July 26 – To Cottage

This is probably a first, a post with no pictures. We have already been on our path home on other trips so we didn’t bother taking more pictures through our bug splattered, sun reflected front windshield.

Most people can just skip this one. I only want to record some thoughts or unusual events so that I will remember.

We were in severe “going home mode”, Long days of driving with not a lot of stops.

Jul 21 – To Moses Park, Washington

We got up to be at the ferry, one hour before it left at 7:45 am, to secure out reservation. It ended up being only 3/4 full. It was a bright sunny day and the water was calm but after we left the dock there was not much to see so we went back to bed in the RV for the rest of the 2 hour trip.

There was a long line of cars at the Peace Arch border crossing. They have an interesting idea here to stop all the cars from just idling and creeping slowly. When the line gets long enough there is a stoplight. If you are behind it and it goes red you know you have about 10 minutes before you will move again so you might as well turn you car off. Once it is green you will make a large jump forward.

It took us about 1/2 hour to get to the booth. The agent asked us if we crossed the border often in our RV, which he probably already knew.. I didn’t quite know what to make of that but said “Yes, at least a couple of times every summer”. It seems if was trying to figure out if we knew the drill and would know what foods we couldn’t bring. We rhymed off what we had and said that we were making a beeline for Ontario and we were on our way.

As usual I-5 was very busy heading towards Seattle but once we turned east onto I-90 the traffic really thinned out. Going across this section of Northern Washington is pretty boring. There were a few picturesque spots but mostly it was scrubland to the horizon.

We arrived at the Moses Lake Walmart at around 6 pm. Since we got up around 6 am it had been a long day. We had stayed at this location  on our way out but when I drove into the lot they were paving the section where I had parked. The rest of the lot that I could see was very busy. After wondering what we were going to do for the night and (horrors) actually looking up some campgrounds, I remembered the “Walmart Parking”  website had said that there was a large area around the back near the truck loading bays. Sure enough there was lots of room, that we shared with 3 other RVs for the night. It was a bit noisy though because it is right next to a busy highway.

It was so hot sitting in the lot that we turned on the generator to use the air conditioning. The heat was even too much for it. We may have stressed it a bit by running both AC’s but it eventually shut down saying its oil temperature was too hot. Even our inverter issued a warning beep that it was also  getting too hot. There was a fairly strong wind blowing so once I opened the bay doors to both of them they cooled off enough.

July 22 – To Butte, Montana

On the way out we had stopped in Missoula, Montana the night before stopping at Moses Lake. The Missoula Walmart had a small lot and has a reputation of getting very busy with RV’s in the summer. I decided to make it a longer day and try and get to the Walmart in Butte, Montana. It has a monstrous lot with easy access but it was a long drive at about 7 hours.

I made sure that we stopped at a rest area every 2 hours and even had an almost hour long nap at lunch so it made the drive seem not as long.

I also love driving east because the prevailing winds give us a strong tail wind which makes the RV so much easier to drive and does wonders for the gas mileage.

The scenery in western Montana made the drive through there very enjoyable. Lots of far off mountains views and close up buttes.

We got to Butte at around 6 pm local time. I counted 5 other RVs in the lot. Later that night I went out for a short walk and there were now 18. When I looked out in the morning there were even more, maybe 25. It was a very quiet night, though.

I don’t know how people can drive for that long especially in a big RV. Leaving one Walmart at really early and getting into the next really late. I certainly can’t do that. I guess two drivers could handle it but that won’t happen with us so we usually try and arrive late in the afternoon for a relaxing evening.

Jul 23 – To Miles City, Montana

Not much to say today. Eastern Montana is either huge fields of corn or wheat, or more scrub land. An easy, mostly flat day of driving. We did do a couple of long climbs to around 6000 feet, one of which was the continental divide. The long down hills are nice. One was a great gradual one, where I didn’t have to touch the accelerator for 10 miles.

