Category: Places

19th Dec – 23rd Dec 2021

From Morro Bay we continued south down the coast to our next stop, Ventura. It was getting noticably busier on the roads and the wild idyll of the northern coast was giving way to large conurbations that melded together. The presence of the not-so-distant monster that is Los Angeles was starting to be palpable. The drive was easy, just cruising along US-101 and our park was easy to find in Ventura because it was about 5 metres away from the busy highway. A lot of parks we stay at are close to a road or a railway line, but this one took the biscuit. It was so noisy. Despite it’s proximity to the relentless traffic this park billed itself as a ‘resort’ and was a bit swanky, or at least half the park was. We were in the other half, of course. It was a short walk to the beach, had a heated pool and we had to wear wrist bands to prove that we were guests to the full time security at the gate. All this seemed a bit overkill at this time of year, as was their nightly rate, which was ridiculous. This, however, was the only RV park anywhere near the the town, and we had to pay for the pleasure.

Our motivation for being here was that this is the jump-off point for access to the Channel Islands. No relation to the tax haven rocks in the English Channel, these eight islands sit in the Southern Californian Bight, between 25 and 100km off shore. The earliest paleontological evidence of human existence in North America was found on these islands at least 13,000 years ago. Now five of the Islands form a National Park and boat trips facilitate short day trips or longer camping adventures. We had booked a day trip to Santa Cruz Island on our second full day here.

Ventura boasts a typical SoCal sandy beach with the obligatory surfing vibe and a long paved promenade that was busy with surf watchers, bikers, dog-walkers, skateboarders, meanderers and sitters. On our first full day here we saddled up the bikes and cruised up the prom and through a nice residential area (some of it a canal development with the homes having their own docks) to the marina at the other end of town. This was to scope out the route for the next day, which had an early start. It was a very manageable 40 minute cycle. The marina was large, full of enviable boats, and also home to the local fishing fleet of purse seiners. We had a coffee in the sun, perused a few shops and headed back to base where we showered and headed back to town on foot late afternoon for a mooch around and dinner. Ventura, like many towns, created a pedestrian-only zone on a section of its main street to aid social distancing and outdoor dining for Covid. This is still in place here and gave the town centre a great vibe. We wandered around to select a dinner venue with a good outdoor area and then, as it was still early, headed to the beach and the old pier to kill some time. The original pier was built in 1872, negating the precarious task of offloading cargo and passengers from ships using smaller boats. It has had several incarnations over the years as it has been victim to nature’s fury and fire multiple times. Now it benefits from historical preservation efforts and provides a very satisfactory location for a sunset stroll. During our time-killing perambulations we came across a building at the start of the pier which was a brewery called MadeWest upstairs and a fish restaurant downstairs. It looked like a complete mediocre tourist trap at first glance, but further investigation showed it to be quite the opposite. We sat on the outdoor balcony upstairs, screened from the breeze with perspex windbreaks, under electric heaters, drinking fine beer, being served a great dinner by the downstairs restaurant, with the best view of the sunset in town. There was a small group of locals doing the same we felt a bit like we had stumbled into a private club. Sometimes you get lucky.

We were on the bikes again by 7.15am the next morning, prepared for our day out on the island. Camera, binocculars, packed lunch packed, and most importantly – seasickness pill taken by me. I love the ocean, but it doesn’t love me. We arrived back at the marina in good time and joined our fellow boat passengers in a very civilised, socially distanced queue. It was a lovely morning, but cool and as most people felt compelled to rush for the outside upper deck seats, we opted for inside. All were wearing masks so we gambled on staying warm over better ventilation. The sea was kind on the one hour trip to Santa Cruz Island. Not only was it reasonably calm but it also delivered us a spectacular superpod of 700-1000 dolphins that stayed with us for a good 15 mins. It was amazing. One of life’s ‘bliss moments’ that need to be permenantly stored in an easily accessible part of one’s memory to be recalled often, especially in times of funk. Consider it done.

The island was a delight. The facilities were all very basic with a network of trails, a old ranch homestead which is now a simple interpretive site, a (fairly deserted) sprawling tent campsite, a few composting toilets and plenty of killer views. The boat disgorged us, with about 50 others who all set off en masse in the same direction on the shortest trail, so we went the other way and saw almost no-one all day. We had about 5 hours before our return boat left the island, so plenty of time to bimble about, take in the scenery and loaf about eating sandwiches.

The Island has some very cute native foxes. These are descended from the larger grey foxes of the mainland, and probably floated over on debris about 18,000 years ago. They are small, about the size of a little cat and have an omniverous diet including berries and deer mice. They were nearly wiped out by the arrival of Bald Eagles in the 1990s as they had no concept of aerial predators but their population has now recovered after ‘relocation of the eagles back to the mainland’ and a captive breeding program. They are very sweet and also have no fear of humans. In fact, one park ranger that we spoke to said it seemed that the foxes had actually missed the presence of people during the year when the island was vacated due to Covid, running down to the dock en masse when the first boat arrived.

The trip home was even calmer and the dolphins put in another appearance. I wonder how many times one would have to see this spectacle before getting blassé about it. On our arrival back at the mainland it was already dusk and we quickly cycled home trying to get back before it got too dark. It was cold so we didn’t stop to admire some of the very impressive Christmas house decorations. It’s not just about strings and strings of fairy lights here. No. It’s all about the inflateable lawn/balcony/roof ornaments. Some people looked like they needed an intervention!

Having left Ventura the next morning we finally headed away from the coast and thrashed our way East across the north of the LA area. It was busy, the highways full of impatient drivers and was a moderately unpleasant experience. None of these things were unexpected though. We had a one night stop in San Bernadino, north-east of LA , only hearing gunshots once in the night, and then headed off to our Christmas rendez-vous in Palm Desert, a neighbour to Palm Springs. As was becoming a bit of a common theme of this trip to date, we made this short-ish journey in the rain. This was the precursor to our 3rd ‘atmospheric river’ in just over 3 weeks. Oh, the irony of arriving in a desert in a 24 hour downpour.

14th Dec – 19th Dec 2021

Bodega Bay was granted some forgiveness as we awoke to a dry morning. After a shower we packed up and only to have our improved spirits mildly deflated again by discovering that one of Big Dave’s front indicators was not working. It seemed an easy fix of a replacement bulb, so we factored in a small detour to an autoparts store for our onward journey. This was in the delightfully named Petaluma. Unfortunately a new bulb did not remedy the problem and the fuse was fine. Then we noticed that his rear indicator was not working either. Luckily Tin Can, which plugs into Big Dave like a caravan or boat trailer does, did have a functioning rear indicator so we pushed on. Bizzarely, a day or so later it suddenly started working again. Huzzah! Then stopped again. Hmmff. An auto electrician was going to need consulting. We just woudn’t turn left until then. Simples!

Our onward journey took us through San Fransisco and beyond. We weren’t stopping here as we had visited before, but we opted to cross the Bay on the Golden Gate Bridge rather than the less scenic Oakland Bridge. This gave us the great view of the harbour, the city waterfront and Alcatraz Island, although, a bit like the worst view of Paris being from the Eiffel Tower – because you can’t see the Eiffel Tower – we did miss out on that iconic view of the bridge. It also happens quickly at 60 miles/hr! Over the bridge the road quickly ceases to be a highway and becomes an urban access road, so progress was slow as we wound our way through the south west city districts before re-joining the highway and onward to our next stop – Moss Landing.

Our road there took us through San José, as immortalised by the Dionne Warwick ditty ‘Do you know the way to San José’. I had no feelings about this city prior to our transit through it, but unfortunately our experience was pretty stressful. Firstly, the highway surface was awful. Tin Can shook so much that I was sure that every item of crockery and glassware would be shattered. That, and I was worried we might lose some teeth. Secondly, our Sat Nav, and Google Maps route was intent on routing us via a lovely new expressway ringroad that banned all vehicles over 4 tons. As you all know, we are 7 tons. We had a stressful half hour where we kept having to dive off the through-road into the belly of the city to find alternative routes. Surely this is counterproductive to urban congestion and pollution, having all the medium and large trucks using the normal city streets.

As Dionne warbled:

‘Do you know the way to San Jose? (Yes)
I’ve been away so long (and we’re not coming back, sorry)
I may go wrong and lose my way…’ (AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT??)

Moss Landing is a seemingly small scrap of a coastal settlement in the mid coast of Monteray Bay dominated by a few big things.

1. A gas fueled power station with two massive stacks that dominate the skyline. Here they are developing a battery storage facility that will be the biggest in the world when finished.
2. The Elkhorn Slough, a massive salt water wetland area and wildlife habitat that is purported to be one of the top 10 bird spotting areas in the world.
3. The Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, a multi-campus research facility of California State University. Study of up to 4000 metre deep ocean depths is facilitated by the proximity of Monterey Canyon to this area. It is the largest undersea canyon on the west coast of the Americas and only an hour or 2 boat journey from the marina here.
4. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Here for the same reason as above. Both these facilities were made possible in large part by huge philanthropic support from the Hewlett and Packard family estates.
5. A lovely long state park beach.
6. Bizzarely it is home to the Shakespeare Society of America. A building stuffed full of more than 15,000 items of Bard memoribilia, relocated after the closure of the LA replica Globe Theatre. The chap manning the shop was very chatty and keen to show off all his treasures/junk. I don’t think he has many visitors at this time of year.
7. A tremendous fish market/restaurant called Phil’s which was voted by BBC Travel as one of the best beach fish restaurants in the world (not sure when this was, but the fading rossette is still proudly displayed at the entrance, and to be fair, it was very good.
8. The land south of here is the globe artichoke growing centre of the world. Weird.

We had a good two nights here.

Our route from Moss Landing to our next stop Morro Bay was planned to take us along the aforementioned iconic road, The Big Sur. Unfortunately all the recent heavy rain had caused more slips and it was shut again, a regular occurance over the past few years. Luckily we had checked this before heading that way and avoided having to do a turn-around. To be honest we were’t too disappointed to have to take the easier inland route. We had already seen a lot of beautiful but heavy going coastal roads. We passed through thousands of acres of artichoke growing land (mostly empty and ploughed at this time of year) and the crops changed abruptly to vineyards as we approached Monterey. One single family company owned all the vines along a 70 mile stretch of valley. Big business.

Our Morro Bay experience was delightful and many pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place for this to feel much more like our trips of years past.

Firstly, topography. The town is named for the big rock that sits at the entrance to the harbour. This is actually a volcanic plug that has resisted erosion more than the surrounding rock, thus standing proud. It is actually one of seven morros, but definitely the most splendid. It is reminiscent of the Rock of Gibralter, but instead of Barbary apes, it is a seasonal breeding home to a large population of Peregrine falcons. (Not here now, of course). It also has a fine sandy surf beach to the north of the morro, and a large sandbar to the south. The sandbar is a wildlife refuge and acts to shelter the town from the ocean, creating a large calm estuary.

Secondly, it has a resident population of rare sea otters. These used to be abundant until humans hunted them to near exinction in the 18th century. They were valued for their pelts which has fur so thick that, in life, their skin stays dry when they are swimming. The fur also traps a lot of air and they look imensely cute just floating around on their backs in the calm waters of the harbour. Mother otters will fluff-up the fur of their babies by blow-drying them, so that they can float too. The otters use rocks to break open shellfish, and will carry around their pet rocks in pouches of loose skin in their armpits. Genius. There are also the usual sea lions and seals hanging out.

Thirdly, our camp was right on the beach which delivered an amazing sunset each of the three nights we were here. Late afternoon we joined the zombie-like crowds who could not resist the lure of the setting sun, all standing in our little groups taking a million photos of the same thing. Our third night here there was a full moon and the gorgeous sunset was matched by the simultaneous moonrise.

Fourthly, the town had a fantastic paved cycle trail that connected our park with the town, about a mile away. This made getting about a pleasure, and meant that so many other people were also walking and cycling, scooting and skateboarding and generally transporting themselves without the aid of a combustion engine. Town planning like this definately gets people out of their cars and we love to see it.

And lastly, but not leastly, the weather. Finally it stopped raining and the sun shone almost continually. This pleases me.

