Roadtrip 2025: Camping, travel. Alberta, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC again!

It seems to have been a while since my last blog update! I guess it's time to get a bit more up to date?

The next tour started pretty much the same as the last one - we headed out west of Rocky Mountain House to a place called Preacher's Point on Abraham lake. It is more or less free camping, but you do require an annual pass to camp in the east slopes of the Rockies here in Alberta. It costs about $30, and is available online. I was glad to see that my last years permit had not yet expired!

Being a week day, we were able to get the very same spot as the last couple of trips - and there were a few more leaves on the trees this time.

We've changed our Starlink service from roam/mobile to 'residential', which is cheaper, and provides supposedly faster service! The downside is that you have to 'change your address' each time you move.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of that process, and it can be a bit challenging to do when there is no cell service to fall back on. If you know where you will be camped next, it is easier to change it prior to actually moving. I also bought adapters for SL that allows me to use shielded Cat6 cable instead of the stock SL cables, which seem apt to fail regularly. At least this way, I have two separate working cables for redundancy.

Abraham lake is actually a reservoir on the North Saskatchewan River, formed behind the Bighorn dam. This time of year the water levels are still low, so it's mostly just a river channel at the upper end.

From there we headed up to Jasper, and over to Valemount, BC. We attended a big get-together of the BC Backcountry Horsemen . I knew a few of the organizers, who I worked with in the backcountry of Jasper, back in the day. I used to patrol the north boundary of Jasper National Park for 17 days at a time, alone, with a saddle horse and two pack horses. Apparently, I didn't take any photos of this occasion!
From BC, we headed back across Alberta, headed for a reunion of Conservation Officers in Saskatchewan - where I also used to work! Although it is only about a 10 hour drive, I was in no rush and managed to spread the trip out over 4-5 days.

On the second day, I paid an overnight visit with Don & Donna, who were spending some time at home between camping and work trips. Don donated me a 1000w inverter he wasn't using!

Another stop was at a historic railroad trestle near Wainwright, originally built in 1908, and still in use today on the CN mainline, with only a few updates.

And here is a Youtube video I did in the area.

https://youtu.be/IKkvFdMotOA

It was a good get-together with a bunch of old Saskatchewan Conservation Officers - several of which were also college classmates of mine.

Saskatchewan camp spots ... No mountains to block the view!

After visiting Saskatchewan, I did spend a total of two nights at home - to mow the grass and re-stock. Unfortunately, a good neighbour had already cut my grass the day I got back. Good timing, so there was not much to stick around for. Back to BC we went.

We have a number of favourite, free camp spots along the length of Revelstoke Lake, and we found one of our spots free.

I didn't notice the canoe and tent on the beach, till I reviewed the video later. Nice spot, on the far side of the lake.

My spot.

So far, the new 200Ah Lipo battery in the camper has been working well, and the dc-dc charger keeps thing topped up when ever there is driving. While camped at the lake, we went 4 nights/5 days of fairly substantial use of Starlink, and keeping laptop, phone, tablet, drone, and e-bike batteries all charged up - without the use of solar, and the generator was left at home. There was excellent sunshine for solar use, but all my panels stayed safely stowed under the mattress as I wanted to give the new battery a good test. After all that time, there was still power to spare. The dc-dc charger had the battery at full capacity again, long before we got home!

The 1000w inverter was used to replace my 400w one. The smaller inverter was quite sufficient for my needs in this rig, but it's annoying fan ran constantly, while the 1000w is silent, and I left it on constantly, never noticing the minimal draw. I put in a new 110v plug powered from the inverter, with the addition of a couple of handy usb ports, and an indicator light to show the inverter is on, and the plug is live. The doorbell switch turns the inverter on and off.