Again, there was a very strong wind. It was mostly a tail wind and boosted my gas mileage from the normal low 7’s mpg up to around 11 or 12 mpg at times.  Not much for a normal car but that saves me a lot of money in this monster. The wind sure makes life interesting when it hits from the side though, especially when it is sudden or unexpected as when you come out of a protected downhill depression to an open bridge across a river. The RV did a lot of rather unnerving leaning.

The Miles City Walmart is another big empty lot. At dinner time there only were 2 other RVs.

The map of the first three days.

July 24 – To Fargo, North Dakota

We had been doing longer than our normal daily driving miles so last night I looked at our trip planning software and just committed to trimming one day off our trip to the cottage.

It was the perfect day to do a long drive. Bright and sunny with that wonderful strong tail wind and very little traffic. Western North Dakota had some nice scenery as we followed the Yellowstone River valley. East of Bismarck the highway was mostly very long flat straight stretches off to the horizon, Easy to drive but kind of mesmerizing.

We took extra long stops to break up the drive. After two hours we stopped for an early lunch. After four hours we both had an hour long nap. Did that ever help. After six hours we parked at a rest stop and had our dinner.

Also, I-94 through North Dakota is the smoothest continuous road I have been on. There was not a rough spot in the entire state. They were even repaving what anywhere else would have been new road. I don’t know how they do it with there vicious winters but other states could take a lesson. I suppose it helps that the roads are not nearly as used as in the more populous states.

Some people must really like to drive fast here. Even though the speed limit is 80 mph, we still saw cars pulled over.

We also saw what looked like a car that been blown off the road and rolled over in the center median. It was really messed up. There was a trucked parked there with a long flat trailer. I hope the car just blew off the trailer but there were EMTs there with a back board on the ground so the truck was probably just to haul the wreck away.

Jul 25 – To Ironwood, Michigan

The Walmart last night in Fargo was in a more urban setting. The night reminded me on the movie title “Planes and Trains and Automobiles”.

Just as I went to bed, two planes, separately, buzzed quite low over the parking lot. I hoped that we weren’t close to an airport. All night long we heard the low rumble of long trains passing through town. There were also several level crossings where they had to blow their horns.

People in the mid west sure do seem to like their big trucks with very little muffler on them. The Walmart is open 24 hours so it died down a bit but never stopped. There was also the not so wonderful sound of that damned back up beep all night from a loading dock somewhere.

So we didn’t get the greatest of rests.

It was another fairly easy although boring drive today. We almost immediately left I-94, as it headed south and we wanted east. The smaller highway were still very smooth except for about 20 miles on MN 210 and again on US 2. They was also very little traffic and long straight stretches so I never held any one up on the two lanes roads.

While it is nice to be off the interstate and actually see some of the towns we are going passed, I really miss the highway rest stops. I always know where they are, from the map and know that I can get in and out easily. It is harder to plan our stops when I have to slowly cruise through the small towns looking for a suitable place and hoping we see one before we go by.

July 26 – To the cottage

Another long but easy drive. We got a few views of Lake Superior but not enough.

As we went through Marquette I had to do a fast stop for a stoplight that changed without much warning. We normally put a clip on the cupboard door that has our dishes but we forgot that morning. So we ended up with several Corning ware dishes and some glass bowls smashed on the floor. The worst part is that some of the pieces had gone under the closed slideout floor making them really hard to find. We pulled over into a parking lot and spent about 1/2 hour cleaning up.

We should have stopped at one of the lake side pullouts for lunch but we were a bit early. The GPS map was only showing up to the next turn in Munising. I hadn’t noticed that after that we would be away from the water for good and have an almost 90 mile long straight stretch along a forest lined highway. Give me the open spaces of the mid-west over this any time.

After a final fill up of cheaper American gas, we had an easy border crossing. There was only 2 cars in front of us.

We arrived at the cottage at dinner time. We are hoping to stay here for a month.

