Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Haven’t been posting much recently, so for anyone interested, my summer (so far) in a nutshell.

- I’ve been working more then I anticipated despite things looking grim in the spring. Prospects for getting back full time are looking up. Eventually.

- We took our RV vacation to the east coast of Canada, a few weeks later then planned, but we made it none the less. We spent considerable time in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Overall it was an extremely enjoyable trip with a much more relaxed pace versus last years trip to Vancouver.

- Still no flying although the bug has been biting hard recently. Must win lottery.

- We’re replacing our minivan with something new. Not sure what yet, I’m opting for a Corvette or something fun, but my wife is leaning towards something slightly more practical for a family of four. One must dream.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Despite the fact that I’m (at least temporarily, based on the latest outlook) out of work we have decided to push on with our summer vacation plans.

Unlike last summer where we logged over 10,000 Kilometers on a trip to Vancouver BC and back this summers trip still involves our RV, but for a much shorter trip to Prince Edward Island on the east coast of Canada, and then down the eastern seaboard of the US to the Boston area, and then westward towards home.

This trip will take us through several notable Canadian cities, many of which I have been to many times before, but not in a tourism aspect, Quebec City being one of the big ones. Our terminus of Charlottetown PEI is a location that I have not visited before, and beyond that the many small towns along the eastern seaboard through Maine and New Hampshire will surely offer up many surprises, excellent scenery, and friendly people, if not big attractions.

Instead of taking 4 weeks for this trip as we did last year this years trip will be 2 weeks. That will give us several additional weeks of vacation time later in the summer or fall to keep our options open to take another short trip or to just sit back and unwind near home, and given the much shorter distance involved with the planned route of this years trip (less then half of last year) we simply don’t need as much time to begin with.

So, the planning begins.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

We did indeed end up camping for 4 nights over the new year period. We took some friendly ribbing from friends ranging from “You guys are insane!”, to “It’s not really camping when you’re staying in a hotel room on wheels!”, but we took it all in stride.

The trip to MacGregor Provincial Park ended up taking significantly longer then I had expected. I was hoping for about 4 hours, but after a few stops including one for fuel, groceries, and a rather frustrating stint stuck behind a slow moving road salter who apparently couldn’t see (or didn’t care about) the 2 kilometers worth of traffic backed up behind him, we made it there in about 5 hours.

The problem with having arrived later then anticipated was that we ended up being forced to setup camp in the dark. That’s bad enough in the summer, but in the winter it was a whole new level of challenge. Thankfully that went well and before long we were comfortable in the trailer and preparing dinner.

After dinner I took a small trek through the campground to familiarize myself with the area, but trying to learn a strange campground’s layout (and MacGregor is a bit curious to begin with utilizing a “clover” layout with a center ring road) I figured I’d leave the exploring until the next day. The Campground host Frank popped by to say hello and ensure we were OK, and then we were alone.

Not knowing anyone, and being rather tired, we watched a bit of TV and crashed early.

The next few days were an adventure:

- Questionable weather. Yes, it’s winter and we expected winter weather, but it was constantly overcast and windy most days. It was ironic (and rather frustrating) to wake up to beautiful sunshine, comfortable temperatures, and calm winds on the day we needed to depart. Regardless, considering it was 10c and raining only days before our arrival (which would have been a disastrous muddy mess for camping) I shouldn’t complain.

- A questionable hydro situation. Collectively, the at-capacity (for the small section that was open) crowd managed to blow out the parks hydro system on new years eve. It was questionable because the breaker that apparently popped was designed to feed two other similarly-sized loops that were closed for the winter. Yes, we were probably all drawing quite a lot of hydro, but what happens in the summer when the other two loops are open and AC’s are going wide-open? If the winter camping program is to be expanded as discussions seem to indicate is possible, Ontario Parks is going to have to ensure that the parks hydro systems are up to the load.

- A great new years eve celebration held by several members of the “Winter Warrior” club who are regulars at MacGregor. It was great fun and I finally got put faces to names of many people who I had talked to online for quite some time.

- Plenty of enjoyable social interaction. Campers are of the friendly sort at the best of times, and winter campers tend to be the really hard core amongst them, and as such, even friendlier. Not once did I go out for a walk and not end up stopping at someone’s campsite for a chat, some of which lasted hours.

- The trailer performed admirably for not being entirely designed as a winter-capable unit. As with any RV of it’s sort (read as: Designed for summer and poorly insulated) it was difficult to heat even with 30 amps worth of electric heaters running taking the load off the furnace, and was fairly drafty, but overall it was comfortable. It did take a while to sort out the best way to spread the load on the trailers electrical system - who thought it was smart to wire an entire 30′ trailer with 10 plugs in various places with only two circuits?

