Day 317: Narrow Roads and Wide Glaciers

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Ben

This morning, the power was back on at the Safeway, so the kids did a bit of homeschool while I got the blog up to date:

We headed into downtown Smithers to purchase a gas plumbing part for our catalytic heater. Unfortunately, the main street had a median which had concrete planters in it at every intersection. Turning right onto a side street, the rear left corner of the trailer grazed the planter. With a couple screws, judicious application of the rubber mallet, and silicone sealant, we were back in business after about 15 minutes:

We had to break her in at some point, I guess.

Smithers is in the foothills of the Canadian Coast Range:

Driving West out of Smithers, we reached Kitwanga after about 70 miles, the Southern end of the Cassiar Highway:

The Cassiar Highway is 450 miles of virtually unpopulated country. The rule on the Cassiar is “never pass up a gas station”, since gas stations are over 100 miles apart and frequently close due to running out of gas or equipment failure.

We drove North on the Cassiar for 97 miles, turning off towards Stewart, BC at Meziadin Junction. About 15 miles after the turnoff, we passed Bear Glacier, one of the only glaciers accessible by paved road in Canada. The glacial ice, which can be hundreds of feet thick, is a bright blue:

Continuing on, we passed through a narrow gorge area. In places, we could see hanging glaciers hundreds of feet above. The nearly vertical faces were covered in lush greenery, interrupted only by waterfalls cascading down from the glaciers above. Signs said “Avalanche area, no stopping”, so we didn’t photograph this spectacular area.

We stopped at Clements Lake, which is about a mile off the highway. There’s just a small turnaround, but here in BC the rule is you can camp anywhere so long as it’s not posted otherwise. It was amazing to have this lake and the snow covered mountains behind it all to ourselves:

Days are over 17.5 hours long here at 56 degrees North. With the overcast skies, the day seems to just go on forever, an effect I find disconcerting.

Good Shabbos from Clements Lake, near Stewart, BC! See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 316: Plank trails and bears

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Ben

This morning we caught B drawing on her wall:

Last night, we ran into one of the park staff who mentioned that there is a plank trail called Water Lew in the park! I’ve always wanted to ride one, so we rode 3 miles and 800 feet of vertical from the campsite up an access road to reach the trailhead. It was steep getting up there, so Trish and the kids did a good bit of walking the bikes up. The plank trail was fantastic:

After riding the plank trail a couple times, we walked our bikes down a connecting path to another trail which had lots of great jumps and berms. There are beautiful birch groves here:

About a half mile from the campground, Trish and B took the beginner route and M and I took the intermediate route. M and I reached the campground in minutes, and rode back up the beginner route to meet B and Trish. When we got back to the junction where we started, I realized Trish and B had not taken the trail, but rather had rode off down a service road. I was pretty worried, as they had a considerable head start, and if they turned of the road, finding them would be impossible and they would be lost in the woods. I asked M to ride back to the RV and wait there, and then I rode down the service road looking for them. Every time I came to a turn-off, I had to look for a muddy spot, checking for their tracks to figure out which way they went. After riding for several miles, I found them.

Worried about having left M back at the RV, I told Trish and B to make their way back on the service road, and I would ride back, get M and the truck, and drive back to meet them. What happened next involved a bear, I’ll let Trish tell the story here.

It’s safe to say that by the time we got back, the truck was thoroughly broken in:

In the end, we rode or walked about 10 miles. The first mile in the route below is a bike computer glitch, but the rest is correct:

Leaving the bike park at 6:30pm, we dumped tanks in Houston, BC, and drove on to overnight at the Safeway of Smithers, BC. WiFi was great until a storm knocked out power to the Safeway and the surrounding buildings. See the trip map for today’s drive.

Day 315: Distracted by Knobby Tires

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Ben

You know you’re in Canada when the Hardware and Automotive stove called Canada Tire has this section:

Canada Tire is my new favorite store, it’s like Ace Hardware + Walmart + Napa auto parts. I was able to buy an inch-pound torque wrench for my paramotor as well as 4 gallons of DEF for the truck. I’m glad we stocked up before we left the US, as many stores are out of stock, and without it, the truck won’t go faster than 5 miles per hour.

Heading West, Trish was reading some tourist information and found out that there’s a world famous (or at least regionally notable) mountain biking park in Burns Lake, BC. The trail map shows an extensive network of trails:

This is just a portion of the skills park at one of two sites:

We rode a number of trails in the bike park half of the complex:

It turns out that the park includes free RV parking, so we decided to stay here for the night. See the trip map for details.