July 20 – Neck Point Park and Repairs

Yay! The RV is fixed! What a relief.

When we got to the dealership to drop off the RV today, the part hadn’t arrived yet which was a bit worrying.

Instead of just waiting around there, we went to a small park that I had intended to see during our previous stay in Nanaimo. Neck Point Park is just a short distance from Piper’s Lagoon.

 http://jennieandstuartontheroad.blogspot.ca/2016/05/may-25-pipers-lagoon.html

We parked in the main lot and stuck to the trails on the shoreline. The trails are very easy. Whenever there is a climb, there are steps and boardwalks.

Indian Beach didn’t look like it had much beachcombing possibilities so we just walked by.

From here we could see some of the shacks on Shack Island near Piper’s Lagoon.

We couldn’t see the mountains on the coast but there were some nice puffy clouds.

Lots of big yachts going by.

Next up was the neck at the point. There are actually two necks, out to two rocky outcroppings. The right one is only there at low tide.

The view back from the left one.

We found an interesting plant as we explored the outcrop.

 

Some of the ends were all foamy. This picture is a bit out of focus but you get the idea.

The view from the right outcrop.

And a photosphere from here.

Neck Point Photosphere

Back down on the “beach” there are always treasures to be found.

A seaweed salad for lunch.

And a crab salad for dinner.

Onward, around the corner to Lost Beach.

I thought this log looked like a happy whale.

It had some interesting holes that really showed the rings.

Jennie liked all the patterns in this old root.

We had lunch at a lookout over the cliffs.

This beautiful iridescent bug certainly had no fear. We first saw it on my shirt. Jennie flicked it off onto the ground. Next thing we know it is on her shirt. Back to the ground. Now my pants. Ground. I even stamped my foot just in front of it but not even a flinch. It finally flew off.

Last up was Sunset Beach. It was almost exactly low tide now.

More treasures to be found.

A spooky face, maybe.

On the trail back across the point we passed a fairy door.

You are supposed to add a treasure if you take a treasure.

There were a group of school kids there. I think there was a bit more taking than giving. One kid gave a rock.

Back at the parking lot I realized that there is no cell coverage in the park so the dealer couldn’t call us if the part had not come in. We had nothing else to do so we drove back to the dealer to wait.

When we got there the RV had been turned around from how I left it, which was a good sign. It turns out that it had just been finished so we just had to wait for the paper work.

Since it was still early I called the Honda dealer on the off chance that we might be able get it fixed as well. Alas, they didn’t have the part and couldn’t get it until Friday.

After dinner, back at the campground, we decided to walk around and check out some of the more permanent sites.

This one almost had a formal garden, with a lawn and pruned shrubbery.

This nearby one, not so much.

Tomorrow morning we are catching the 7:45 am ferry to start the mad dash to the cottage.

July 19 - Vehicle Repairs in Nanaimo

It seems like this is the trip where we have all the problems with our vehicles. In every other year I think the worst we have had is a flat tire.

Let’s start with the CRV’s problem because it is shorter. After the first, short dirt road that we took near Port Hardy to Huson Cave, I had started to hear a rattling from under the car. It kept get worse and worse so today I took it to a Honda dealer in Nanaimo for a look before we start the long trip home. It turns out that a sway bar bushing is loose. They said that it should eventually be fixed but it is not a safety issue and we could wait until we get home.

The motorhome is a longer story.

About half way along the way out from Toronto in April the check engine light had come on. Since we were nowhere near anywhere that could look at it, I recorded the code and cleared it. I looked the code up online and it said that there might be a problem with a vacuum line but that it wasn’t really bad for the engine to keep going. The check engine light kept coming back once every day or two.

I also noticed that the engine was idling really slowly and roughly. Worse, when cruising down the road at a constant speed I got a really big vibration in the steering wheel. If I accelerated at all or let off on the gas it would go away.