Other points of interest of Morro Bay: It too is dominated by the stacks of a power station, although the one here was decomissioned in 2014 and they are still deciding whether to demolish the chimneys. I think they look good, although I imagine they will fall down one day if not dealt with. It also has lots of nice harbourside eateries, at one of which we had a marvellous lunch. The sunny outside terrace was unexpectedly deserted, but looked a perfect spot for a few beers with seafood. The hostess said that because she only had two servers, they were only serving meals inside which was packed. We could however order take-out, and eat it on the terrace. The bar was separate, and happy for us to buy beers at the bar and take them out. Perfect. The hostess then proceded to bring us napkins and condiments and our ‘take-out’ meal was served to us at our table on plates. She also served us more beers to our table. I think that we scored a private dining experience without having to pay a tip! The enjoyment of our meal was slightly tempered as we watched a seagull drown a pigeon.

9th Dec – 14th Dec 2021

Crescent City was our first Californian destination. We had spent the night here in the past during a car road-trip and had strangely nostalgic memories of it. Not entirely sure why as it is not a beautiful place. It is a utilitarian coastal town town with a big fishing harbour that is often shrouded in thick fog. Having experienced 33 tsunamis since 1923, the harbour and town were devastated by a huge tsunami in March 1964, killing 11 people and destroying 29 city blocks. Our pitch was in an unappealing tarmac RV park within the harbour and our neighbours all looked like longtermers in mostly tired old rigs. The not inconsiderable charge for this pleasure did not include access to the shower block (closed), laundry (also closed) or wifi (just generally rubbish and not fit for purpose). Hey ho. Its saving grace was was its location, a stone’s throw from the water. After a quick set up we wrapped up warm and headed down the breakwater to catch the end of the day and meet the fat, lazy locals- a pile of sea lions.

These were very smelly, very noisy and had annexed various pontoons and wharfs for their important ‘lying around whilst grunting at each other’ activities. The day gave us a last gift of a pretty spectacular rainbow without the rain before we headed back to the Tin Can where we sat around for a bit before heading out to dinner at the ‘Mom’n’Pop’* restaurant we had eaten at during our last visit

*non-chain historically family run restaurant usually serving hearty classic dishes with epic proportions.

The next day dawned with a cloudless sky and the sun shone for every single moment until dusk. What a treat and how good for my soul! Our onward drive took in some more amazing coastal views and inland forest vistas along the Redwood Highway. Our lunch stop was at a wildlife refuge area in Humboldt and it had a lovely 1.5 mile walk through a wetland area to stretch our legs and do some impromtu bird spotting. Our next stop was another quick overnighter in a town called Fortuna. It was nice enough to spend some time outside sorting a few things out with Big Dave. Of great importance and much ongoing annoyance – a sticker needed removing from the inside of his windscreen. This has been there since we bought him and had resisted all efforts to scrape it off. Now I had the correct highly combustible and toxic solvent in my possession. I won the battle. We sorted out our sat nav which could now attach to the newly cleaned spot on the screen, and we cleaned the outside so that all important forward visibility in sunny conditions would be vastly improved. Little did we know that we weren’t going to see the sun again for a while.

Our journey onwards took us further down US 101, continuing through the Redwoods area. We opted not to take the scenic bypass along ‘ The Avenue Of The Giants’ which takes in some of the groves of massive trees. We had seen this on our previous trip and were happy to just cruise on the bigger road due south. Happy, that was, until we made the decision to cut back to the coast on California-1. Big Dave and Tin Can weigh in at about 7 tons together, a significant heft indeed. We do try and take into account the topography of the land when we are planning our routes but sometimes we either just can’t avoid steep climbs and descents, or we just completely misjudge them. This next section of road was a big slice of both. It was horrendous! 22 miles of a narrow, winding, steep road that was unsurprisingly quite quiet. Poor Big Dave worked hard, as did Nick who was fairly vocal with his thoughts on how he wasn’t enjoying the driving experience. The forest was pretty, but that didn’t help much. We finally arrived back at the coast and stopped in a waterfront picnic spot for lunch. Big D’s brakes were stinking and we were glad that he had new rear ones as part of his recent ‘works’. Even I was exhausted.

Next stop was Fort Bragg, a small ex lumber/port town of about 7000 people, not to be confused with the enormous military town in North Carolina. There is not alot going on here since the efficient tree felling industry felled all the trees and left the mills with nothing to do. The port also suffered from the arrival of the railway to this area, negating the need for its important all-weather port for the ships transporting goods and travellers up and down this coast. There is, however, a rather marvellous walking/biking trail along the cliff tops that has fantastic views and was a great way for us to get into town whilst avoiding the footpath alongside the main highway. Our camp backed onto this path, and although was rather rustic, the setting could not be faulted. We managed a quick pre-dusk stroll until the evening saw the arrival of the second ‘atmospheric river’ of our trip. It rained all night and blew a gale. A good view rarely comes without some exposure to the weather.

Happily by morning the rain eased and we had a whole day of dry weather to wander into town. Our destination was Cafe One, a hostlery at the other end of the main drag that had been frequented in the past by friends The Jeromes, and purportedly served mighty fine bacon which was perfectly flat like it had be ironed. Unfortunately, after a 3 mile walk, it was closed. Them’s the breaks. Our homeward journey was broken up by a trip down to the old Noyo harbour and a couple of delicious mid-afternoon beers sat out at a delightful waterside bar, and we even managed to make it home via the supermarket just before the heavens open again for the rest of the night, again.

The morning gave us a brief window of oportunity between downpours to pack up and get going without getting soaked and we were on the road by 9.15 am, quite an achievement for us. It was a drive of two halves, with the first segment offering gently undulating roads and great distant views – very enjoyable – and the second segment being quite different. This next section of coastal road is like a smaller, angrier, less predicatable, stimulant addicted small brother to the well known tourist scenic drive, the Big Sur. It has the same spectacular views from a winding road carved into the coastal headlands, but the route is steeper, narrower and much more terrifying. There was a paucity of guard rails and plunging to a watery grave was a constant, overbearing thought, somewhat detracting from the enjoyment of the views. Coupled with intermittant heavy rain, even Nick had lost his nerve after navigating the 147th hairpin. By the time we arrived in our next port of call, Bodega Bay, we were both frazzled.

Bodega Bay was disappointing. All looked good on paper, and maybe in the summer, when the harbour is bustling and you can get out onto the water, it would be a grand place, but ’twas not to be for us. Our park was only about half a mile from the waterfront and ‘town centre’, but a) it was all bleak and shut down and b) there was no safe way of walking there. This country is such a slave to the automobile that they often completely forget that sometimes, somebody might want to actually walk somewhere, and that that somebody might wish to do that without the high chance of being squished. Oh, and c) it started raining heavily again and we had no desire to go anywhere. As much as we know that this state is very short of water, we are tired of this weather now and are much looking forward to getting to the desert.

3rd Dec-9th Dec 2021

Having had our leak fixed we saddled up and rode out of town. It was amazing to be finally on the road again. Big D was running well and we could start to forget about the money he had cost us. (Or had we just become numb with the thought of it….??) Wenatchee is surrounded by hills and mountains and there was a fair amount of climbing and descent to get where we wanted to go. The landscape went from forest covered hills to a fertile growing valley dotted with huge stacks of hay under tarpaulins to a barren plateau with far reaching views. Within a couple of hours we were reminded just how enormous this country is.

We stopped in a service town called Yakima to do our first major provision shop at, you guessed it, our old favourite village store, Walmart. It really is a phenomenon. A wonder of consumerism, frequented by the ‘interesting’, where we can buy anything and everything that we might need (albeit of mediocre quality) including that essential of RV life: dissolving toilet paper.

The final leg of our first day’s travel brought us back to the banks of the now-even-mightier Columbia river that we had left in Wenatchee. Here the river forms the boundary of Washington and Oregon and our site had a lovely view of the river, Oregon and the sunset. There was one small (or very large) spanner in the works of our tranquillity. The trains. The massively long, pulled by two engines and pushed by another, running all day and all night, half a mile long, freight trains. The tracks were about 20-30 metres from our pitch. Luckily we have a borderline abnormal fascination with US trains, and ear plugs. We had two nights here with not much to do. We had miscalculated the ease of walking to a local brewery for dinner as the main township, and brewery, sat at the top of a steep escarpment and the RV park was at the bottom. This had not been obvious when looking at a 2D map. The road that linked the two was steep, busy with traffic and had no pavement. A burger and a few pints of IPA was not worth the danger of walking up there in the dark.

It was interesting to learn how to live in Tin Can again. The space is very generous for a truck camper, but still very compact and bijou compared to a whole house. Everything has its place, including us. Movements need to be slow and declared to each other to avoid collisions and tidiness is definitely essential. It was also amazing to get reaquainted with all the possessions that we have acquired over the years. Jeepers we have squirrelled a lot of stuff away in this thing. We even have a printer, for Pete’s sake! A lot of stuff won’t be needed for a while: the BBQ, the camping chairs, the picnic rug, the games…We’ll be living inside until we get quite a long way south.

Our next destination was Lincoln City on the Oregon coast. We crossed the Columbia river and followed it on the Oregon side to Portland and then wound our way across the north of the city to pick up the road out to the coast. Our route took us right past the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, which was quite epic. We stopped here as it the home of the famous ‘Spruce Goose’, the largest flying boat ever built and which is made entirely of wood.

It was the wartime pet project of Howard Hughes, who at the time was the richest man in the world, on behalf of the American government. Its remit was to transport US troops and materials across the Atlantic whilst avoiding the German U-boats. It was cutting edge technology, costing $18 million of tax payers’ money and $7 million of Hughes’ own money. After 5 years of work it was finally completed in 1947, missing the war entirely and to add to its monumental uselessness, it has only ever flown one mile on its single test flight. Since then it has cost countless millions of dollars to maintain, store and move and it is now the centre piece of this very interesting museum that houses loads of historic, mainly military, aircraft. All that said. It is enormous and hugely impressive. Bigger than an Antanov heavy lifter, if you know how big that is.

Lincoln City gave us our first look at the Pacific Ocean. We pulled in with the promise of a gorgeous sunset and once set up we headed to the beach to stretch our legs and take the obligatory photos of the sun going down. It was quite lovely. Somehow this felt like the true beginning of this trip and from here we have about 1000 miles due South to our first major waypoint, Palm Desert for Christmas. We had given ourselves 18 days to do a trip achievable in 2 long days. This is travelling on ‘Hampson Time’, tortoises not hares are we. We just had one night here and as there was a nice bar just down the road we availed ourselves of the first (of many) burger & beer dinner of the trip. We rolled on due South the next day. This would have been another day of gorgeous coastal and forest scenery, but the weather was hideous. It rained from dawn to dusk. We packed up in the rain, drove all day in the rain, had our picnic sandwiches parked up in a deserted dunes carpark in the rain, arrived at our next stop-Port Orford- in the rain and set up in the rain. These are the perils of travelling in the Pacific North West in December. It is only rain, however, and we can certainly climb into our Big Girl Pants and deal with it. (Whilst giving ourselves permission to whinge a little in the moment)

Port Orford is our favourite type of town. Small, coastal and a bit gritty. It obviously has a bit of a tourist scene in the summer as indicated by the few motels, closed up galleries, gift ’emporia’ and restaurants. Right now, not much was happening. The next day was completely different. The sky was (mostly) blue and the sun shone (a lot). At the crack of midday we went a’rambling. Port Orford has two claims to fame. 1) It is the rainiest town on the Oregon Coast and 2) It is located at the furthest point West on the contiguous USA mainland. I will argue with neither of these facts. Our rambles took us up onto the headland which had a good loop trail with some magnificent views.

We then trundled into ‘town’ and down to the fishing dock. Port Orford fact number 3 coming up: it is (allegedly) one of only two open ocean ports in the US (or was it the West Coast?) This means that it is often too rough to moor the fishing fleet in the water, or to launch and retrieve the smaller boats in the conventional way. The solution: use a crane. We were very impressed by this and spent a considerable length of time that afternoon watching the crane pull boats out whilst taking photos, looking either like sad tourists or quite inept spies.

The fishing dock was also home to ‘Griffs’, a mighty fine fresh fish joint that sold us some very marvellous take-away fish and chips that we ate in the sun. What a difference a day makes. With full tummies we walked back through town back to our roost.

