Tin Can Travels

2nd – 6th Jan 2022

A long, long time ago, back in the time when dragons were still common, a glorious, flaxen-haired girl-child was first born unto her parents, Jacqueline and Stuart. Fifty years later, by now significantly more glorious but also a bit more silver than flaxen in the hair department, the girl-woman was asked by her loyal consort what she might like as a gift to celebrate the milestone. She decided that she would like to go to a lovely guest ranch for four days and pretend that she was a cowgirl. Her wish was granted and thus the duo (for this was really quite a nice treat for the loyal consort too) found themselves driving to the very, very edge of the great slab of the land that is known as Amurca to a special, magical place called Rancho De La Osa.

If we had driven any further on our journey to the southern border of Arizona we would have arrived in Mexico. In fact the 600 acres of the’Ranch of the She-Bear’ ran all the way up to the recently intalled border wall which loomed on the near horizon like an oversized art installation. It is an old place, neat but dusty, its gum trees towering above the surrounding scrubland of the desert providing some rare shade. The ranch was originally the site of a village inhabited by the Tohono O’Odham native tribe. In 1722 Jesuit missionaries built a mission outpost as a place of worship, a trading post and an inn for travellers. This building still stands today despite having cannonballs fired at it in 1916 by Pancho Villa and his men when they tried to capture it in an unsuccessful raid. It is the oldest continually inhabited building in Arizona and now functions as the cantina for the ranch, inside which there was an unmanned bar operating a ‘serve-yourself’ honesty policy. The rooms were all decorated in a hacinenda Spanish style with open fireplaces and all meals were served at long communal tables with a big bell to summon us all to each sitting. There was no mask wearing and no social distancing. We crossed our fingers and just went with the flow.

The ranch offered two horse rides a day, 22-rifle target and 12-bore shotgun clay pigeon shooting, archery and ATV tours around the property and beyond. We planned to do it all. There was a heated pool, but it wasn’t quite warm enough to break out the swimsuits.

Big Dave and Tin Can had a perfect spot to park just outside our room and we even found an outside socket to be able to plug Tin Can into the A/C supply and run the fridge. It was also made packing and unpacking quite simple.

We had four nights here, arriving in time for lunch on the first day. Within 1 minute of sitting down at the table we had met Ed and Karee from Florida and a new friendship was born! They became our eating, drinking and activity buddies for the whole stay here and many an hour was whiled away at the cantina together. We were honest at the honesty bar, but supplemented our libations with BYO, which was entirely acceptable to the establishment, who just let us do our own thing.

We rode horses. Nick for the first time ever, and me for the first time in 20+ years. The Western-style saddles were a blessing and Nick was very brave. The ol’leggies didn’t scream with pain too badly after the event.

We shot guns. The Americans presumed that we had no idea which end of a gun was which, but we surprised them all with our skills. Nick was King of the Clay Pigeon Shooting.

We did archery. I was Queen of the Bow with a sublime ‘centre of the gremlin’s forehead’ shot with my very last arrow. It was sweet.

We took an ATV tour up to, and along, the border wall. This section was only completed about a year ago and has a gravel road running along it’s US side. It is not an inpenetrable object, however, with several gaps coinciding with dry riverbeds and because of the change of government-and thus policy wall building policy-at the last election, its build was suspended and the wall just stops. Our tour took us to this point.

This is patrolled at regular interavals by Border Patrol officers in trucks and there are lots of cameras too. We were told by our guide NOT, under any circumstances, to stray to the other side of the wall because to come back would be to illegally enter the USA. We would be seen and arrested, which would really kill the guest ranch experience buzz…..

Apparently the wall is not primarily to control the influx of people, more the trafficking of drugs. It has helped with both, but the patrolling of the border takes an incredible amount of money and manpower. On our last afternoon here a Border Patrol helicopter was flying low just beyond the horse corral on the ranch. It was circling round and around a specific area, so we all went to see what was happening. It played out like a TV documentary drama. The helicopter could obviously see some illegal immigrants in the bush and was trying to direct two Border Patrol officers, one on a quad bike, one on foot, to where they were hiding. More officers arrived in trucks with another quad bike but still they couldn’t find them. The helicopter was still circling. Finally another truck arrived, this one carrying a German Shepherd who got the job done within 5 minutes – four men finally being apprehended and driven away. It was very surreal.

