Adventures are Good

Banff.   The first normal temperature morning since arriving in the Rockies.  Got up early took a drive along Vermilion Lakes. So beautiful as usual I was taking pictures with my camera and not my phone. Will try to do better next time. Off to Lake Louise for two nights.  Will remember to take pics with my camera.
All good adventures so far on this leg

Bouncing Along

Well I should not complain but you all know me: so we have had about 12 hours of rain mostly at night.

So far once we got all the kinks worked out our trip has been smooth except for the terrible terrible roads.  Well what do you expect when all the roads go through one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.  

Internet access is very limited so I think most of you want to know that we are well and enjoying every minute.

Hopefully the pics will give you some idea

So these are not in any order of the trip but this is what you are seeing.

Our trip onto the Athabasca Glacier.  The ice on a glacier is that pristine blue because the pressure of the glacier forces out all the Oxygen and the remaining ice reflect the lowest spectrum of the light.  Greg on the glacier bus

Our first black bear

Flowers from all over the Rockies


Bobbi and Me standing on a rock on our favorite Canada lake Lake Ohara

Stay tuned I will update as often as possible.

A new day brings a new Miracle

2 days 906 miles and we finally arrive at Redstreak campground in Radium Hot Springs BC.  Our camping spot is beautiful nestled between the trees with lots of room between us and the neighbors.

We get everything situated and it is time to unhook the trailer from the truck.  I tell B I am going to go to the bathroom.  As I am sitting there I here the trailer jack begin to lift the trailer.  Thought that was strange, then suddenly the trailer leans to the right and a terrible crashing noise ensues.  I grab up my pants holding them up and dash out to make sure B is okay.  She is.  I look at the trailer and the jack is now sitting on the ground and is about 10 inches below the truck jack.  A problem to solve.  Well we carry quite a bit of lumber to level the trailer so we begin to puts lumber under both sides of the trailer tongue.  Thank goodness the trailer jack still works, so  the process goes like this put wood under the the tongue and then raise the trailer about an additional 3 inches, stop put more wood under the tongue, take the pressure off the jack and put more wood under the jack, raise it another inch, and repeat until we run out of wood.  Still about 4 inches short. 

 What to do?  Well we call our handy dandy Roadside assistance insurance.  They call back and said that they found a business to respond.  It will take them 4 - 5 hours to get to us and they charge mileage and $175 per hour.  Did I want the to dispatch them? Well thank goodness B had gone to the gate and gotten the names of  local towing company. So this whipper snapper pulls up in a tow truck long.  Now while waiting for him we had continued to re-stack the wood under the trailer jack and we thought we had it pretty steady.  Dean, that,s the whipper snapper's name, walks up to the front and takes a look  He asks what else we have to chalk the tires?  We look blank so he begins to haul big rocks.  Once he is satisfied with the tire chalks he calmly walks to the front of the trailer and begins to use the jack to lift the trailer.  Our hearts are stopped waiting for the whole thing to come crashing down.  It doesn't.

Dean says bring the truck lets hook this bad boy back up.  I bring the truck and begin to back towards the trailer.  Dean is waving his hand around and I can't figure out what he wants, but hey I can put this trailer ball right where it needs to go but no Dean throws up his hands in the universal sign for stop.  He very calmly walks toward the truck and when arriving at my window says I do not believe you are understanding my signals so he educates me.

Trailer safely on the truck and Dean says hey I am getting paid for a full hour and this took about 15 minutes so why don't you let me finish setting up your trailer for you?  Our mommas' did not raise any fools so we chilled while he set our trailer.

Our second day on the road and another miracle.  Bet our Angles are exhausted.  

I will try to get our next challenge to you before too long.

Today we are leaving Fairmont Hot Springs and traveling to Banff Alberta.

You just wont believe it

Well we have joined forces in Fairmont Hot Springs with our travel buddies  This is how we got here:  Monday I drove to Eugene to pick Bobbi up at the airport  got home about 1 and finished packing up the trailer  decided we were ready so we pull out from home to start our grand adventure  turned the corner and see the power cord for the trailer dragging on the road  minus the plug   oops one of us forgot to unplug the trailer   Out to our trusty RV repair shop and they say they are out 3 weeks but they love us so they say they will get on it Tuesday morning  good enough  Spend the night relaxing at home  Tuesday morning  B is taking out the garbage and sees some National Parks Passport stuff I threw away  She comes back in and asks me if I packed our passports  imagine my horror when I realized without the power cord tragedy we could have driven 700 miles to be turned away at the  Border!!!!!   So we drove 906 miles in 2 days .  There is more but I will save that for another day

How do you know when it is time to go?