On our second day in Port Orford we went for a walk in the opposite direction, a route that took us up to a place called Paradise Point where we got chatting to a chap called Tom. He was spending a few hours parked up in his truck, gazing at the sea whilst smoking a variety of legal things. He looked rough as a bag of oysters elbows, but turned out to be very interesting. He was a sixty-something Vietnam veteran who was living in free accomodation courtesy of the Veterans Association and proudly told us about his recent purchases of an electric bike and iphone because he ‘had nothing else to spend his money on’. Not sure that’s how it’s meant to work, but who am I? He had some (mostly) very sensible opinions on a very wide variety of topics and was obviously usually a bit bereft of stimulating conversation. We were there for a while. Eventually we managed to extract ourselves and continued onto the beach to walk home. This took longer than planned as the sand was quite deep and soft but we made it in the end. Quite the work out. I finished the day with a video meeting with our NZ accountant. Life on the road, 2021 style.

The next morning we were on the move again, but not before we did the laundry. Those in the know will know how satisfying a task this is when you are on the road. It is not a chore, it is pure joy! The other task, which always falls to me rather than Nick is ‘The Dump’. This is not so joyful, but equally satisfying. Over the years I have perfected the dark art of ‘waste management’. Get it wrong or cut corners and a good day can quickly become a bad one. I am the High Priestess of the Tanks, and don’t let Nick near them. He finished the laundry.

The journey to our next stop was pretty short but along some more amazing coastline. We bade farewell to Oregon and crossed into California. The border is unusual in the US, in that it is manned. We were asked if we had any fruit. Yes, some apples. Did we buy them from a grocery store or harvest them from our own garden. Bought them. We were granted admission. New Zealand-style biosecurity this aint.

11th Nov – 3 Dec 2021

Our last trip ended at the end of Sept 2019 and we left the USA planning to return in May 2020. Well, we all know by now that life can quickly turn into a sh*t show and the best laid plans can be packed into a cannon and blasted off into oblivion. The world got Covid and we all had to stay in. By ourselves. For ages.

Nick & I chose the eve of a global pandemic to relocate from NZ back to the UK and the USA, along with many countries, shut its borders to visitors in March 2020. We couldn’t get back and Tin Can Travelling was put on hold, indefinitely. We settled in, made an unplanned house purchase near my folks, supporting each other in a bubble and we killed time doing home improvements, gardening, walking our local countryside, creating interesting meals, making cocktails and watching Netflix. We stayed safe and well, got vaccinated as soon as we could, and waited. Life for us was not bad. Just a bit boring.

We waited. Continued paying our storage fees and waited. Finally, after more than two years of being away and a lot of world-wide ups & downs, news & non-news, facts & figures, protests & heroism, fatigue, heartbreak, triumph, successes, failures, frustration and joy, we are back in the USA. The American drawbridge was lowered on 8th Nov, and we returned on the 11th. Life has started to go on. It is not as certain as it was, but we have insurance, boosters, masks, a healthy level of caution and a need to get back on the road.

We flew into the Pacific NorthWest on an atmospheric river, touching down in Seattle in heavier than normal pouring rain and were astounded to be standing outside the terminal building a mere 30 mins later (and that included a trip to the loo). It was a relief to take our masks off after 15 hours of travel. Immigration, baggage claim and customs had been uncharacteristically speedy. Hardly any of the usual grilling and our chap didn’t even glance at any of the Very Important Paperwork that we had spent days obsessively collecting and that I was expectantly clutching. Vaccination certificates and PCR tests? Paff. Come on in!

For the next 4-5 days we were guests of Dean & Jill at their place in Edmonds, a coastal suburb of North Seattle. We spent a lot of that time chatting, eating and drinking and battling the twin monsters of insomnia and jet-lag. Mask wearing indoors in public places is still required and respected here and most venues were checking for proof of vaccination, making it feel much safer than the free-for-all that we left in the UK. A lot of restaurants have outdoor dining with heaters and even with the ongoing rain it was quite cozy. After dinner one evening, between downpours, we walked down to the jetty by the marina to witness an unusual spectacle. Every inch of the railings was filled by hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder, fishing lines with glowing lures dangling into the water. The air was filled with the exhaust fumes of countless small petrol generators that were powering powerful arc lamps that lit the sea below. This was squid fishing! It was noisy, smelly and crowded and everyone was having a ball.

One of our days here saw us take to the water in a small ex-commercial fishing trawler, the Cape Decision. Its owner, Dean’s uncle, spends his summers up in Alaska on it, recreationally fishing. Dean & Jill had volunteered to bring it home for him to Seattle at the end of the season. Their trip had taken just under a month, and in an alternate reality was one that we had discussed doing with them in 2020. The best plans start with a pipe dream…then get cancelled due to global pandemics… Anyway, the boat needed refuelling and although the fuel dock was only a short trip across the marina it was a great excuse to spend a few hours messing about on the water. We wrapped up warm (although, in retrospect, not warm enough) and having taken on the fuel and two other friends, Rich & Wendy, we set off to Lake Union. Boating is always interesting, but there was something special about chugging around in front of a major city skyline, especially if you add in the coming and goings of float-planes and the odd ‘hot tub boat’. Yup. You can hire a floating hot tub, complete with chimney and small outboard engine and meander around a major boating thoroughfare whilst sous vide-ing yourself with your drunken mates in chilly ambient temperatures. What could go wrong??

Just as hypothermia was getting nicely established in yours truely we tied up at the dock of a fish restaurant that served us a takeout lunch of hot chowder and portions of fish and chips. Some meals just really hit the spot.. I was revived. We continued around to see the local University college football stadium, home to the Huskies, which was just preparing to host a home game. The usual tradition of ‘tailgating’ is elevated here and a significant number of Huskies flag-flying boats were gathering on or near the docks just below the stadium to party, and in lieu of ‘fan buses’ there were several loaded passenger ferries transporting beer drinking game-goers from the city.

Our time in Seattle came to an end, and it was time for us to head over to Wenatchee. This is is the town two and a half hours east of Seattle on the other side of a small mountain range called the Cascades, is where Lori lives and where Big Dave & Tin Can are stored. Dean dropped us at the pick-up point of the minibus shuttle that we had booked, and we said our grateful goodbyes. The seating in the bus was a snug affair, but all were masked and the driver took our minds off the proximity of our fellow travellers by driving like a getaway driver. We arrived in good time and in one piece. Seattle seems a million miles away once you get here. The mountains soak up all the rain and Wenatchee is a veritable desert. The town is divided into two halves by the mighty Columbia River and is surrounded by some very lovely large hills.

Lori, our friend and all round Good Egg was not here. She is, rather sensibly, spending the winter down in the warmth of Palm Desert, Southern California. She generously was letting us stay in her home in her absence, but it would not be free for 3 days, because her generosity is not limited to just us. We were happy to have our first few days here in a hotel in town. Having collected our seriously mediocre hire car, a Nissan Versa saloon, we collected our rig keys and guff and headed up the hill to the storage unit to see what state BD & TC were in. We needed to know what we were dealing with.

We rolled up the large unit door, and there they were, just as we had left them. They looked brilliant. We were 99.9% sure that Big Dave’s batteries (he needs two) would be flat as flukes, but there was still a tiny glimmer of hope as we turned the ignition. Obviously nothing happened. We were unfortunately not at this stage the proud owners of a set of jump leads and nor was the only other person on the premises. We made the 6 mile roundtrip to the nearest auto parts store, and armed with our new purchase, headed back. The previously maligned Nissan Versa was given an opportunity to save its reputation. We connected them up, let the Versa run for 15 minutes, then tried Big Dave again. He started! What a relief. There may have been a bit of joyful dancing in the twilight. Now we knew he was start-able we could relax. We went back to town , checked into our hotel and headed out to a local brewery for dinner and celebratory beers.

The next morning we returned to the storage unit. The plan was to off-load Tin Can up here and take Big Dave to a mechanic in town for a service and to get a few things fixed. Before we off-loaded we opened up and got inside Tin Can. All was perfect. Not even a slightly fusty smell. Amazing after two years. We grabbed a few things, closed up and dropped TC into an outside space that the owner of the storage place had let us use. Spirits were high, but unfortunately it was not to last. Big Dave, who had been running all this time, suddenly died. Versa was unable to revive him despite multiple attempts. The place was deserted. After an hour or so of considering our options whilst being very grumpy with each other- exacerbated by thirst and hunger-a chap arrived in a big truck to drop off a trailer. He was kind enough to help us start Big Dave again. Sprits were raised up again. We just needed to get him to town. I drove him around the storage facility for a while and then, as town is down a steep hill, I checked the brakes. This killed him again. This time it felt terminal. Unfortunately he had conked out right in the middle of a roadway so we (Nick mostly) pushed him to the side. He is a leviathan (he tells me…)He probably is actually as Big D weighs 4.5 tonnes. We were left with no choice but to arrange a tow truck to take him to the mechanic. Unfortunately the original (modestly priced) outfit that we had been in touch with had been a bit unhelpful and sounded like they were too busy to be interested in our business. The main Chevy service centre in town was a completely different story and we ended up taking him there, resigned to spending a bit more. A bit depressingly Big Dave’s first miles of this trip looked like this.

36 hours later we had the verdict of the diagnostic foray into Big Dave’s ailments. He had lots wrong with him. He is, after all, no spring chicken. It was going to be time consuming and expensive, but all fixable. We briefly looked at the option of cutting our losses and buying a more modern truck but in the current climate there is very low inventory of vehicles and values have gone up significantly. A fixed Big Dave will be worth more than we paid for him 4 years ago. We gave the go ahead for the work. Without him, the Tin Can don’t travel.

In all it took two weeks for him to get fixed. We had another couple of nights in our hotel before we moved into Lori’s place. It was great to get back to a normal ‘at home’ environment and home cooking. Burgers and fries are all well and good, but we don’t want to add a travel bulge to a lockdown bulge. We went to ground a bit, opting not to stray very far. We had thousands of miles of travel coming up and were happy to stay put in the short term. There is a great 10 mile paved circular river-side trail that goes right past Lori’s house so we did some walking and cycling most days. After some early snow which quickly melted the weather was mostly cold and bright and dry, but with some bizarrely high temperatures in the second week. We had three very enjoyable dinners with Jan, Lori’s friend and next door neighbour who we had met before. And there was A LOT of Netflix in our lives. We started watching Seinfeld from the beginning. It is an epic opus of comedy (some of which definitely wouldn’t pass today’s standards of acceptability) and we whiled away many amusing hours binge watching that and many other things. Thanksgiving came and went. We half-heartedly joined in with a turkey drumstick each for dinner. These were very disappointing. We should have known better. We opted not to recreate one of the most awful sounding traditional Thanksgiving dishes: Sweetened mashed sweet potato topped with marshmallows. What the…? We did brave the local Macy’s on ‘Black Friday’. It was pretty busy but we didn’t get trampled in stampede of possessed bargain hunters. Nick did get a pair of good jeans for $33.

Finally, Big Dave was discharged from hospital. It was a very big bill and ran to 4 pages of work on the invoice. He was practically a new machine. Like the ‘Six Million Dollar Man’, literally and metaphorically. We Uber’d to the service centre, drove him back to the house, threw the bikes in the back, drove up the hill, loaded Tin Can back on (first time success, no marital fallouts) and put the bikes on the rack. I swept out the storage unit, handed back the keys to the office and then we drove the whole sharabang back down the hill to the RV service centre. Now Tin Can needed a few things doing that were going to take a day or so. We cycled home and were back by 12pm. In the Hampson world of late starts and slow days this was officially classed as ‘a busy morning’. We were making progress.

Eventually, 24 hours later, we had collected them headed back to Lori’s. Finally our ducks were all back in their very short line. Our final couple of days here was spent de-winterising Tin Can, checking all the systems, rediscovering all the guff that we had left here, moving in all our guff that we had brought with us and all the guff that we had bought since we arrived and cleaning ourselves out of Lori’s. On 3rd Dec we were finally on our way! Unfortunately this was briefly via the RV service centre again as we had discovered a moderate, but not disastrous, leak from a water pipe associated with the outdoor shower during the de-winterising, and then half an hour later we were finally, finally on our our way.

