada (up and down), and getting a new card may be impossible during this trip.  Not sure if they allow them to forward to our mail forwarding service.  I guess we will find that out in the next few months.

That night I woke up from a dead sleep around 2 am  remembering I had put a PIN on a card that I almost never use.   I checked in the morning and I had that PIN in my password manager,  Keepass.   That morning I drove over to a bank really early to take another $400 and it was declined.  Turns out the only bank in Milk River only takes MasterCard in their ATM and my card was a Visa..  Holy Smokes, this was getting tough.

The following morning I overhear Kathy and Tami on the phone saying something about Scott has to go back to the US to activate his Hotspot SIM card for data to work in Canada.   I had to go over and ask Scott what was going on as we had gotten it working late yesterday afternoon.  Turns out his Google Fi account had switched to unlimited data overnight and his Data SIM was disabled.   His call to Fi support was not helpful getting it to work, and they said he must go back into the States to activate it again.   I assumed he needed a U.S. cell tower, but that turned out to be incorrect, he just needed WiFi that was listed as being in the U.S.   My new Starlink system to the rescue!  We connected his laptop to my Starlink and was able to activate his data SIM.   So apparently the stop in Milk River was good for both of us.  🙂

Tami said we should follow them to their next stop instead of us staying in Milk River for a second night.  Kathy wanted to leave this place because the trees dropped sap and leaves and debris that stuck to Dusty’s feet, so we went with them.   We drove to a casino in Lethbridge, AB.   And happily for me, that Visa card worked in one of their ATM’s!!  What an ordeal.  But finally I had a way to get a bit of cash if needed later.    Turns out that bank card has a maximum of $375 of cash advance, which is $500 Canadian.

While camped/parked at the Pure Casino, we enjoyed lunch, and the next morning we went in for the $5 breakfast.   The funny part about breakfast was the night before we decided to go at 9 am.  When we walked back to the doors we had use the afternoon before, we noticed the large print about them opening at 9:30 every day.  I guess we were truly “too poor to pay attention” for that one.

Also of note, when we got to Lethbridge, my Starlink knew we were in Canada, so Scott’s SIM activation may not have worked if we waited to do it then.

This was not a great way to start the adventure!  But it all worked out in the end.

The morning in Dillon was extremely cold (to us) 27 degrees at around 6 am.   When I woke up and saw that, I turned off my charger on the inverter.  I then went outside and turned off the solar panel output breakers and turned on the newly installed battery heater switch.  (I am so glad I installed the switch before we left)    I did this as my LiFePo’s should not be charged when they are colder than 32 degrees.   They probably have a low temp protect circuit, but do I trust it?  Nope.

Around 10 am we got on the road heading toward Great Falls, MT, to meet with friends that were also going to Alaska.   We aren’t traveling with their group after checking how many miles they were traveling each day on the Alcan.  It’s  just too far each day to drive, taking into consideration our knowledge of the roads once you get past Dawson Creek.   We chose to go with another couple we met in Alaska the last time we were there and had caravan’ed with for a couple months on and off,  Larry and Sue.  They tend to drive shorter distances on the really rough roads that we will likely encounter on the Alcan, but  most importantly,  they are really fun people to travel with!

The drive from Dawson Creek (beginning of the Alcan) to Tok, Alaska,  is over 1,200 miles (not km) and they only get a couple months of the year to fix it, so all the construction for the year is happening when you are driving it.   They pave it with dirt and rocks, so it can be a real mess.

We got to the campground in Great Falls and ended up in a spot just a couple slots up the hill from our friends Tami and Scott.  We also got to meet the people they are traveling with and got to spend a few days enjoying being with the group before we all head on this great Alaskan adventure!!!  And to our delight most of them know how to cook and we got to share a few dinners with the group, which were impressive meals.