My birthday fell in the middle of our stay here. It was a very low key but perfect day. In the evening at dinner the staff brought out a birthday cake which doubled as dessert for everyone. I ‘blew out’ my candle with a Covid-safe clap as another guest played Happy Birthday on his harmonica. Later that evening, by coincidence rather than design, our host and ranch manager- the Venerable Cowboy, Ross Knox – treated us to a reading of cowboy poetry which was actually very cool. It turns out that Ross is a two times world champion horse packer and had been inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Who knew such an esteemed establishment existed?

Our time here was magic and was a worthy place to celebrate a milestone birthday. The ranch was so relaxed. The sun shone. It was dry. We ate well. We did some very fun stuff and we made some great friends. Our good byes to the ranch were hard, but not so our goodbyes to Ed and Karee as we have invited ourselves to stay with them in Florida towards the end of our trip in April. They were powerless to refuse our demands…..

27th Dec 2021 – 2nd Jan 2022

Not far from the country club enclaves of Palm Desert lies the very peculiar Salton Sea. It is a place that time didn’t just forget, it completely disowned it. It is a shallow, landlocked, highly salinated body of water that sits in the Imperial Valley, over part of the San Andreas fault. Millions of years ago this valley was connected to the Gulf of Mexico, into which ran the Colorado River. Eventually sand deposits created a dam between the valley and the ocean, thus a huge inland sea was created. It has been intermittantly fed by the Colorado River, but over the ages the river has changed its course and when it flows beyond this valley the lake begins to dry up. It was last completely dry in 1580, and the last flood of the Colorado to fill it was in 1905 when the modern sea, about 15 x 35 miles in size, was created. It would have dried up again, but local farmers continued to nab water from the Colorado via irrigation canals and in the 1950s and 1960s it became a resort destination. A lake in the desert was an irrestistable recreational oasis and numerous holiday towns with hotels quickly sprouted up, catering to the watersporters and the beach bunnies. The area was also a haven for much birdlife which used the sea and its wetlands it as a stopover on the Pacific Flyover. All sounds brilliant, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately the idyll was not to last. The sea started to dry up and shrink. Salinity levels rose causing a massive fish die-off and the beaches to be littered with their rotting carcasses. Run off from agriculture polluted the water causing the flourishment of toxic algae, there were outbreaks and spread of diseases of the birdlife which also suffered massive die-off of populations. The lake bed was increasingly exposed, dried out out and then blew about as dust clouds into the resorts and communities. Within a decade or so this was no longer a very nice place to paddle about in your bikini or form a waterskiing pyramid of beauties with nine close friends. Tourism drastically declined and then followed the sad but inevitable death of the resorts, thus creating exactly the faded glory and decay that we love to visit.

We camped for two nights in a nearly deserted lakeside state park with a splendid view of the water and the westerly hills on the other side. This place is -236ft below sea level, wrecking our finely tuned endurance athletic training. The lake played host to lots of birds and the sunsets were amazing. There was an obvious demarkation where the original shoreline would have been, then the ground beyond that was a mixture of tiny shells and an oddly thick fine dry mud that became squelchy as we approached the water. A mild, festering briney odour eminated from the wet ooze. We did not need to read the numerous signs warning us not to swim in or drink the water to know that this was nasty. We fell back to camp and lit the fire pit, our first of the trip. It was great to spend some time outside in the evening and cook on a grate, but the temperature plummeted like a stone once darkness fell – banishing us to the warmth of Tin Can to eat dinner – the desert reminding us that it was winter.

As we travelled south from here along the shores of the sea we called into a old resort town called Bombay Beach which was barely clinging to its existance. The decay was pervasive and it was hard to believe that anyone still lived here. Amazingly there were a shop and a bar still functioning. The sign outside the shop was advertising lithium for sale, maybe providing some commentary on the mental health of the remaining locals, and the bar- The Ski- Inn used to ply a roaring trade to the watersport enthusiasts. Now I think more tourists like us come to take photos than actually buy a drink. Perhaps we shouldn’t do the former without doing the latter. We drove on.