12th – 30th September 2019

Firstly, I apologise for the two month delay in getting around to publishing this final post. I guess that I just ran out of steam and post-travel life just took over. I hope that you can retain the enthusiasm for reading this last post, now that I have finally summoned the enthusiasm to write it. If you can remember, we had just left the Rockies……

Our first stop in British Columbia was in the delightful town with the first-rate name of Revelstoke. This is home to about 6500 people and is situated on the Columbia River, miles from anywhere, but connected to the rest of the world by the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the Trans-Canadian Highway. The town is surrounded by mountains, sits at the base of its own eponymous National Park (a ‘hikers paradise’), has a nearby fairly sizeable ski resort (which boasts North America’s ‘greatest vertical’ at 1,713 metres), and boasts a distillery, some shops and restaurants, a museum or two and an RV park a short 2km from its centre. This seemed a winning combination of attributes and it was also perfectly placed as a stop-off for us. We decided to spend five nights here as we had some time in hand. The other thing that Revelstoke has to be proud of is its location in the middle of the world’s only inland temperate rain forest. As fascinating as this fact may be, the operative word in this statement is ‘rain’. Having had more than three months of good summer weather, with only occasional and mostly night-time rain, Revelstoke was wet. Wet. Wet. Wet. Before the rain arrived we managed a walk into town to procure well overdue haircuts and even sat outside to enjoy a coffee. During this brief sunny and dry interlude we got talking to a couple who also lived in New Zealand having relocated from the UK and who were travelling through Canada in a car. We had much in common on paper but they seemed to be intent on being contrary on all subjects. We drank up and hastened away before either we both felt the urge to jump from the nearby bridge or push them off it. We had a very nice lunch in a recommended bar (popular with the Après Ski crowd in the winter) and stocked up with off-the-wall DVDs before heading home. It stayed dry long enough for a short pre-dinner campfire, and then IT arrived. The rain. 72 hours of solid, unrelenting rain. Nick managed to not leave Tin Can for nearly 48 of them until I instructed him that he had to brave the 20m dash and go and have a shower. I, at least, did the laundry and had a series of interesting conversations with fellow campers amid the machines and lint. There was a siege mentality brewing. Two thirds of the campsite was shut as many pitches were muddy quagmires and unusable. There were some miserable faces as the owners turned away RV after RV; people who had been driving all day through the monsoon and looked like they just wanted to stop the bus and start drinking. So after three days later the rain finally passed on, the sun came out again and peace and quiet was restored. Rain is very noisy on the roof and had been contributing to the madness slightly.

We emerged into the world like butterflies from chrysalises and cycled back into town. After a quick visit to the Railway Museum we went for a walk to take in the historic ski jump that put Revelstoke on the map in the ski world. The original jump, appropriately called Big Hill, was built in 1916 and was a natural jump, basically a very steep hill with a narrow and exhausting path to climb up followed by a death defying hurtle down the run before the jump, the glide and the (hopefully safe) landing. By 1933 four world records had been set on the hill and in 1948 it was upgraded and renamed after Nels Nelsen, a local boy and jumping superstar. In its heyday it was well and truly on the ski jump tournament map and a mecca for the brave/foolhardy, despite never having a lift. It hosted its last competition in 1975, after which it closed and the Trans Canadian highway was carved through the landing zone. Now it plays host to a short and challenging walking trail from town which winds up the same route as the jumpers would have taken, carrying skis. It was hard enough carrying ourselves. The jump hill and judges tower are slowly being reclaimed by nature as trees fill in the gaps in the rainforest where the slope used to be. At the top there is still a fantastic view down into the valley below and a truely low tech ‘virtual reality’ experience of what it would be like to launch from the base of the jump is provided by ‘Nels’ Knickers’, a mould of his ski-suit leaning out over the hill into which one can insert oneself if one should desire. I did. Vertiginous Nick did not. Walking down was less strenuous but steep enough to remain perilous.

Our next stop after Revelstoke was the town of Vernon. The road wound through the beautiful but ever dwindling mountains, alongside lakes and the ever-present Trans Canadian Railway. In Vernon we had arranged to stay with a couple called Mark and Dawn and their two young boys. Mark is second cousin to our very good friend Ed, and although we had met them at Ed’s nuptials 15 years ago (a fact proven by a photo of the four of us together that Mark unearthed from somewhere) we were essentially complete strangers. That aside, we had directions to their lovely home, were trusted to let ourselves in before everyone else arrived home and were hosted with real warmth and instant friendship for two days.

Their home is gorgeous, overlooking a large lake and surrounding hills. Vernon sits at the northern end of the Okanagan Valley, wine country. Dawn kindly took us on a vineyard tour, with her delightful mother as a ride-along and we bought them lunch along the way, which seemed only fair. Both evenings were filled with good food, moderate (to slightly excessive) amounts of great wine and lots of easy chat. By the time we woke up on our last day here, the household had all left for their day’s endeavours. We packed up and let ourselves out. Our next stop was a few hours away, the Canadian border town of Osoyoos, gateway back to America.

The drive to Osoyoos was stunning. The road followed the Okanagen Valley south, passing flat calm lakes surrounded by soft hillscapes and many vineyards. The one night that we had booked here was to be our last night in Canada and the last night sleeping in Tin Can on this trip. I had carefully calculated the number of days that we had to spend in Canada and out of the USA in order to remain below the threshold for becoming a US tax resident. 20th September was the earliest day we could re-enter. That was tomorrow.

We had a perfectly manicured concrete site in a lakeside park mainly populated by seasonal campers many with fancy set-ups involving gazebos, decks, sheds, plant pots etc. We went for a stroll around the park and along the lakeshore in the afternoon. It wasn’t warm enough to consider a swim in the lake, but it looked lovely. We had a random encounter with a fellow camper and his large black rabbit in the evening. He was taking it for a walk after he got home from work. It was just hopping around with him, not needing a lead. I made the mistake of going to chat with him (because it was so random and I needed to meet the rabbit…) and then had to endure far more idle rabbit-associated chit-chat than I was prepared for. I suspect he was a bit devoid of human company. Man cannot talk with rabbit alone.

Crossing borders is alway a little stressful and this was the first time we were going to try and get back into the US with the rig. We would have to declare our alcohol and most fresh food is not allowed across. We had a classic ‘fridge scrapings’ last meal, a digestive treat assembled from all and anything in the fridge. My mother’s name for these creations is ‘canal-bank stew’ which has its origins in the ‘last supper’ of a couple of canal boat holidays that we took in my childhood. The end result is varied, but always edible. (Those that complain go hungry.) Alternative names could be ‘like-it-or-lump-it lasagne’, ‘peculiar pie’ or ‘ indiscriminate fried rice’. We did a pretty good job of eating up. Only a small amount went in the bin after we had made a packed lunch for our journey the next day. There was no reason why we wouldn’t be allowed back into the USA the next day, but despite that I didn’t sleep very well and was glad to be on our way in the morning.

The day started with a comprehensive tank washout in preparation for Tin Can going back into storage. Living with tanks for waste ‘grey’ water and ‘black’ toilet waste is a fact of life on the road and one that we live quite happily with. (For some reason, managing the tanks is my job. Not quite sure how that came to pass.) Aside from some isolated ‘fallout’ incidents associated with not having a baldy clue what we were doing in the beginning, rapidly learning a few idiosyncrasies of the camper’s drainage and the infamous ‘poopsicle’ incident of New Year in Moab, Utah, it is a fairly simple process that nowadays doesn’t cause tears or dirty feet. I was, however, looking forward to getting back to living with mains drainage again. Tanks done we hit the road and ten minutes later we were at the border.

Passports and Visas: In order (We skirted around the ‘homeless and jobless’ situation. That tends to trigger some unwanted scrutiny by border officials)

Wine beer and spirits ready to declare and pay duty on: They didn’t even ask.

Camper inspection to ensure no concealed humans or animals: Passed

Ham and egg sandwiches in picnic: Permitted

Four elderly cherry tomatoes in picnic: CONFISCATED.

We surrendered the tomatoes to an armed border officer who breezily mentioned, whilst scrutinising my passport, that her mother was born on the same day as me, and feeling old and tomato-less, with imminent scurvy upon us, we re-entered the US of A and continued our drive down the amazingly beautiful Okanagan Valley.

Our time in Canada had been a very lovely and stress-less eight weeks of cruising through some of the world’s most beautiful landscapes, meeting some great people and consuming excessive quantities of poutine, but we were strangely pleased to be back in America.

As we travelled south through Eastern Washington the wine gave way to fruit trees groaning with ripe apples and three hours later, after eating our final picnic on the shores of the mighty Columbia River at Brewster, we arrived at our destination, East Wenatchee. Apple Capital of the world. It wasn’t the apples that brought us here. This is where Lori lives, and this is where Big Dave and Tin Can will be living for the next six months too.

Our ability to easily undertake our adventures in America has been entirely down to the friendship and support of our friends Lori and Dean. With Lori’s help we had managed to find suitable storage in East Wenatchee and the next few days were set aside for cleaning and packing up. We had some beautiful sunny and dry weather which was perfect. With the rig parked on her driveway we set to work.

Nick did the outside, I the inside. A good division of labour and actually quite nice to have some ‘time apart’ for a few hours. Our storage this time was not climate controlled, so prepare for the inevitable sub-freezing temperatures of the forthcoming winter we had to winterise Tin Can, emptying all the fluids from the tanks and pipework and flushing through several gallons of pretty pink, non toxic anti-freeze solution. That job done we did a final close-up, and headed up the hill to the storage unit, with Lori following on. It was an anxious moment as we were not 100% sure that we would fit in. The unit door was 12ft high, and we had done an ‘accurate’ measurement a couple of months previously that made us 11ft 10in. It was going to be very tight. We had to find a long pole to hold the roller door fully up and in the end we fitted in with a mere (slightly stressful) 1 inch of clearance over the air-con unit. A close call. So Big Dave and Tin Can were successfully tucked up into their next hibernation nest and thus ended our third tincantravels adventure.

Bidding farewell to our trusty chariot is always a bit poignant so Lori cheered us up with a trip to the nearby gun range. What better way to take our minds off things than furnishing us with a 9mm hand gun each and letting us fire off a few hundred 9mm rounds. It worked a treat and was another American Cultural Experience checked off. We were also pretty good for a pair of Limeys.

After spending a few days with Lori, who constantly humbles us with her hospitality, generosity and friendship, we took the shuttle bus over the Cascade Mountains to spend some time with Dean in Seattle before we flew out. The highlight of these few days was a spectacular twenty four hours during which he took us to visit his family holiday cottage on San Juan Island, about 130km to the north. Now this would have been a fantastic trip by car and ferry, but instead Dean, who has been flying for decades and recently obtained his commercial licence, charted a Cesna and flew us there.

What a treat! After a 45 minute flight we landed in the tiny town of Friday Harbor, walked 500m to the island’s car rental outfit, procured the smallest four-seater whizz-bang car and drove ten minutes for lunch. A plain old cafe meal, this was not to be. It was a magical place called Wescott Bay Shellfish company, a destination establishment housed in a wooden clad building, overlooking a rocky sheltered bay. Here they sell you fresh plump oysters by the dozen that you shuck yourself and then either eat raw, or dot with blue cheese or flavoured butter and then cook on the numerous hot charcoal grills scattered around the garden. Crusty bread and bottles of rosé are also for sale and this made for a blimin’ marvellous and memorable lunch.

The day continued with a stroll around the Roach Harbor. This small bay has a sizeable but picturesque marina stuffed full of pleasure boats of all shapes and budgets, but mostly large and impressive. The grocery store sold us the makings for our dinner and we had sunset drinks on the small deck at the cottage, gazing out at the bay. It was a beautiful spot.

In the morning we went back to Roache Harbor to have brunch at the harbour-side cafe, took one look at the queue which snaked out the door and down the dock, went back to the shop to buy bacon, eggs and bread, and went home again. Far preferable than waiting for an hour. We cooked, ate, cleaned up, dropped the car back, walked back to the air strip, jumped back in the plane and flew home. It was such a fantastic end to our trip, and Thank You Dean!

A day or so later he continued to be a ‘jolly good friend’ and dropped us off at the international airport so we could catch our flight out. I had carefully calculated this meant that we had spent 112 days in the USA in 2019, our maximum allowance to stay non-tax resident. This left no scope for a cancelled or delayed flight, but we left on time on a flight back to the UK via Iceland. The captain suggested that we leave our window shades open overnight and we were rewarded with a short display of the Northern Lights. Now that really was quite a finale.

So we are in the UK for the winter, making plans for the next trip which will start in May sometime.

Alaska is calling!

29th Aug – 12th Sept

Ah! To the mountains!