Since we were getting close to our destination I thought I would wait until we got to Victoria because, surely, there would be a place there that could look at it. Once there, I called up our road side assistance help line and they were as useless as usual. They could come up with no place to take it on Vancouver Island. They said to either go back to Port Angeles or to somewhere near Vancouver.

So I put up with it. In our entire time on the island the light has only come back on twice. At each of our stops I would call the local Ford dealer and see if the could handle a large RV. I even called some truck repair places but they would not take an RV. It turns out that I guess I forgot to call the Nanaimo dealer. I think I looked at the google earth view and didn’t think their bays were big enough.

While we were on our Gwaii Hanaas trip, I told our tale to our new friend William. He said that he had a friend that had an RV and he would ask them where they took it. When he got home, the friend said that we should try the Nanaimo Ford dealer.  I called them up and sure enough, “No problem, Bring it in.”

Since I was going to stop in Nanaimo overnight before we took the ferry back to the mainland, I just added another night to our stay to take the RV in.

It surprised me, looking at the map, how far back down the island it is to Nanaimo.

So I booked two nights at the Living Forest RV campground, which is near the ferry terminal and not too far from the dealer. It is a huge place with over 300 sites. Most of the sites are quite large but the roads are really narrow.

I hope I never meet another big RV coming the other way because they are two way roads.

After we arrived at the dealer for our 10:30 am appointment, I dropped Jennie off at a mall and then came back to wait. And wait. They finally started looking at the RV around 1pm.

My assessment of the place from Google Earth was somewhat correct because none of their bays are big enough. He just parked the RV up against the door and worked on it outside. I have no idea why none of the other dealers couldn’t do that as well.

It didn’t take him very long to discover that it was not a vacuum problem but that the fuel injector on cylinder 7 was not working. So the engine has only been running on 9 of its 10 cylinders. That would certainly explain the rough idle and the vibration. I had been really worried that the vibration had been a transmission problem.

Unfortunately they didn’t have the replacement part in stock. They had to order it from Edmonton but it would arrive tomorrow morning. So I quickly called up the RV park and booked another night. It is a different site but since we take everything with us to the dealer it doesn’t matter.

We left the RV at the Ford dealer and went to the nearby Honda dealer. We were only there about 1/2 an hour. Then we went back and hooked up the car to the RV to go back to the campground.

We will drop off the RV tomorrow morning and find something to do in Nanaimo while we wait.

As to the ferry, I had put off booking one until I knew how long the repair would take. I had checked availability, hoping we could go tomorrow, but the two morning ones were full. My choice would have been 5:15 am or 12:45 pm or later. I was not looking forward to getting up at 4 am to get be there the required 30 minutes early. Now that we have to wait until Thursday, the much more reasonable, 7:45 am ferry is available and now booked.

Fingers crossed that all is made well tomorrow.

For my family, with our slightly delayed departure, we should arrive at the cottage sometime late on Wednesday the 27th.

July 17 – A Day at the Races at Filomi Days

We went back into downtown Port Hardy for the last day of FIlomi Days.

First up were the go cart races. We only watched for a short while.

Everybody wished that the officer had brought his radar gun.

They used this truck to bring the carts back up the hill. The cart on the ground had just made a really fast run but as the truck started up the hill it fell out and they broke the spoiler. I am pretty sure the spoiler didn’t help much though but it did look cool.

The main event of the day was a build it and race it boat race. Teams had 4 hours to build their boat and then they would race out and back to a buoy in the harbour.

I wasn’t sure about the rules. It seemed like you could gather all your materials ahead of time but all the construction had to happen on site in the 4 hours.

This couple went with the classic and simple split barrel with rebar and styrofoam pontoons.

This one was made of large PVC pipes made into a sectioned raft with some boards and styrofoam to stand on. I forgot to get a later picture.