- The fresh water supply and sewer situations did require some creative handling, but with the help of many pointers provided by those who have done this sort of thing before, it all went remarkably well for the most part.

It was temping for me to stay another day although I think the rest of the family had reached the point of being ready to head home. Add to that a freezing rain alert for Sunday, and it was clear that Saturday was going to be the day we had to head home, which we did.

The trip home was punctuated by a stop at the east Toronto Apple Store (where Apple service shined yet again, but that’s another story for another blog entry) and then me getting the trailer stuck quite well at it’s parking spot after unloading it at home.

Will we do the winter camping routine again this year? I doubt it - it was fun, but it was also a considerable amount of work above and beyond summer camping.

Next new years? I hope so.

Photos: (Updated Gallery)

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Due to yesterdays snow as well as several additional forecasted storms in the next week, I decided it was prudent to extract our trailer from it’s storage lot in preparation for our trip to Macgregor Point Provincial Park from the 30′th to the 4′th.

Although I’m usually pretty good at making do without it, I’ll admit that having 4WD would have been handy.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Our weekend, in celebration of our 10th anniversary and my wives Birthday.

Saturday.

8:00AM: Wake up, have cereal with the kids.

12:00PM: Drop off kids with grandparents, head to Toronto. Reality distortion field energized.

1:00PM: Check into a very, very nice hotel. Experience culture shock.

1PM-5PM: Enjoy all the hotel has to offer in ambiance and services. Our room is heaven.

5:30PM: Depart for the CN Tower for a 5-Star dinner at the 360 Restaurant, 1122′ AGL.

8:00PM: Dinner was great, the view from our windows-ledge seat of the CN Tower is unbeatable as always.

8:30PM: Watch aircraft doing night touch-and-go’s at the Island airport from what is almost circuit altitude.

9:00PM: Return to hotel.

Sunday.

9:30AM: Wake up. Enjoy sun shining in our massive window as well as the rooms elaborate shower.

10:00AM: Breakfast arrives within seconds of our 10AM order placed the previous night.

10:05AM: I could eat this sort of breakfast every morning.

11:00AM: Climb back into bed. Most. Comfortable. Bed. Ever.

12:00PM: Realize our 1PM Checkout time is approaching. Reality distortion field failing.

1:00PM: Checking out. Valet retrieves our vehicle.

….1:45PM: Stop at Ikea on way home, eat 50 Cent hotdogs for lunch at Ikea cafeteria.

Yeah, back to reality. ;)

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

This post will probably only be of interest to family and friends, for the record.

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Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

So far this year we’ve logged probably in excess of 60 nights of camping, a number which was bolstered greatly by our RV adventure that was 30 days (and 10,000 Kilometers) long.

We started our season on Mothers day weekend, and if the weather cooperates, we hope it can go on for another few weeks, but unfortunately it’s looking like our time is limited - the long term forecast isn’t looking great, thanksgiving weekend is approaching, and the impending freezing weather will soon dictate that we winterize the trailer (at least the plumbing) before we’d really like to.

During the season we’ve taken thousands of pictures of our adventures, and this evening I picked out a handful that feature the places we’ve been. Some are generic, yet others show off the spectacular scenery we saw along the way, and those who have traveled Canada and the USA by road are likely to be able to pinpoint the position of at least a few of the pictures below.

With the plumbing system winterized or not, the one other (more limiting factor) against extending our camping season is the simple fact that most of the campgrounds close on the Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend, which is now only two weeks away. With no campgrounds left to visit, and extremely limited backwoods camping opportunities in our immediate area, our RV season is effectively forced to an end, like it or not. It’s rather disappointing since camping in the fall is one of my favorite times of year - the colors, the crisp cool weather, the smell of freshly fallen leaves - but with the fall colors being late this year most of the parks are likely to be closed by the time the peak colors even arrive.

We are contemplating a trip to the Pinery Provincial Park sometime in January of February, however. The Pinery is one of the few campgrounds in the province that is open all year around - the electricity remains on, and they will plow out a site for you when a reservation is made ahead of time. Many think we’re insane, but really, our RV is hardly “roughing it” (even in the dead of winter), and it would be a great break in the monotony or boring winter weekends.

Despite the amount of traveling and camping we’ve managed this summer, I can’t say I’m not sad to see the season coming to an end regardless, and with the Pinery being a 300 Kilometer trip (each way) it’s simply not a realistic destination for what is now only a one-night weekend camping schedule.

Perhaps another tenting weekend is in order.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

In early 2006 me and Paul flew to the annual rec.aviation Pinckneyville Fly-In in Illinois. I blogged about it as it was the furthest I had ever flown in a GA aircraft, and remains such to this day.