Think Canada and images of snow capped, pine clad peaks spring to mind. We have been in the country for forty days and seen barely an undulation in the land and finally there they were. The Rockies. In fact we have crossed the Rockies twice already on our travels. Once through northern USA in 2017, and earlier on this trip in Colorado. Somehow they are more impressive up here. Crisper, pointier, more beautiful. Perhaps that is seeing them through our prairie saturated eyes. 

From the East there are three entry points into the National Parks of Banff & Jasper which cover most of the Rockies mountain range in Canada. The most popular ones are the northerly entrance that comes from Edmonton into Jasper and the southerly one from Calgary into Banff town. The road through the National Parks that connects these two towns is one of the most scenic drives in the world. The third road comes from the town of Red Deer, entering at a junction about halfway along the scenic parkway. This road is called the David Thompson Highway, named not for a French fur trapper for a change, but for a British-Canadian fur-trader, surveyor and cartographer who beat a path through the mountains here.  Overall, David Thompson travelled over 90,000 km throughout North America, mapping 4.9 million square km, making him one of the greatest ever land geographers who ever lived that you’ve never heard of. This was the road we were on, a beautiful, deserted highway, far from the madding crowd. 

Our next campsite, the thematically named David Thompson Resort, was about 40km from the National Park gates. Stopping here was not due to any great distance travelled but due to the logistics of trying to find a campsite at short notice over the Labor Day weekend.  For all the non-North Americans amongst you, this is a three day weekend at the start of September which is summer’s last hurrah. Campsites in the National Park are booked months, if not a year, in advance and we were lucky to find a roost for these few days at this privately owned park on the park outskirts. It was wooded, spacious, on the edge of a turquoise lake and would be a very fine place to sit-out the melée of the holiday weekend.

This is bear country and there are strict rules about managing rubbish, not storing food or coolers/chilly bins outside and generally keeping a tidy campsite. Even a barbecue with meat remnants on it is a bear magnet. This apparently had been a bumper year for sightings, and we could believe it. I took this photo from the campsite entrance one late afternoon. He was massive for a black bear, and happily for us, stayed the other side of the road.

Our main adventure from here was to drive up into the National Park and north to the Columbia Icefields, an area covered in ice and glaciers about an hour and a quarter away. We had made a booking to do a tour on the Saturday, but having looked at the weather forecast (good Friday, poor Saturday) and having spoken to the campsite owner about how much busier it was going to be at the weekend, we hurriedly re-booked for later that day, Friday, did a rapid off-load of Tin Can from Big Dave and hit the road. It was a stunning and sunny drive up to the icefields, which span the Continenal Divide and have feet in both the Banff and Jasper National Parks. Covering about 325 square km, the ice is between 100 and 365 m in depth and feeds six major glaciers. One of these terminates close to the parkway road and is called the Athabasca Glacier.

This is the one onto which you can take a tour in a fleet of custom ‘snow coaches’. Now the road to get here here was not busy, but when we arrived at the visitors centre where the tours start, it was bedlam with seemingly thousands of people milling around. This is a ‘must-do’ on the Rockies Tour Trail, and it seemed that everyone ‘was-doing’. If this was a quieter day, I was glad that we had rebooked. The tour up onto the glacier involved a normal coach ride up to the glacier edge, then a change onto one of the impressive glacier-going snow coaches. This crawled up over the lateral moraine (massive pile of rock debris along the side of a glacial retreat path) and onto the glacier where it stopped for 20 minutes for us all to get out, take pictures and get cold. We then got back on the bus and retraced our steps. It was interesting. We found a Kiwi flag to pose with. We learned some glacial facts. It was overpriced. What we hadn’t realised, due to the lack of information on-line, that it was possible to just park and walk the 2km to the glacial terminal face. Same view. Fewer unsatisfactory encounters with other humans who have a complete lack of social awareness. Free. Never mind. We have had so few disappointing experiences on our wanderings that we were happy to suck it up. The second part of the tour was a bus transfer to a cantilevered ‘sky walk’ platform that is suspended out over a ravine. Impressive engineering, disconcerting wobble, nerve wracking glass floor. Nick decided he didn’t need to experience it. I probably didn’t either, but did it anyway.

On our other few days here we did a couple of amazing walks from the campsite. One was along the shore of the fantastic lake nearby, and another was up along a river gorge about 2km down the road. In both cases the signposting was very characteristically Canadian, ie non existent, and we navigated by a combination of verbal directions from locals and optimism. It was a little off piste in parts but we made it home successfully both days and we didn’t have to contend with any bears. Which is always a good thing.

The campsite had a mini-golf course. We played. I won again. 3:0 winning streak for me.

From David Thompson Resort we headed into the National Park and south to Lake Louise Village, a very, very lovely two hour drive through the mountains. It was busier, but not tediously so, and we did not get held up in one of the road’s notorious ‘bear-jams’, where a wildlife sighting stops traffic. However, our taste of crowds to come came when we tried to stop at a picturesque lake along the route. Our plans were thwarted by the huge volumes of like-minded tourists. The carpark was full and overflowing with people parking all the way down both sides of the access road. We had to squeeze our way through the tight carpark to turn around, navigating some epic pot-holes that threatened to kill our suspension on the way, and then we drove on. Being able to enjoy this popular part of the world was going to involve some better planning on our part and possibly being more relaxed about being a part of the hoards.

Lake Louise needs little introduction. It is the jewel in the crown of the Rockies National Parks and has been luring people here since the first little hut was built on its shores in 1890. Visitor numbers jumped soon after when the Canadian Pacific Railway was built through the Rockies with a station at the bottom of the hill, in Lake Louise Village. Over the years the hut morphed through several incarnations into the current monster 548 roomed iconic, but honestly a bit plain, Fairmont Chateau Hotel and now the Lake can see up to 15,000 visitors per day in peak season. The village of Lake Louise is about 5km away, down a winding road, and is home to a Visitors’ Centre, a couple of smaller hotels, a few cafés, a bike shop, a small grocery store, petrol station and an enormous campsite.

The campsite had two parts. The ‘hard-sided’ camper section and the ‘soft-sided’ section. Because of the number of grizzly bears in this area, it was compulsory for anyone with a tent, or a camper with any canvas walls, to stay in an area surrounded by a six foot tall, bear-proof, electrified fence and electrified cattle-grid. It was a bit like a reverse a Jurassic Park. This dangerous wildlife issue does add a layer of adventure to camping trips in this part of the world. Getting cold and wet is not the worst that can happen during a night under canvas in bear country. Our stay here was an unusually long six nights. This area is understandably on the well-beaten path of the rental motor-home trail and most folk only stop for a couple of nights. Our site was o.5km away from the shower block and 1.5km from the village (which was the only place that we had access to internet) so the bikes came in very handy. We had five full days here and for a couple of those we did very little in the way of sightseeing, catching up with admin instead. We treated the bikes to a long overdue service at the bike rental place. They have been strapped to the back of Tin Can and carted around a whole continent over the past three years so they were desperately in need of some TLC. We now have smooth gear changes and functional brakes again. We spent more than several hours sat in the visitors centre using the wifi and, with the invaluable assistance of Nick’s brother Mike, managed to buy a car in the UK, ready for our arrival. The internet (when wifi is available) is amazing.

The traffic situation at Lake Louise is dire at this time of year and parking is at a premium. Everyone tries to drive up to the lake, but the car park up there is usually full by 9am. There is a shuttle bus system, but it only runs from the overflow carpark about 5km the other side of the village and queues build up quickly with some people having to wait 1-2 hours for a seat on a bus. The only sensible option was to walk up there, which is how we got our first glimpse of this utterly gorgeous lake. There are two trails up from the village: a steeper walking trail which is about 2.8km long and a less steep biking trail which is about 4.5km and follows the old tram line route. This was a trolley that ferried the train passengers of the late 19th and early 20th century from the railway station up to the lake shore. We walked up in near solitude and arrived at the lake shore to where the crowds were. Having dodged the selfie takers, the tripod wielders, the slow wanderers, the ‘walking four-abreast-ers’ and the ‘posing-for-a-pouty-Instagram-photo-takers’, we took our place on the shore and marvelled. It really is a special place. The water is glassy calm, aquamarine, enclosed by steep rocky mountain sides and dotted with people cruising around lazily in red rental canoes. The view is up into a glacial plain.

It is obvious why so many people make the effort to come here. The Chateau rises up at its downstream end and although it is statuesque, I don’t think that it is a building of any great beauty. We followed the human traffic along the flat, 2km lakeside walk to the top end of the lake which is fed by a glacial meltwater stream. Here we found a quiet-ish rock on which to perch and eat our picnic. Our lunch-time entertainment included watching a strapping young man peel off (most of) his clothes in order to dive into the freezing lake so he could have his photo taken with the Chateau in the background. He was out pretty sharpish, but probably still slower than the time it took his lady-friend to upload the shot to Instagram .(Sorry, too bitchy??) That, and the cheeky ground squirrels who invited themselves to lunch and weren’t taking ‘no, go away’ for an answer. They freaked me out. We turned around and headed home, taking the longer route on the bike trail this time, having trundled a respectable 15km in total.

Lake Louise Ski Area is the second largest in Canada (apparently) and sits on the opposite side of the valley to Lake Louise. Its gondola runs in the summer for hikers and sightseers and there is a jolly nice restaurant at the top too. We caught the free shuttle from the village to the base station and went up the hill. This is also grizzly bear country and there is another electric fence protecting the gondola upper station, the restaurant and the wildlife interpretive centre that is also situated here. Hiking involved letting ourselves out of the protected area without electrocuting ourselves and doing a short but steep hike (partly up the Mens’ World Cup downhill ski slope) out to a lookout point. The view was amazing, across back to the lake and I built the obligatory Inukshuk.

This may be a bit of cultural appropriation, but I love making them in places like this, looking over epic views. I named this one Louise. One very fine meal and some very fine sangria cocktails on the sunny deck of the White Horn restaurant later we headed back down the hill. No bears had been seen, but we didn’t really care by this stage.

We had gorgeous weather during our stay in Lake Louise, but we knew it wouldn’t last long. Our last day here was the final beautiful day forecast for a while and I talked Nick into another trip back up to the lakeshore to walk to up to a lookout overlooking lake and chateau. Unfortunately, the only realistic way to get there was by bike, a hot 45 minute slog up the 3% grade of the old tramline. This was followed by a 30 min steep walk up to the lookout. The view was good, the ride down the hill a dream! Dinner earned.

The old railway station of Lake Louise Village is still functional for the dropping off and picking up of passengers travelling on some train tours to the area but is mostly now a restaurant in a museum. We cycled the 3km out to it for a meal on our last night, and sat out on the deck right by the tracks. Adding hugely to the ambiance -but perhaps not so much to the peace and quiet of the evening -a couple of beautifully restored old passenger trains stopped at the station whilst we were there.

The first was a tour train which disgorged enough passengers to fill four waiting coaches, but the second was a very special, privately owned, luxury, Orient Express style, eighteen cabin train that stopped for about half an hour. We discovered from the staff that is available to charter for a mere CA$300,000 per day. Bargain. Apparently it was hosting someone famous but no-one was talking and we couldn’t see anyone through the windows. The food and wine were good, the excitement of the trains got us talking to nearly all of our fellow diners on the deck and we rode home in the dark with head torches strapped to our handlebars and fingers crossed for no bear encounters. It was bear-less, but freezing.

Apropos of nothing, this rig pulled into camp whilst we were there. He was taking the ‘toy collection on the trailer’ to the next level. It could have been very cool, but unfortunately it was a shame that he was a miserable b@#$%@&d with no sense of humour. Sir, if you insist on dragging a helicopter around behind your RV, please be prepared for people to be interested, want to engage with you and take a couple of photos…

After leaving Lake Louise we had a long and arduous journey to the town of Banff. Just kidding. It’s only 40 minutes away. Here our camping trip was going to have a four day suspension and we were going to be staying ‘on dry land’ in a hotel condo with our friend Lori travelling from Washington to join us. After the obligatory trip to the laundry and the supermarket we checked in, found space for Big Dave and Tin Can on the edge of the carpark and we ‘packed’ for our stay. What I mean is that we carried armfuls and shopping bags full of what seemed like half the total contents of the camper into the condo in about fifty-three trips across the aforementioned carpark. Staying in self catering accomodation whilst having access to all your worldly possessions a 30 second walk away is both very handy and a bit counterproductive. The condo was lovely. We had an enormous bed in a bedroom four times the size of TC and there was even a bath. Not a very big bath, granted, but that’s not the point. The pièce de résistance of the place was a real open fire with free access to all the firewood we needed. What a treat. Needless to say, we lit it early each evening and kept it raging whether needed or not. That’s what opening windows are for, right?