There were some very serious grizzled working man types in this. I was sure this guy didn’t have a chance. He was building a raft of these huge thick PVC pipes, heavy metal brackets to hold it together and Tuck Tape to seal the pipe ends.

He made platforms for them to sit on and oar locks for his oars.

This guys was in a bathtub race mood. First he cut off all the extra stuff. I heard him say that he had goofed on one cut and gone through the tub.

They added some boards and styrofoam.

I thought that the masts with the banners would make him top heavy but it didn’t.

Another one where I said “What are they thinking?”. These kids started with some very flimsy plywood.

But they added enough stiffening boards and garbage bags to waterproof it, that the result seem pretty good.

 

Can you tell that this guys is a plumber.  HIs boat was just a board with some styrofoam but he was making some very elaborate paddle wheels.

Most of us just could not figure out what this guy was doing. He seemed to be hollowing out these strips of very old driftwood.

As he progressed I realized that he had taken a huge, flat driftwood log and cut it into strips. He then used the chain saw to cut out as much wood as he could to save weight and add buoyancy and then he caulked and screwed it back together.

It looked pretty cool.

I was sure this couple had no hope. They didn’t. They were using this very flexible corrugated plastic and Tuck taping it together. They did have a board down the middle of the bottom but they added the styrofoam on the inside where it really doesn’t help the buoyancy at all. The cross pieces, to hold the sides up, were also just tape.

 

These two were in it to win. They made an almost professional looking canoe.

Two layers of glued on plastic made it waterproof.

They even had comfy seats.

Jennie went to a booth that let you create your own unicorn horn.

The girl that ran it wanted Jennie’s picture because, I think, she was the first adult to get one.

We had hoped to have some more of the great BBQed salmon that we had yesterday but sadly they did not return today. I consoled myself with some mini donuts. We did have what they called an Indian Taco. Taco ingredients on fried bread,

Race time. Right around this time the skies got bright and sunny, after being very grey all morning, making for a great afternoon.

Everyone turned to the harbour.

Out go the boats or whatever.

The rescue boat is ready.

On your mark.

They’re off.

The rebar on the pontoon barrel quickly went U shaped.

The plumber’s was just not a good boat.

The guys on the PVC pipe raft did OK at first.

Then one of the pipes cracked and the whole thing filled with water so down they went. Rescue time.

The two canoes took to the lead.

These guys were so far ahead that they took a little break.

The kids were not that far behind. Although they did land on the wrong part of the beach, they came second. One of the kids was using a shovel as a paddle. It was pretty wet in there when they did land.

The guy on the log was slow and steady and made it all the way around the course.

The bathtub sat really low in the water and did fill up.

But they finished.

The pipe raft with the oars also surprised me and finished in a respectable time.

The plastic canoe never even got away from the shore.

Even though it was the worst boat, I think they might have had the most fun.

Lots of laughs all around.

We listened to a band from Campbell River for a while. The singer had a nice voice and they had some different takes on some songs they covered.

They did do what seemed like some inappropriate solo performances. During what I thought was a relatively quiet song the drummer broke into several minute long drum solo.

The skies had cleared up enough that we got our first view in a long time of the mountains on the mainland.

We stayed for most of the set before heading home at around 4. We will be heading back for the fireworks at 10:30. It gets dark really late here.

Just got back from the show. It was really very good. Solid big fireworks for about 25 minutes. You have got to love small towns. We could park 1 minutes away, nobody crowded us and no lineups to get home. It was a great way to end the trip.

Lots of kids running around with LED swords. The guy that was selling the bubble guns had switched to these.

Since I didn’t want to take my eyes off the sky, I just held the camera on my lap and hoped it was aimed correctly. I’ll just include a few to remind me.

And so ends the active exploration part of this summer’s journey. Tomorrow we head down to Nanaimo for a day to get some work done on the RV. I finally found a place (a Ford dealer) that says that they can handle its size. On Wednesday we start our beeline across the continent to our cottage. That should take 7 days.