Just beyond the end of the Sea is another very odd place called Slab City, an area of Wild West off-grid camping in the desert. Inhabited by an ever fluctuating population of societal margin dwellers, squatters and artists, it is an area of desert dotted with rotting, tarp-covered RVs, surrounded by various piles of detritus. With no power, running water or sewage facilities, the people living out here are carving out a different sort of existance, one that is often facilitated by illegal substances, I think. One chap, Leonard Knight (1931-2014) who lived here found that God also helped and created his own unique way of showing this, creating a ‘hillside visionary environment’ called Salvation Mountain. He painted the side of a rocky outcrop and this has also become a tourist attraction and we called in on our journey.

Our onward road took us into Arizona. Just over the border was our next stop: Yuma. We were now into our next time zone and finally out of the ‘stupidly high price for petrol’ zone that is California. On our way here we passed close enough to the Mexiacan border to see The Wall. A thing much reported and discussed during the previous US government. It was a bit surreal to se it in the flesh. Yuma itself was just a place to stop for a couple of nights. It is the site of the historic ‘Yuma Crossing’, a section of the Colorado river that was relatively easy to cross on foot and on horse, making it an important place during the European settlement of this area. Yuma is a centre for agriculture, providing 90% of all the leafy vegetables consumed in the USA. Apparently it is also the hottest, least humid and least rainy of any place in the ‘lower 48’ states. Also it has an old prison on a rocky outcrop overlooking the river with some fabulous views (probably not appretiated by by the inmates of yore) and a ‘historic downtown’ (a bit overhyped) connected to our park by a nice cycle trail along the river. We snuck into our ‘over 55s’ park by being British and hoping they wouldn’t ask. If we had been Canadian they would have charged us $10 more per night. I have no idea why. Here we bobbed about a bit. Did some touristy things, had lunch out and were slightly bemused why, other than the weather, Yuma is the winter destination for 90,000 Snowbirds.

After Yuma we continued our Sou’Eastern trajectory through Arizona. Destination Why. Why? Because it was on the way and it was called Why. Why else? Why it is called Why is apparently because two roads meet here, making the shape of the letter Y, and the chap that founded the settlement that sprung up here (in the somewhere of nowhere) wanted to call it Y. But he was refused this request, because all places that are to be recognised by the United States Postal Service need to have at least 3 letters in their names. Hence Why.

We travelled here on the 31st of Jan down a desolate road in our 4th atmosheric river of our trip. It rained and rained and rained. In the desert rain doesn’t go anywhere, it just sits in big puddles on the ground in a bemused way as if to say ‘now what do I do?’ We passed sign after sign warning us of flash flooding in the dry washes that crossed the undulating road and hoped that we arrived at our destination before that happened. We did. Why was no more than a petrol station, a cafe, 20-30 homes, a small community centre, a fire station and two RV parks.

There seemed little reason to be here but the twenty-something young man with terrible teeth that was managing our RV park was ‘Why born and bred’ and had only spent one month of his life living anywhere else. I guess not everyone needs to check out greener grasses of other pastures. We arrived in the continued hosing rain and hurriedly set up bedecked in our waterproofs. By 2pm we were installed, in dry clothes and contemplating a mild New Years Eve celebration. This hadn’t been our first choice for our New Year party. We had originally booked an RV park at a casino hotel just south of Tuscon, but the rapidly increasing numbers of Omicron made us very wary of hanging out indoors with a bunch of partying strangers. We needed to stay Covid-free for our next imminant adventure that was happening on the 2nd Jan.

The rain did stop. We did get in a short sunset stroll and we did have a lovely NYE-for-two with plenty of nice food and drinkies. We even had some party lights a’flashing. AND we even managed to stay awake until midnight. Hello 2022! More of the same old chaos?? My mantra for the next 12 months will be:

High Hopes And Low Expectations.