Day 314: Extended Door Clasp and Expensive Yellow Diesel

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Ben

The door clasp that holds the RV’s door open is too short because we have a mezuzah mounted to the door frame and the door collides with the mezuzah before it is fully open. The solution was to buy a length of toilet fresh water supply pipe, cut the door clasp in half, and shove the two halves into either end of the pipe. This allowed me to extend the class by about 10 inches:

Leaving the Walmart at Williams Lake, we stopped to fill up on diesel. I had to triple check the pump since in the US diesel is always the green handle, but here it’s yellow, and green is for unleaded:

At a bit under $6 per gallon, it’s no surprise that our first gas station visit in Canada set a new record for the most expensive yet:

On the way out of town, we stopped at the local tourist center. We picked up many pounds of brochures. The center had this car on display, they look like they’re ready for fun:

The theatre showing a regional promotional video was quite authentic:

You could also pretend to be having outdoor adventures:

M loves fishing:

We did laundry today, so we got off to a late start. We drove about 3 hours north to Prince George, British Columbia, where we are overnighting at the Walmart here. This is the last town we will see before we head west on the Cassiar Highway and reach Yellowknife in the Yukon. See the trip map for details.

Day 313: Your Call Cannot be Completed as Dialed, eh?

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Ben

The signage in the Walmart lot said “3 hour parking”. We had called ahead yesterday and been given permission to overnight, but I was still nervous (what Trish calls my “everyone is out to get us” syndrome) so we drove away a bit after 8am. We parked a couple blocks away and the kids did homeschool with Trish while I went in search of cell service.

AT&T’s Canadian rates are outrageous, so I walked to the nearest Roger store, which happened to be across the street from a Telus store. I had to note store locations before we crossed the border, as we had no cell coverage once we crossed over.

In the end, I signed up with Telus. My phone is still in the two-year contract period with AT&T, so they wouldn’t unlock the phone to work with another carrier’s SIM card, so we used Tricia’s phone, which is out of contract. For $30 we get 1GB of data, usable over the next 30 days. Inbound calls are 50 cents a minute, but by adding a $5 texting plan for the month, that rate drops to 15 cents a minute.

Our Google Voice numbers, which we have to dodge AT&T’s texting charges, won’t forward for free to the Canadian cell phone number, so I signed up for a $10 a month hosted FreePBX. I registered a couple US DIDs with the PBX, set up rules to forward inbound calls received by the DIDs to the Canadian cell number, then set up Google Voice to forward to the US DIDs. So it went from this:

Google Voice –> US cell phone

…to this:

Google Voice –> US DID –> FreePBX –> Canadian cell phone

This gets around the Google Voice limitation of free forwarding only to US numbers. Since Google Voice is forwarding to a US DID, Google Voice is happy.

On the outbound call side, it costs 65 cents a minute, down from one dollar a minute thanks to the addition of the $5 texting plan. Using FreePBX, I turn a 65 cent per minute outbound call into a 15 cent a minute inbound call by enabling callback on the PBX.

Of course, all of this is in case I can’t use the data connection on the phone to make a VoIP call using a softphone client on my phone, which makes the call effectively free.

To avoid data charges, I set this all up in the Telus store using their free WiFi.

Continuing North, we stopped at the Walmart and Home Depot of Squamish, BC to cobble together an antenna cowling for the WiFi Antenna which was damaged by low hanging branches yesterday. It is considerably more vulnerable atop a 13 foot high 5th wheel than it was atop a 10 foot high travel trailer.

As Home Depots go, this one was quite stately. I think the mountains and the Canadian flag lend a certain gravitas, don’t you?

Rather than take Route 1, we took the shorter but less traveled route 99 through the coast range. The drive was amazing, which majestic mountains plunging into Lions Bay. Heading inland, climbing to 4,000 feet, we drove through the clouds, the road reduced to insignificance as it wound between steep mountain faces towering thousands of feet above. Bridges over storm fed streams were one lane, wood decked affairs. We glimpsed several hanging waterfalls and passed the resorts of Whistler and finally descended several 13% grades to pass by the modest mountainside town of Lillooet. There weren’t any good pullouts for photography, but the drive was spectacular, the ignored smaller sibling of the drive through Banff and the Canadian Rockies.

Meeting up with Route 1 a bit North of the town of Cache Creek, we continued North through the towns of 100 Mile House and Lac la Hache to arrive at the Walmart of Williams Lake, BC for the night. We arrived at 11:30pm, about 45 minutes after twilight surrendered to night. We will be in the Land of the Midnight Sun soon! See the trip map for details.