Castlegar

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A Journey of 3,040 Kilometres

Whew! I made it home at 2AM this morning (Wednesday)!

I had a most excellent drive even though it was a loooooooong day. I stopped for a nice lunch in Fernie, paused in Blairmore, then had a long break in Lethbridge where I did a ton of shopping (one clever person told me the apocalypse is over, LOL). I hit up a few electronic stores for a better cell booster antenna (no luck), Walmart for dried goods, and then Canadian Tire for a few projects. I also bought a big cooler that was on special; nothing fancy but will come in handy for supply runs.

There was construction coming out of Lethbridge, so it was slow going for a bit, but Medicine Hat still came more quickly than expected. There was a lot of talk on the radio about the flooding and evacuations, but I saw no evidence of any of this. I decided that I was four hours from home, so I was going to get my grocery shopping done and finish up this trip.

When I pulled out of town, it was about 9:30, with my ETA being 2:30AM. The drive to Swift Current felt endless. I was physically tired, but not mentally since my body thought it was an hour earlier. I stopped for gas and a leg stretch, found a station playing my generation’s music, and rocked to Bryan Adams, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and New Kids on the Block all the way to Assiniboia, a stretch that felt about a 10th shorter than it actually was. It’s nice when the last stretch flies by!

I pulled into Haven at about 1:45AM, unloaded what absolutely had to be unloaded, and climbed into bed where I was asleep by quarter to 3.

I’m feeling a little groggy today and expect it will take a few days for me to fall back into my routine. I did get the truck fully unloaded and most of my stuff put away. I don’t have internet at home right now (I’m telling you, the bloody thing is sentient), so I’m up the hill waiting for Charles and Caroline to come home so I can pick up my boy.

I have several posts to write up about the weekend, but I want to say two things right now.

1) The weather in BC was mostly miserable, as it usually is, and the mountains were damp and grey, and shrouded with fog. I am so happy to be back under the sun bleached skies of my beloved prairies. If I have to live in this cursed country, there is no place I’d rather be.

2) I LOVED camping in the truck. It was the perfect compromise between car and hoteling it or taking a cumbersome gigantic rig out. I’m going to write more about that, but I really saw on this trip that my gas guzzler wasn’t a stupid buy at all. I didn’t have a lick of trouble with her and she is soooooo comfortable. My clutch leg isn’t even sore today, as it would be with half the distance traveled yesterday traveled in my Accent. It took a year to really use the truck the way I intended to use it and now that I have, I am fully at peace with the compromises I have made.

I’m off to shop online for another antenna and plan to pay big bucks for fast shipping. Wish I’d known I wouldn’t find anything in stores and had ordered earlier.

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Monday At the RV Owners Lifestyle Seminar

I awoke to rain and dampness in the back of the truck. Still, I was up a little later than the other mornings and had to hoof it to my first seminar of the day. The one I wanted to attend, about water quality, was cancelled so I went to boondocking, which was the only seminar of the weekend that was really disappointing.

After coffee break, I debated whether to go to the seminar in Baja or to the one about summarizing and sanitizing your holding tanks. I decided that I really have no special desire to go to Baja and that I did want to see one of Sanidumps John’s seminars, so I went there. I got some good tips out of that one! But I missed the first few minutes of it for a meeting with campus faculty. I’ll elaborate on that once I’m home as the meeting is only a tiny part of some thoughts running through my brain right now.

The final seminar of the weekend was about generator maintenance. That one alone was worth the trip! I found out the likely reason that my genset failed and that if I can’t get it going myself after doing a few things the instructor suggested, then I might as well get another one. There is nothing a service tech could do that I couldn’t (seeing as I’m moderately handy). I’ll blog more about that later also.

We had a brief wrap up session and that was it! I HAVE to fit this seminar into my schedule for next summer! I had so much fun and it is so well organized. Really, anyone going north to Alaska or into the Rockies in June should attend!

I left Kelowna around 3:30 on highway 33. Jody was heading west on highway 3 and our schedules were so well matched that our itineraries would likely intersect at the junction of the two highways at almost the exact same time, which they did!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, her plans had changed and she needed to get closer to Vancouver tonight. So we had a good chat, I got my mail, and then we continued on, with me taking the road she had just traveled, highway 3 eastbound.

There is no cell service along most of highway 3, so I decided to drive to Castlegar, where I would arrive around 9pm, with enough light to find a place to camp for the night. And that’s where I am now. 🙂

There was a torrential downpour between Grand Fork and here, so bad that I would start hydro planing if I went too fast. I hope it wasn’t that bad further east as the highway is apparently badly damaged around Fernie, with only one or two lanes open. It was fairly clear when I arrived in Castlegar, but it’s now raining lightly.

I decided against making a cannonball run to home tomorrow as that would stupidly keep me from doing a much needed stock up of supplies. I’ll see how far I feel like going tomorrow, will stop in Swift Current or Moose Jaw for stuff Wednesday morning, and will be home by mid-afternoon Wednesday. Provided I can get past flooded Medicine Hat…

Another upcoming post: a review of what it’s been like to camp in my truck!