Our accomodation was about 1.5km up the hill out of Banff centre. An easy walk down, and an even easier bus ride back up. The hotel gave us complimentary transit passes for the duration of our stay, meaning that Lori’s hire car didn’t need to move for a couple of days. The first day we dodged the occasional rain and walked into town. We cruised the ‘strip’, checking out some of the plethora of clothes and outdoor gear shops, walked up to the far more impressive Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel to be nosey, walked back along the river walk and then had lunch at Banff Ave Brewing Company.

The bus took us home. The next day was a bit wetter, but we dressed appropriately and headed out on foot from the hotel and did a lovely trail walk, mostly downhill, back into town another way. On this walk we came close to a fantastic 7 point bull elk who seemed particularly unfazed by us or the nearby road. We gave him a wide berth as it is rutting season and we didn’t want him to get his knickers in a twist (North American: panties in a bunch) over us. We got the bus back up the hill again.

On our last day we got an early start and went back to Lake Louise in the car. We wanted Lori to see it and we had saved one of the good walks to do with her. The sun was nearly shining after a couple of rainy days and we were quietly hopeful that we would be able to snag a coveted parking space near the lake shore We were and we did, but it was one of the last spots, so we were lucky. The weather perfect for our planned hike – an 4km trip up from the top end of the lake into the Plain Of Six Glaciers – it was cool and dry with clouds moodily hugging the gullies and peaks.

This was one of two walks from the chateau which boasted a special destination: a tea shop. The other, at Lake Agnes, was shorter and apparently much more popular, making our choice for us. The walk started with the same 2km lakeshore stroll, dodging the meanderers, then we hit the hill.

It was a slow, steady, moderately travelled route and we got warmer and warmer as we climbed, the sun making an appearance on and off. About an hour and a half later, weary and hungry, we arrived at the most beautiful sight to behold – a Swiss chalet style log building nestled in some trees. It was built in 1927 by Swiss guides and was a rest stop for mountaineers heading up into Abbots Pass.

It has been in the same family since 1960 and is run with no modern amenities of electricity or running water. Dry supplies and propane are flown in once a season by helicopter, otherwise fresh goods are hiked in by staff who stay up at the nearby huts for five days at a time, hiking out the rubbish with them on the way down. The menu is simple hearty, vegetarian fayre and it was fabulous. What a spot! We headed back down to the rumble of an ice avalanche across the narrow valley.

We finished our Banff sojourn and our time with Lori with a fantastic meal at a steak restaurant called Saltlick. Our server was a Kiwi with a very dry sense of humour so we had entertainment as well as excessive sustenance. We have actually eaten out quite infrequently this trip, but this week had seen three blowout meals. Back to home cooking next week. Lori headed off in the morning, we ferried our many possessions back into TC, put everything away and then embarked on our last day of mountain roads, a drive back up past Lake Louise to follow the Trans-Canadian Highway west. This road took us out of Banff National Park, seamlessly into Yoho National Park and out of Alberta, into British Columbia. With this came another time change as we re-entered Pacific Time Zone and we cruised on, climbing into, and rolling down from our last big climb through Glacier National Park. Next stop, Revelstoke.

18th – 29th August 2019

Our last stretch along the Yellow Head Highway brought us from our carpark in Lloydminster into Alberta proper and on to Edmonton, Alberta’s capital city. About a million people live here, compared to its largest city, Calgary, which is home to about 1.5 million. Edmonton itself is not on the usual Canada tourist trail but it had a couple of drawcards for us. Firstly, and peripherally, it is home to North America’s largest shopping mall. This was the biggest in the world when it was built, if you include the attached waterpark and indoor amusement park. Of course China has now built something bigger. Secondly, our visit coincided with the Edmonton Fringe Festival, second largest in the world after Edinburgh. We had found a space in one of our favourite types of park, a city park with easy public transport links to Downtown. The small park is in a small leafy valley and is home to a small ski field in the winter and a bazillion mosquitos in the summer. This, coupled with the close quarters of our fellow campers, meant that we didn’t do much sitting around outside in the evenings. We had four full days here. The first day we decided to visit the famous West Edmonton Mall, which was an easy 6km, single bus ride away. It was, as advertised, enormous. We came; we saw the ice rink, the water park, the sea lion enclosure, the amusement park, the firing range, the cinema, the pirate ship, the hundreds of shops and the three food courts; we conquered a coffee, a lunch and a round of mini-golf (victory to me). We bought nothing. Nothing. I have a master-shopper sister-in-law who will be ashamed of my behaviour. (You know who you are.) Then we got the bus home again. Busy day.

The next three days were spent fringeing. Or is it fringing. I am sure it is not a verb, but it is descriptive as far as made up words are concerned. The Fringe Festival was based in a district called Old Strathcona which is across the river from the CBD. It is a cool, hip, leafy place full of independent businesses and is home to the theatre district. It was a slightly more involved two bus, 10km journey to get there, but navigation was facilitated by a very logical numbered grid street system and some helpful locals on the bus. On the first day we successfully arrived in the right place and scoped out our surroundings. There was a great central hub in a small park with a box-office, beer tent, food trucks, busking areas and there were people and port-a-loos everywhere. The sun was shining and we set about the task of working out what on earth was going on, and what, when and where we would like to see. Our booking methods were fairly haphazard but mainly involved the comedy end of the vast spectrum rather than ‘cutting-edge-one woman- modern-dance-and-poetry-performance’ end.

Day 1 :

We saw a slick five person group doing a very funny sketch show. This theatre had a cool bar with a sun drenched patio. Winner.

Next was a stand up show by a very unusually liberal Kentucky born and bred comedian called Stephen Huff. The show was called ‘Darwin vs Rednecks’ and was very amusing. The venue was a small intimate lecture theatre in the Francophone University campus that was about 2 km from the main hub. There was a shuttle bus, but as it was nice day we decided to walk, underestimating the time needed and the heat, arriving just in time for the start. The fringe has a strict policy of no late-commers, which is great if you are the usually rabidly punctual people that arrive well ahead of schedule and infinitely annoyed by less organised people, rather than the people that dashed into their seats in a sweaty mess remembering why they are usually rabidly punctual. Anyway, he was very very funny, the show was more of an intimate tutorial than a gig and well worth the hustle.

After catching the shuttle back to the hub we visited the beer tent and then had a lovely meal at a restaurant across the road. Our seats were in the window which gave ample opportunity to soak up the weird, the wonderful and the frankly plain normal of the passing Fringe-goers. We opted out of public transport to get home and opted into an Uber.

Day 2 :

A near carbon-copy of the first part of the day to get us to the hub at nearly exactly the same time, about 1pm.

Our first show was another sketch show in the same theatre with the cool bar. Bar still cool, performances, writing and comedy not quite as slick or funny as the first lot.

Show two was a one-man scripted monologue of three interwoven stories delivered over a 90 minute period almost without break or pause. He was very good, funny and talented. The venue was a church, so the posteriors were a little worse for wear after an hour and a half sittingin a pew, and about the only time he left his script was to be amused/shocked by his own utterances of the ‘F’ word in such an ecclesiastical location.

Our last show for the day was back at the Francophone University Campus, and we took the bus. Canada’s Frenchness ebbs as you travel in a westerly direction across the country, but every now and then you find a small oasis of it in unexpected places. We deliberately arrived in more much more characteristic time for our show to give us time for a bite to eat at the small cafe here. There was loads of patio seating, live music and it was another lovely sunny afternoon/evening. I ordered a croissant Croque Monsieur, poutine and two beers in French whilst we listened to jazz before we headed into our show, musing on how little distance and time had passed since we were watching chuckwagon racing and dancing badly to country music only four nights ago. This is the same country, right?? The evening’s show was a cast of three- two men and a woman- who delivered a very slick Sherlock Holmes tale, rotating freely through the roles with only different voices and the passing around of a deer stalker hat to indicate who was playing who at any given time. Clever, talented and far too high brow for us really.

Day 3 :

Originally I had thought that we would explore town on our bikes today, but we were having to much fringey fun, so we got back on the bus for a third time and did it all again.

Our first show was a crazy, bonkers one-woman clown show delivering some off-the-wall sex education and pearls of wisdom in true Fringe Festival style. She was hilarious and very endearing, and I wonder if glittery blue eyebrows and lipstick could be a new look for me? We all learned some stuff in that hour…..

Next we saw a very good improv group do a very amusing show. This stuff can be tedious and embarrassing if not done well, but this came highly recommended and did not disappoint. I have huge admiration for this sort of comedy, but it has to be good.

Our last show of the day was another bonkers offering called ‘Thundercats’. This was a musical delivery of the 1980s/1990s Thundercats cartoon characters in the style of Cats, the musical. There was faceprint, big wigs, leotards and plenty of singing. Not our thing, per se, but it was big and bold, funny and polished, and we really enjoyed it. They sold beer in the foyer too, which helped.

In between these shows, we watched lots of buskers, sampled offerings from numerous food trucks and had a beer or several. A jolly good time was had by both and as we headed on our way the next day we thought that we might quite miss Edmonton, although we had only seen a teeny slice of it really.

Next on the journey was an intriguingly named place called Drumheller. This was a little off our natural westerly route, but sounded worth a detour. It sits south of Edmonton, closer to Calgary, and is a town located down in a valley created by the Red Deer River, a scar in the otherwise endless plains. The erosion of the rocks has created a Badlands of striped rocks and hoodoos. It is also an area high in dinosaur fossils and there is a fantastic palaeontology museum here. It is also the home to the world’s largest dinosaur… You can climb up into his mouth, but that sounds like crazy behaviour.

The town is named after a chap called Drumheller, which was less interesting than I imagined and aside from every business and street corner having its own dinosaur-themed model, sculpture, sign or mural, is unremarkable. It is here because they found coal here, and for a time was a bustling, rich and filthy place. Now it has the dinosaurs to lure us tourists in to feed the coffers and it is an occasional film location. There were a few scenes of the new Ghostbusters movie filmed here during our stay, although we missed it. The town is also home to an amphitheatre set in the badlands just outside town. It was built specifically as a venue for an annual Passion play that is put on here, but more recently also been used as a music venue.

There was a ‘famous-in-Canada’ band doing a gig the day after we arrived, and we decided to go along. Rain was forecast, but we were prepared with coats, a poncho for Nick and a natty oversized bin-bag with arm and head holes for me. The support band were great and the rain held off until they finished their set, and then the heavens opened. Unfortunately the accompanying electrical storm made the organisers anxious and we were all evacuated to the enormous beer tent for a hour. Shame! I hear you cry…Yes it was a shame, because the number of evacuees exceed the liquor licence restrictions, so the bar closed. Duh! The weather eased, we were released back into the open, and with much pomp and pizzazz the main act – Walk Off The Earth – took to the stage….. which suddenly went completely silent. We were prepared for rain, but some hapless sound engineer had allowed their sound console board to get drenched in the downpour, and it was drowned. They tried to fix it, but in the end their show was reduced to a few acoustic numbers performed by the six member band through a single microphone. Valiant, but it was not cutting the mustard in a 3000 seat outdoor venue. They called it a day and we all went home.

We did most of the jolly things one can do whilst we were here: a tour around a historic coal mine, a walk over a historic suspension bridge, a meal in a historic saloon, a scenic drive around the badlands and hoodoos (all old, so technically historic) including a river crossing on a historic ferry (been here for ages) and a trip to the fantastic Royal Tyrell Palaeontology Museum (full of dinosaur fossils which I suppose are pre-historic).

We had our historic 19th wedding anniversary here, and celebrated with an enormous plate of fried food for lunch and a walk amongst the Badlands that involved some off-piste scrambling up a seemingly sheer rock face to get back to the car. The Canadians seem to be very relaxed about marking trails, or not, as the case may be. I think their attitude is more: ‘Well, there is some good hiking over there. Go for it.’

Drumheller saw our last days in the prairies. We left town after five nights here, doing a bit of a backtrack to get back onto our westerly route and finally headed towards the Rockies.

