Sunday, August 28, 2022

Back to Vancouver Island

When we left our great camp spot on Bridge Lake, BC, we continued west into the town of 100 Mile House.  After the fuel and propane was topped off we swung by the local RV dump.  Well, I gotta say, I’ve been to a LOT of dump sites over the years, but this one has to be the best I’ve ever seen!  Super convenient spot, just off the main highway, easy access from either direction.  It is super clean and located in a small park setting, complete with flowers, and a garbage bin.  Worth stopping by even if you don’t have to dump Smile.

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Headed south on Highway 97 past Clinton, we took the 99 heading south and west towards the coast.  In the Pavilion area the highway passes through the site of a massive landslide a few years ago.  Last time through here, it was full-on construction getting the road rebuilt.  You can see these massive anchors bolted into the bedrock below to stabilize the road area.

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Past Lillooet, the terrain gets even more dramatic, winding it’s way through gorges, and clinging to the canyon walls.  After a while it moderates somewhat and I began to look for an overnight spot that we had stayed at previously.  Sure enough, we found it and it was vacant.  It’s right by the highway, but this road gets pretty quiet at night, and the sounds of rushing water drowns it all out anyway!

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The next day we continued over the summit, and headed down through Pemberton to Whistler.  The plan was to stop in Whistler to eat or look around a bit, but every square inch was occupied, and even the ‘pay’ parking lots were overflowing – so we carried on!  Turns out there was a major cycling event in town, and it was a weekend, so that accounted for the extremely crowded conditions.

Down in Brackendale/Squamish, I was disappointed to find that the main access to the waterfront was closed off for some major construction projects.  Nevertheless, we tracked down a couple of friends who live in the area, and had a good visit and spent the night.

In the morning we drove the spectacularly scenic ‘Sea to Sky’ highway down to the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay, and got in line.  Without a reservation and with no idea what the schedule was, we missed the first sailing and caught the second.

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With no response from my last-minute note to some friends in the area, and not wishing to drive much further up the coast of the island, we opted just to find a quiet secluded , non-scenic spot to spend the night.  It was very quiet at least, and fairly handy to the main highway.

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I spend a fair bit of time ‘recreationally’ looking at real estate online.  Occasionally a place will catch my eye, and that is the case with a place I spotted on Quadra Island.  Even though it appeared to be sold within a week back in the spring, I wanted to have a look at it for real and see what I had missed!  So we got on the short ferry across to Quathiaski Cove on Quadra, from Campbell River.

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Sadly, the place looked even better in real life than the online version, and it looked like the new owners might have trimmed a few trees to make the view even better.  O well, saved a lot of money not buying that place!  As expected, the island is a pretty nice place, so we spent the better part of three days checking out the roads, parks, beaches and the views.

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Spent a couple of days at Rebecca Spit, admiring all the expensive boats anchored in the cove there, as well as some biking and hiking on the trails.

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Some unique windmills on some boats in the harbour.

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Back on the ferry to the ‘mainland’ of Vancouver Island.

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We made a run into Browns Bay, but found the forest service road to be very rough and very dusty.

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Good thing we didn’t leave our boat trailer ‘UNINTENDED’!  That’d kind of like the sign at the laundromat that says ‘no loitering’!

IMG_9452We moved up the coast a bit, to a nice forest service rec area with great view of cruise ships, tugs towing barges and log booms, fishing vessels, and lots of small sport fishing boats.

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It was a great spot, until …

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some arrogant obnoxious types pulled in right next to me with a Class A, and a trailer full of Atv’s.  All good till they fired up their cheap 7000W industrial generator to ‘cook supper, and charge the atv batteries’.  It took about 2 minutes for me to vacate the site after that.  The next spot down the shore was pleasantly private, but not exactly level!

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- to be continued …

Saturday, August 13, 2022

More travel and camping. Westward bound!

Here we go again – hoping that Open Live Writer 0.6.3.0 pulls through again.  It seemed to work just fine with the last post, but this is the real test.  We are very off-line in a remote BC area along highway 99, somewhere north of Pemberton.  I can’t even look up the name of river because – well, we are very off-line!  And this is the big advantage of Live Writer!

After our last camping expedition up Revelstoke Lake, north of the town of the same name, we decided to head home for a few days to mow the grass and meet up with some old friends. 

It was made a little more interesting by the constant weather alerts and tornado warnings that kept popping up on the phone and TV screen!

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How I’m loving Live Writers allowing me to easily drag and drop photos where I want them – so unlike the Blogger editor!

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The only damage, if you can call it that, was the top of a tree broke off and fell on the hood of my truck.  No harm done, other than a little sap on the windshield.

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As soon as the company and the tornado warnings ended, it was time to check the weather reports and head off camping again.  Not sure if this Grosbeak thought he could get a free ride south with us, but he stayed on the hood of the truck as we drove out the driveway!

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We headed back to BC again, because that’s where the hot weather and cool lakes are!

But this time we headed south of Revelstoke, instead of north.  We were lucky to find that our favourite free (is there any other kind?) camp spot was vacant and waiting for us.

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The lake levels were still fairly high for this time of year, but there was still enough beach exposed to enjoy it.

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Hailey started to wonder if she could actually catch some of those minnows in the shallows!

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Once again, having the solar panels on a long cord made collecting the required power a breeze.

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Once again, I was able to sleep in the hammock most nights, only putting up the rain fly one night – but that turned out not to be required.

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The squirrel and chipmunks kept Hailey occupied – between naps in the sun.

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As usual, did lots of bike exploration in the area.WGI_0005 (3)

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Finally, a day of cloud cover convinced us to leave, but we checked out a couple of alternate spots along the same lake shore.  Lots of potential.

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With not much reason to go home, now that the grass has slowed down its growth, we decided to keep on heading west and see what adventure we could find.  In Kamloops we happened on a familiar looking vehicle, like I used to drive, and chatted with some Alberta wildland fire fighters who were exported to BC to help with some of the fires here.

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It was pretty hot in Kamloops, so after getting a few provisions and fuel, we promptly headed north and into some cooler, higher elevation areas that we had previously explored back in 2016.

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We stumbled into a rec site at Scott Lake at dusk, and had it all to ourselves for the night.

(Its great! Live Writer lets you crop, turn, adjust the photos right in the editor!)

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In the morning, we also drove over to another deserted nearby rec site at Allan Lake that we had previously stayed at.

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Carrying on westward, our next stop was at Bridge Lake.  Thanks to a tip a few years ago from another RV’er who lives at this lake, we got a choice, private, free (of course) spot on the shore for a couple of days.

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Right above the camp spot, in a huge old tree, well over 100’ tall is a years old Bald Eagle nest.  At this time of year the young and old had already departed, so we flew up to check it out.

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Well, that about does it.  The blog is officially up to date for the first time in quite a while.

But, you won’t know it until we find some internet service, and then it will be out of date already.

Loving Open Live Writer.  Without it, this post would not have been possible till who knows when in the future.  With it, we were able to put together this post in a remote camp spot to the sound of white water.