Well I don't have an answer to that for sure.

I know I am not leaving until Bobbi gets home.  She had not to be missed family business to attend to.

She should be home around midnight;; No we are not leaving tonight, though I have threatened to pick her up at the airport with the truck and trailer!!!

I think most stuff is packed.  Tried to be really conscience of weight but then I got on the scale this morning and decided it was a losing cause once I put my but in the truck seat.  

We will both have our cell phones working on the entire trip.  Well that is when we are in range of a cell tower.  Probably not every night but most so leave a message if you need to talk to us.

I am really tired of puppy sad eyes every time I open the door and take something else to the trailer.  Bobbi always leaves me with crappy chores.  Don't know if she will be able to walk out the door with the pups giving her sad eyes.  Might have to blindfold her to get her out.

I know we are both excited to leave on this trip.  Bet we are just as excited to be home at the end of the journey.  Will probably know for sure if we will be able to spend lots of time in the trailer together when I retire next year.

Hopefully the first three days will be pretty uneventful just lots of miles each day.  The fun will start at the Border crossing.  I still don't know how much wine Bobbi has stashed in the trailer.  Probably more than we can legally take across the border but as long as I don't know I can't lie.  It's all on her.  Well its off to finish last minute stuff, then a nap before I pick up B at the airport.

It is almost time

After months and months of planning and Dreaming we are feeling a lot of panic.  Bobbi flies out mid week for a quick trip to Colorado for a big event.  She gets back about midnight one day and we leave at first light the next morning

I am putting just a little bit of pressure on her to have all of her stuff in the trailer before she flies.  She is just organized enough to pull it off.  She must be feeling confident because today she decided that Bess (that's the trailer's name) really needed a bath so she spent today washing the trailer.  So for the first 100 miles we will probably have the cleanest trailer on the road.

I hope to get the truck loaded this weekend with all the stuff I think I might need in case something besides my brain fails on this trip. Weight is the enemy on this trip so I am trying to choose only essential gear.  Harder than it might sound, especially when it comes to electronics.

The 90 degree days are making it rather unpleasant to do manual labor.  Open door take two steps wipe sweat out of your eyes, go back into the air conditioned house and repeat until you manage to get one or two items to the truck or trailer.  Go in put feet up and re-hydrate so you can try again 2 hours later.

The pups are starting to get nervous cause they know something is up cause the spare room has stuff laid out all over the bed.  I just don't know how we are going to manage to tell them to stay when we walk out of the house to leave on this trip.  We have a great house and dog sitter lined up and as long as they are fed according to their schedule they probably won't miss us too much.  We are hoping the sitter shows more discipline than we do cause our Sprout is a little to hefty for her own good per the vet visit today!!!

So about 7 months ago we bought a handy dandy little GPS for the truck.  Bought it early so my navigator would have plenty of time to practice with it so she could get me through the major cities.  In seven months we probably have taken 15 road trips in which practice could have happened.  Could have happened if we would have remembered to bring it!!!  So we will learn as we go.

So it is a nice cool evening here and I should be up and about getting stuff done but as usual I would rather stay here and try to remember how to work this blog.  I promise I will get essential clothes in the trailer before the end of this week. Yeah right!!!

So will try to get another update done before we actually take off.

So until later  Bobbi n Sylvia

Are we camping in Denali???

Only 5 months until we leave on a journey that will take us to Denali National Park.  Today we started talking about things we wanted to do while we were at the park.

Now remember we will be pulling our fully self contained travel trailer complete with air conditioning and a wonderfully efficient furnace, nice running hot water and a flushing toilet.  I said to B,  why don't we take our little tent and plan to camp out one night in the park.  She looked at me like I was a total stranger and went right back to her book. 

I sure did pause in my thinking a bit before I said "Well Wonder Lake looks like a great campground."  So not believing me yet again she sets her book aside and grabs her laptop.  These are the first images she sees; Camping in Wonder Lake  Not too bad she says.  Can we get all our camping gear there?  Well no I say it would be pretty primitive tenting; no cots, no two burner stove, no porta pot etc.   Well that brought on quite a glare.  She did admit that it sure was pretty though.

Wouldn't it be great if we could say that we spent the night camping in Denali?  There is that have you met me before look again.  Being the diligent researcher she continues to search for more info on Wonder Lake and suddenly these strange sounds begin to come from her vicinity.  Then she shares this image; Essential Attire for Wonder Lake   Why do you think these folks have mosquito head wear, long sleeves, long pants and gloves?  Well maybe they forgot their repellent.   Needless to say I have yet to hear anything beyond her final humph as she closed her laptop. 

So stay tuned as we begin to plan and negotiate our adventure.