We chilled out on the 1st Jan and went for a longer walk in the cold sunshine. Our route took us through the other RV park in town, an off grid, spread out affair with lots of interesting rigs with big solar set-ups. This is another place folk come ‘to winter’. Lordy knows why. Good to have a ‘sticky beak’ though, as the Australians would say.

23rd Dec – 27th Dec 2021

From an outsiders point of view Palm Desert is an odd place. It is situated in the Cochealla Valley about 14 miles from its better known, older, more established, more cultural neighbour, Palm Springs. This whole area is a mecca for the ‘Snowbird’ population- mostly retired people who live in the northern USA and Canada who are fed up with frozen bones and shovelling snow off driveways in the colder months so escape to the warm, sunny, dry, desert for at least a few months each winter. This valley is surrounded by mountains that create a ‘thermal belt’ protecting it from the potential colder night-time temperatures that the desert can deliver. Having experienced a couple of UK winters over the past two years I completely understand the pilgramage and, this Tin Can journey being a winter trip, our presence in this part of the country is no random event.

Palm Desert has grown rapidly and caters nearly exclusively to the over 55s. The housing is almost entirely arranged in beautiful walled communitites with gated entrances and despite the desert environment there are palm trees, lush plantings and green lawns, all supported by widespread irrigation. The communities mostly all have social clubs, pools, golf courses and other sporting facilities and the whole place functions like a big ‘summer-camp-in-the-winter-for-the-mature-person-with-an-inner-child’. Friendships are forged, legs are tanned, bodies are exercised, aching joints are eased, parties abound and life is completely geared to benefit a segment of society that can often be marginalised by the modern world’s obsession with youth. In fact what makes it odd is that there are almost no children here. Visiting minors are occasionally spotted hanging around the sports facilities watching their grandparents play Pickle Ball, or they may be the kids of the golf pros. I guess they are allowed to breed.

So we arrived here a couple of days before Christmas and it was the end of the first phase of this trip. We had covered 1600 miles in 3 and a half weeks and we had come to spend the festive period with Lori and her family from Wenatchee. They all decamped here in November and we were really looking forward to catching up with Lori and her partner, Paul, who we hadn’t yet met. (Approval since granted!) Our digs were to be the spare room of Lori and Paul’s very comfortable Air BnB house which was on, you guessed it, a manicured, gated community, complete with palm trees and pool. (Also approved!) Unfortunately there was no parking for BD & TC here, but Lori’s parents, Rocky & Casey were happy for them to be abandoned on their driveway, about 10 minutes away. We packed an unfeasible amount of possessions and alcohol into reuseable shopping bags (all class) and Lori and Paul scooped us up before another very ‘un-desert-y’ 12 hour downpour commenced.

Now although we were ostensibly here for Christmas, it was not the main focus of our stay. That was pickle ball. Now for those not in the know, pickle ball is a cross betweeen tennis and table tennis, played with a paddle and a plastic wiffleball on a court about 1/3-1/4 the size of a normal tennis court. It is mostly played in doubles, very social, easily accomodates all ages and mobilities and in these parts has the participation levels and passionate following of a religious cult. We really had no choice but to give it a go. We were pretty good. This was unsurprising for Nick who was a tennis whizz in his youth, but even I, with my pathological inability to clear a tennis net with a tennis ball, was suprisingly competant for a newbie. We played every day including Christmas Day and with plenty of expert coaching from Paul, Lori and Marla, Lori’s sister, we were able to put up a reasonable game, although we had some aching muscles from our unfamiliar exertions. We came away from Palm Desert with some loaner paddles and balls from Marla and a plan to play when we find some courts on our travels. Apparently the ettiquette is just to turn up to a court complex and await opponents.

Otherwise Christmas was a low-key family affair with Lori & Paul, Marla and her husband Marty, Rocky & Casey and us. We all got together on Christmas eve for dinner and ‘secret santa’ present giving and again on Christmas morning for Rocky’s traditional Swedish pancakes with bacon and sausages. The catering was excessive enough to feed us all for days with leftovers and we had a thoroughly lovely time. Thank you everyone!

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.