On our way we had a one night stay in a park just outside a town called Rocky Mountain House. A whole town of thousands of people is named after a single, historic (obviously) fur trading shop. Quirky. Finally as we moved on the next day we had our first glimpse of ‘ the big pile of rocks’ and suddenly our journey was feeling a bit more like the Canada of postcards.

4th – 18th August 2019

Soon after leaving Riding Mountain National Park, our long, straight, flat, prairie flanked road brought us to our third Canadian province, Saskatchewan. Before we crossed the border we took a 40km detour to visit a National Historic Site of Canada. What lured us from the path, I hear you ask? The Inglis Grain Elevators! What?

Quick recap of what I learnt… The grain gets harvested, brought in trucks to the grain buyer at the elevator. He weighs it and pays the farmer. It gets tipped into a storage area through a grate, under the truck. A system of cups on a vertical belt is run by a lazy diesel engine and scoops the grain up carrying it to the top of, and depositing it into, a tall storage bin. The grain then gets loaded into railway boxcars that are stacked up along the line next to the elevator, to be collected by a passing engine. There were thousands of elevators around the prairies in its pre-industrial ‘hay’ day, but modernisation saw most of them close and be taken down. Inglis has a rare collection of five original elevators in their original row. It was very low key and we had a personal guided tour by the docent as we were the only people visiting at the time. I learned some things about grain. 1. Canola and rapeseed plants are essentially the same. Rapeseed oil is used industrially and it was only with some genetic modification of rapeseed to remove a few toxic compounds, that canola oil fit for human consumption was created. 2. Flax plant flowers are periwinkle blue and create fields that look like water. It is a little early for us to see this unfortunately. 3. A bushel is equal to 8 dry gallons or 4 pecks.

Suitably educated, we continued into Saskatchewan. To be fair, this is fairly similar to Manitoba in size, topography, and industry. It is also about 2.5 times the size of NZ, but with even fewer inhabitants, barely 1 million in total. It is also pretty flat and mostly given over to the growing of wheat, barley, flax and canola, but has another important export in the form of potash, a potassium rich mineral mined in vast quantities and mostly converted into fertiliser. Saskatchewan is the world’s largest producer of potash. It is in the North American Central Time Zone, the same as Manitoba, but for some reason it does not observe daylight savings, so we rolled back an hour as we crossed the border. Another few days of disrupted appetites and sleep routines. We compensate by eating more, starting drinking earlier and spending a splendid amount of time asleep. We are definitely in the camping groove now.

Our first stop along the road through Saskatchewan was two nights in a small highway town called Foam Lake. Don’t let the name fool you. There was no lake here. Our camp was a small leafy and charming, quiet town-owned park set back about 500m from the main road. We had an enormous site, so big in fact that we managed to have a ‘marital discussion’ about where to actually park in it. We thrashed that out quickly and efficiently and were soon installed. Our ability to have a row about nothing, sulk for a bit, then carry on as if nothing happened has become elevated to ‘grand master’ level. Our trigger is usually hunger, but sometimes a full bladder can work just as effectively. We became a little anxious as the afternoon went on, and it became apparent that almost all the other campers in our area seemed to be all gathered for a family party, with more cars and trucks pulling up as the afternoon became evening. There was a massive table, several BBQs, lots of coolers and even a small bouncy castle for the kids. We braced ourselves for a noisy evening running into the night. Happily for us, it turned out to be the tamest party of the century, fizzling out before darkness fell. I sometimes forget that this is Canada, not America. Volumes are lower. Earplugs were not needed.

The next day we decided to head into the town centre on our bikes to see what was going on. This was only about 1.5km away, and the answer was NOTHING. We knew that it was a public holiday Monday (just to commemorate having jolly long summer weekend, as far as I could tell) but we were expecting something to be happening/open. Nope. Zip. It was a ghost town with out the tumbleweed. Deserted. No humans to be seen. Not one of the 1148 people that allegedly live here. Odd. They must have been all down at that imaginary lake…. Luckily we had provisions for the duration, so we went home for a cup of tea and a biscuit. The rest of the afternoon was spent sat outside the camp office, 500m from Tin Can, the only place that we could access the Wifi. It’s not all rainbows and puppies here, you know, but the homemade bacon double cheeseburgers that we cooked on the campfire that evening were pretty darn good, so it’s not all hardship.

In the morning we rolled onward to some veritable civilisation, the city of Saskatoon. Dubbed the Paris Of The Prairies it is the biggest conurbation in Saskatchewan with about 300,000 inhabitants and was named for the native Saskatoon berry. On our way there we took a moderate detour to visit the curiosity of Little Manitou Lake. This is a smallish lake about 100 km from Saskatoon which has a very high mineral content, the same ones that produce the potash, causing it to be ten times denser than normal freshwater and causing hyper-buoyancy. It is one of only three bodies of water in the world with this property: the well known Dead Sea and the lesser known Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. We couldn’t not go. There is a little spa resort and a beach on the lakeshore and we parked up to go for a ‘float’.

Unfortunately it was a bit chilly, so it was a very brief event. We came, we floated, we took the obligatory photographs and then we scampered back onto dry land. Luckily we had the sanctuary of TC to change in and get warm again, and after some sandwiches we continued on to our destination.

In Saskatoon we had five nights booked in another town park only 3 km from downtown, with a good riverside cycle trail to get us there easily. Our site backed on to a golf course so it was generally quite quiet with only occasional thwacking, swearing and celebratory noises to break the peace. There was a huge 50ft tall protective fence between the course and the park which made the discovery of a golf ball in our site most intriguing. Some trick shot! Our time here coincided with the Saskatoon Exhibition, a week-long city fair held at the exhibition grounds on the other side of the river from our camp.

This was a fiesta of funfair rides, food trucks, performers, art exhibitions, music and fireworks. We were going! Getting there involved about 8km of cycling up river, across river and down river which was very pleasant and earned some much needed calorie credits for the dubious food choices that we made later in the day. We arrived mid afternoon, the only cyclists to pull up in the 1000+ capacity car park. Our first entertainment was watching a bloke doing an ice hockey themed flaming hockey stick juggling act. Can’t get much more Canadian than that, unless he had doused himself in maple syrup, I suppose.

The second act was a police themed high diving act. Bizarre and impressive. The third was a very lame trial bike demonstration which was generally quite boring, except for the dog that belonged to one of the riders and ran around generally getting in the way and causing mayhem. There was a half decent band playing in the beer tent area whilst we were there, the male lead singer doing a fine selection of high octave female artist covers. As for food, we had our first taste of perogies. These are an Eastern European import and are a boiled dumpling filled with various fillings such as cabbage, mashed potato, meat or cheese. Perfect street food! And of course poutine. The fine, fine, fine, dish of chips, gravy and cheese curd. Who thought chips and gravy could be improved on? The Canadians, that’s who! Our nutritional extravaganza had its finale with a bag of mini donuts. I only wanted a few, but the smallest bag that we could buy contained 20. Shame. Needless to say we both ate 10 donuts each, although possibly I had 12 and Nick had 8. There was a high degree of self loathing in the 10 minutes following their consumption, but we moved on quickly to the beer tent to help ourselves forget… The funfair didn’t lure us in its quest to spend any money to spin ourselves around or upside down, or to try and hit things with things in order to win things, but it provided ample people watching opportunities. Replete and tired we cycled home at about 7.30 pm, opting not to stay for the evening concert which we could hear from our campsite anyway, and each evening of the exhibition there was an 11pm fireworks display t0 keep us from any early nights.

The city of Saskatoon itself is a little treasure. It sits either side of the South Saskatchewan River with cycle trails up and down both sides. It has several French inspired buildings, lots of green space and tree-lined avenues. The city centre is busy as the main shopping mall is located right in the middle of town and it has a very stylish new modern art museum. We spent a day mooching around, drinking coffee, browsing through the mall, eating lunch and then filled the afternoon with seeing the new Tarantino movie, which was excellent. On another day we visited the art museum, spending most of our time being amused by all the bizarre creations that pass as art, and particularly all the hot air written about it. I call it Art Depreciation.

The other jolly thing that we did in Saskatoon was go to a basketball game. The elite professional league is in its inaugural season in Canada, and we got tickets to see the Saskatchewan Rattlers take on the Edmonton Stingers. Having never seen a live basketball game before, this was on our list of quintessential North American things-to-do. We tracked down the shuttle bus stop in town to get transport out to the venue, which was on the edge of the city. (Elton John is playing here in October) and arrived in time to get beer, burgers and find our seats which were one row back from courtside at the home end. It was a high energy evening with a DJ playing tunes all through play, cheerleaders, mascots, commentators, TV cameras and general merriment. Sat behind us was a group of very vocal blokes in their early 20s who obviously knew a lot about basketball, and also knew some of the players of the home team. They spent the whole time yelling, cheering, calling play and getting the attention of their friends on the bench. They were very amusing and made the evening for us.

The tense game culminated in a winning shot by the Rattlers made in the last 10s of the game with the visitors missing a basket in last 2s. What excitement! The crowd went wild, and one of the sweaty 6 foot 10 inch Rattlers players used his unfeasibly long legs to bound up past us over the chairs to celebrate with his crazy mates behind us. Quite a fantastic first basketball experience. We caught the bus back to town, and followed the buzzing crowd to a cool brew pub for a few drinks before getting an Uber home.

After Saskatoon we continued to follow the Yellowhead highway northwest to’ The Battlefords’. This is the collective term for the towns of Battleford and North Battleford which sit either side of the North Saskatchewan River. We stopped here for provisions and had a fun half hour in an enormous self service truck wash shed knocking some dirt and flies off Big D and TC.

Our camp for the next 3 nights was 40km north from here in Battleford Provincial Park, a small park on the shores of Jackfish Lake. We had hoped to do some kayaking or paddle-boarding but the temperature dropped and the wind picked up so watersports were suddenly less inviting. Instead we did some biking, hiking and loafing, had some campfires and cooked some more spectacular burgers. There was even a lakeside mini-golf course and on one memorable windy morning I took a glorious 5 shot victory from my husband. He is still hurting from this.

From Battleford we continued northwest along the Yellowhead Highway. The landscape changed subtly with the fields of the prairies sprouting gas and oil wells and the grain elevators being joined by scattered refineries. Not quite so scenic, but not as ugly as you might imagine. With gas and oil comes jobs and money, and we definitely noticed this as we pulled into our next stop, Lloydminster. The town is currently booming with lots of housing being built and many workers living in RVs and tons of shops and businesses. Lloydminster is Canada’s only province border town, with the Saskatchewan-Alberta border running through the middle of it, marked by four tall red steel obelisks. All the shopping is on the Alberta side as there is no sales tax on that side of the border, and the whole town observes mountain time, keeping thing simpler in the winter. We had booked into the town park which is on the Saskatchewan side but when we arrived our host had a confession to make. He had overbooked and there was no site for us. He had been relying on some of the oil workers to go home and free up some space but this hadn’t happened. He was very apologetic and had a solution. We could pull up next to the pavilion/bathroom block, plug into a normal power socket and could camp for free. He would move us to a site as soon as one became available. We could deal with that. We filled the water tank and parked up.

We weren’t the only ones in the overflow zone as two big motor bikes with small trailer tents arrived soon after us and set up camp on the nearby lawn. After getting sorted they headed off to dinner on their bikes, meeting a big group of fellow bikers at a restaurant about 1.5km down the road. Not quite sure why they didn’t walk. It would have taken less than 20 minutes and they could have had a few drinks and stretched their legs. Oh I know. One has to turn up on a bike to a gathering of bikers, even if you’ve ridden your bike 400km that day. They were packed up and gone by 8am, long before we surfaced. Probably had another bazillion kilometres to cover. Crazy muddy duckers.

The main attraction of our stay in the utilitarian town of Lloydminster was to attend an illustrious sporting event: the Canadian chuckwagon racing finals. A sport we had previously not even known existed so therefore was nowhere near our ‘to-do’ list. It was a series of races over five evenings at the exhibition grounds, 2km from our camp. The end of the series was to be celebrated on the final night with Roots & Boots, a ‘country music cowboy cabaret dance’ with performances by three well known country stars from the 1990s and a couple of sets by an up and coming local band. Despite our usual lack of enthusiasm for both live music generally and country music specifically we felt that this was something not to be missed and we had purchased our tickets a few weeks ago. Now all we needed was some cowboy gear. We saddled up the ponies (the wheeled kind) and headed to Alberta to do some shopping. Our destination? A western wear shop about 3km up the road. They would know what we needed. We were taken under the wing of a very helpful assistant called Yvonne who advised us on the subtleties of Canadian cowboy fashion and we left the store the proud owners of a pair of Wranglers and a new shirt each. We were ready! On the way home we swung our steeds up to the exhibition grounds to check the lay of the land and the safest route to cycle, especially considering it was going to be dark on our way home after the party. We discovered that there was basic on-site RV parking available at the grounds. How better to get home from a party by just walking across the carpark?? We could move up here for that last night and not have to cycle anywhere! We headed back to camp to find out that our host had a proper site available for us and it was still free for our inconvenience, so we quickly packed up and shifted and filled our afternoon with inactivity and a load of laundry. The next day was miserable with the temperature dropping to about 10 deg C and it was really windy too. Summer had been suspended. I got a bit of cabin fever so talked Nick into coming with me to the supermarket, a short 10 minute cycle away. Unfortunately we mis-timed our journey fantastically and got caught in a sudden downpour. I wasn’t very popular. Our planned attendance at the chuckwagon races that evening was cancelled as it was far too cold. We stayed in, put the heater on (!), wrapped up in rugs (!), ate curry and watched a movie instead. This is early August in the Northern Hemisphere, isn’t it? Nuts.

Saturday we packed up and headed to the exhibition grounds after lunch, finding a spot to park up and paying our $15 for the pleasure. We were 50m from the wagon racing entrance, 100m from the cabaret venue. We filled the afternoon with a visit to the town’s cultural centre/gallery/museum, a short cycle away. The highlight of this was a taxidermy display of over 1000 specimens all done by the same chap called Fuchs, apparently the largest collection of taxidermy done by one man in North America. From polar bears to humming birds, he had converted more living creatures into posed stuffed ones than you could shake a stick at. Here is a diorama of rabbits playing poker…

So. Chuckwagon racing. A sort of chariot racing for the modern times. We headed over to the track at about 5.30pm, bought some beers and had a ‘beginners guide’ tutorial from a nice lady behind the bar. Each race had four wagons. Each wagon is pulled by four thoroughbred horses and has one driver. The race starts with each wagon stationary at a starting barrel. Then an outrider, a single rider on a horse, gets off his horse, stands behind his team wagon and when the starter horn sounds, the outrider picks up a ‘stove’ (a very small barrel) and loads it into the back of the waggon, then the waggon races off, around a second barrel, back around the first barrel and then gallops off to do a single lap of the racetrack.

Meanwhile the outrider, jumps back on their horse and, with a second team outrider who seemed to magically appear from nowhere, gallops off to chase their wagon. There was a complicated system of penalties and despite watching 8 races, we still really had no idea what the outriders were doing, or how the ‘stove’ barrel thing was relevant. It was still a lot of fun though. It was sunny, but with a very cold wind and we were like icicles by the end of the races with 30 minutes to kill before the cabaret started. Luckily, home was in the carpark so we went back, put the heater on and had a cup of tea to warm up before slipping into our new threads.

The cabaret was held in an enormous shed with a massive stage and dance floor area covered in a mysterious fine grit. There were trestle tables and chairs to seat about 500-1000 people and two bars. About half the folk were in proper western wear and the other half obviously hadn’t seen the memo. We blended in perfectly as long as we kept our mouths shut. It was a blast. The first few hours we spent stood in a perfect spot for people watching and analysis whilst warming ourselves up to dancing with some drinks. It became apparent that 80% of all people that live in rural Canada learn to do a ‘country two-step’ at some point between birth and the end of high school. It was very impressive. All ages, all sizes, all combinations of couples hit the dance floor and instantly wheeled around doing this tight-stepped, foot-sliding dance move, making it suddenly obvious what the dance floor grit was for. It made the moves much easier than being on plain concrete. We, obviously, could not two-step, but by then could not care less and danced for a couple of hours until the batteries ran out just before the 2am finish.

Getting home was a breeze. Taking your whole home to a party really simplifies the process. We slept like the dead and surfaced very late the next morning feeling only mildly shabby. We headed back to our faithful road, the Yellowhead highway, leaving Saskatchewan and continued northwest into Alberta proper.

26th July – 4th Aug 2019

Manitoba is a fine place. Little did we know but Lonely Planet have even named it as one of its top ten regions to visit in 2019. How fortuitous! A province of lakes, forests and miles and miles of prairie farmland sliced through by some of the straightest roads we have travelled, even when compared to our North Dakota days. Manitoba is roughly twice the size of New Zealand, with a population of around 1.3 million, less than the population of Auckland. More than half of these people live in or around the only major city, Winnipeg. In fact over 80% of all Canadians live in urban areas, so in a country that is larger than the USA by land area, with only 10% of its population, once you get out into the countryside this place is emptier than the B&Q pedestal fan aisle during a UK heatwave. Really empty.

We rolled across into Manitoba from Ontario soon after leaving Kenora on the Lake of the Woods and stopped at an information centre just across the border to pick up a highway map. I am a much happier passenger/navigator with good old fashioned paper cartography to back up the sometimes blinkered google navigation of our ‘lady-in-the-phone’, Mary-Lou. She can be blind to the big picture of getting from A to B. I also enjoy the dark art of in-car fold out map origami. During our planning of this stage of our trip we decided to minimise our single night stops as far as possible, so our next destination was a two night stay in a small lakeside town called Lac du Bonnet. It was a cute little holiday town with a small town beach and all the basic amenities. Our camp was about 4km down the road and owned and run by a delightful couple in their mid seventies. It was pretty sizeable and immaculately kept with acres and acres of tidy lawns, flower beds and newly planted trees. They still do all the maintenance and upkeep entirely themselves and it was exhausting to watch them in constant motion as we loafed in our chairs in the sun. Not only did they manage the campground, but adjoining it was a small piece of woodland through which they had cut and gravelled a maze of tracks leading to a plethora of huts and sheds containing fantastical dioramas with mannequins, decorations in the trees and nursery rhyme signs. It was charming and bizarre in equal measures. At Halloween they have actors dressed up in the various locations and have a little golf-cart ladybird train which takes local children around the wood after dark. This too they do all by themselves. Some people have more get up and go than others.

It was an easy flat cycle to town and we arrived to find the weekly market in full flow. This was mostly arts and crafts, with the odd vegetable thrown in for good luck. No coffee cart, however. There should always be coffee available at these gigs. We did our usual trick of wandering around, not buying anything and then sloped off to find a cafe for a caffeine fix. We then killed the thirty minutes needed until it was justifiably lunch time by cycling around looking at homes, real estate agent window displays and tat shops and then parked up at the beach. Here there was a food truck and we had a very satisfactory lunch of: beetroot and chickpea salad and taco fixings served on an opened a bag of cheesy Doritos . No prizes for guessing whose was whose… The small beach was very sweet and clean, had a safe swimming area cordoned off with buoys and a squadron of pelicans but was populated by some noisy mini-humans. I think they are called children. They made our ears hurts and despite having brought our swimmers, it wasn’t hot enough to need a swim. We cruised home to the peace and quiet of camp and lazed around until drink o’clock. Later that evening we spent a few hours chatting with our neighbours around their campfire. They only live a few hours away in Winnipeg, but quite often come to this camp for the weekend to get away from the city and go fishing on the lake.

Our next top along our road was a place called Grand Beach Provincial Park, about 90 km north of Winnipeg. It sits on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg which I had never heard of before but which is apparently the world’s 11th largest body of freshwater. The area along the east of the lake had some pristine boreal forests and rivers and had recently been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our camp was in the woods with a maze of loop roads and paths. The sites were large and private and we were only a 5 minute cycle ride from a 3 km beautiful white sandy beach. This beach has a fairly constant presence on the ‘top ten beaches in North America’ list and we see why. Despite the number of campsites in our park at the East end of the beach and the number of seasonal cottages down the other end of the West end of the beach there is minimal commercialisation of the area. At the West beach there is a small boardwalk which has a couple of food vendors and one small beachwear kiosk, but that was about it. This is in fairy sharp contrast to the origins of this as a beach resort. In the early 1900s the railroad came to this area facilitating the building and visiting of a large privately owned resort hotel here which opened in 1917. Winnipegians flocked to the resort by train for day trips (the last train back to the city leaving at midnight) or longer stays and at one point it boasted the Commonwealth’s largest dancehall pavilion. Its success was only curtailed in the 1950s when a devastating fire destroyed the dancehall, a tragedy that the resort never really recovered from. At some point the resort closed and the land passed to the Provincial Park Service, who have maintained its low key magnificence ever since. We had two full days here. On the first we cycled around to the other end of the beach, about 5-6km via the road. It was a very windy day with a seemingly constant headwind in both directions. How is that possible? It was warm, but the lake was boasting some seriously impressive white horses and surf, so was closed for swimming, not that you’d think that as there was a not insignificant number of people splashing around in its murky shore break. It was generally fairly quiet though as the wind was leaving no nook nor cranny without high pressure sand ingress meaning sitting around on the beach was not for the fainthearted. The next day was much calmer. We walked a nearby loop track, keeping an eye and ear open for bears. (None). We had a few hours on the beach, swam, soaked up some rays and watched the boats tow people about on the flat water. It is at times like this that we really miss our boat. Should be waterskiing….

From Grand Beach we headed south again, skirted around the north of Winnipeg and headed west along a section of the Trans Canadian Highway into the ongoing prairie lands of southern Manitoba. We caught a glimpse of Winnipeg’s skyline from a distance, but were glad to be avoiding it. The land is very flat here. They say that if your dog slips its collar, you can see it running away for hours and hours. There are endless miles of arable land, planted in wheat and barley, corn and canola. The best business to be in seems to be the sales of massive bits of farm machinery to tame it all. This night was a single night stay in one of the few larger towns outside Winnipeg, Portage La Prairie. The park did have a pool, but was a ‘child noodle soup’ of noise and merriment that we decided against joining. We did laundry instead and then took a stroll around the rather lovely wooded park, admiring some of the set-ups of the seasonal campers. Large trailers were enhanced with decks, summer houses, elaborate fire pits, decorations and plant pots. The sky was filled with the booms of an approaching thunder storm and there was a weather watch in place for hail. The rain started just as we were sitting down outside to eat our dinner. We pulled the table under the awning but it gave no protection against the quickly monsoonal downpour, so we retreated inside. The thunder and lightening continued for hours and the rain was so loud on the roof that it was pointless to try and watch a DVD. Nothing to do except gaze up at it all happening through the skylight. In the morning our next door neighbour told us that hailstones the size of baseballs had fallen 50km to the north. Glad that missed us.

From Portage La Prairie we headed north, leaving the Trans Canadian Highway to join the Yellowhead Highway. This, and the Yellowhead Pass which is its route across the Rockies, is named for a French fur trapper and explorer Pierre Bostonais. He had blond streaks in his hair and was nicknamed ‘Tête Jaune’, or Yellowhead. It seems that there isn’t a lot in this part of the world that wasn’t discovered, founded or started by a French fur trapper. The road was very straight and continued to take us though flat prairie lands until we started to hit some subtle undulations in terrain. The prairies were finally giving way to some low-lying hills that led us to our next destination, Riding Mountain National Park. Now ‘mountain’ is a strong term for this area, but we did climb 500m and the views changed from crops to woods and lakes again. We had booked a site in a large campsite in the small holiday town of Wasagaming, on the shores of Clear Lake. Population 400 in the winter, up to 30,000 on peak summer holiday weekends, like this one.

The town and campsite both sit within the National Park boundary, so again, despite having a nice selection of eateries and shops, it was very pleasantly uncommercialised. Our site was massive and had a family of ground squirrels living nearby to keep us entertained. We were warned about the black bears but didn’t see any evidence of them. There was lots to do in and around town without needing to drive into the park wilderness. On one day we hired kayaks for a few hours and cruised up the lakeshore to the north, another day we cycled along a lakeside trail that went to the south. The cycle trip included a picnic lunch and a swim from a small quiet beach that was far from the madding crowd of the town beach. From all angles there was the constant amusement of the antics of the boaters. It was a large lake with plenty of space for all but there seemed a compulsion to be whizzing up and down the shore in close proximity to one another or all mooring up in the same bays, cheek by jowl. (Is it a pack mentality or a need to show off?) We drank in a bar called Canoe and ate in a restaurant called Wigwam. The sun shone and the good times keep a’rolling.