It was a fun trip, but one thing that I particularly fell in love with was the rib dinner that we had on the Saturday night. I’d had ribs before (and even tried to cook them a few times myself) but they simply paled in comparison to what I experienced at PJY.

While they were cooking I was carefully observing all day. What surprised me most was that they lit the fire in the smoker the night before in order to create the bed of coals, and then after a good dry-rub seasoning the ribs were put on the smoker early Saturday morning even though they weren’t to be eaten until dinner time. Low and slow was the mantra I eventually learned.

Looking back through my iPhoto library I just found a picture of the actual smoker itself at PJY, as well as a few pics of the results:

The smoker at the Pinckneyville (PJY) Fly-In.

They were without exception the best ribs I had ever eaten in my life, so good that I went back multiple times for more and actually started to feel like a bit of a glutton..but wow, I couldn’t get enough. I unfortunately forget the name of the lady who was diligently tending to the food all day, but I remember a few of the locals referring to her a the “rib specialist”.

Shortly after returning home I set forth on a hunt to find a smoker (albeit a bit smaller!) for myself, and with the help of a friend who found one at a yardsale, I was in luck. Since then I’ve smoked more racks of ribs then I could ever remember, as well as chickens, beef roasts, fish, and anything else that I could find that would be compatible with smoking.

It was a bit of a learning curve to get it right (it really is a bit of an art) but I’ve become quite proficient at it over the years.

A recent addition to my smoking arsenal was this critter.

My wife picked it up about a week ago and I’ve been dying since to get it sparked up. Unlike my previous smoker which was fed mainly with charcoal, this new one is a wood-burner - a fact that makes for a better taste, but also makes it more tedious (and expensive) to operate. In a total fluke, less then 48 hours after getting the smoker I bumped into a free (and inexhaustible) supply of perfect quality oak and maple to burn in it.

So yesterday was the first run - 6 racks of ribs.

6 Racks just as I put them on.

And at the first flip 4 hours later.

After just over 8 hours of babysitting the smoker, 15 pounds of oak, and a few beers later, the results were well worth it - the ribs were smoked perfectly with just the proper amount of smokey taste, were tender, and virtually fell off the bone. Unfortunately in the rush to consume them I failed to get any pictures of the finished product,

I’m hoping todays chicken turns out just as good as yesterdays ribs and that my neighbors can tolerate the smoke wafting around the neighborhood once again today.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

My truck was still not running right after we left Yellowstone National Park on our month-long RV adventure. I had some signifigant repair work done on it in West Yellowstone by a shop which I won’t (yet) mention by name, and despite fixing the problem I came in with, I left with several more problems.

At the time I was frustrated beyond any possible explanation about the whole issue, and I had (for a while) thought that the underlying problem was actually still rooted elsewhere since it had been present before the repair.

It turns out that the repair that they did solved the initial issue, but in the process of repairing the one problem, the shop created many more issues, and then shoved the truck out the door without addressing them. Clearly the mechanic who worked on my truck was anything but competent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

After departing Wisconsin Dells we took the following day to trek to Gurnee Illinois, home of a Six Flags theme park that I had visited many years ago and we wanted to visit again with the whole family.

We arrived in the early evening and once again decided to boondock near the theme park itself, not so much because of the money saving aspect, but simply because there was no campgrounds remotely close to where we wanted to be early the next morning - near the park. Quote to the contrary, with our holding tanks nearing capacity and our fresh water supply nearly exhausted, we would have welcomed a campground, but weren’t going to inconvenience ourselves for the privledge as we were not yet desperate.

Our choice of overnight location ended up being great, until the lawn care company arrived at 6AM and started cutting the expansive grassy area immediately in front of our parking spot. At one point I could smell the exhaust of the lawn tractors and weed eaters as they passed our spot. They seemed to take no issue with us being there, but at the same point in time they weren’t exactly trying to be quiet, and really, I don’t blame them - they had a job to do.

As a result of the early wake-up we got breakfast out of the way and packed up. We made a quick stop at a gas station to fuel up the generator. With the blessings of the staff we also commandeered the garden hose and took on some fresh water as we had exhausted our water tanks after my morning shower.

The park ended up being great despite a heavy thunderstorm that passed through in the evening. After it passed we stayed until the park closed at midnight.

Upon closing I wanted to make the short drive through Chicago during the night hours instead of fighting rush hour traffic the following morning. I was extremely tired, but we pressed on, and made it. We crashed for a well deserved good nights sleep.

The second last day took us most of the way across Michigan where we stopped at a large campground for a single night. This allowed us to relax for an evening after many busy days, and also allowed us to (finally) empty our now brimming-at-the-seams holding tanks.

The morning of day 29 took us to the science center in Detroit, and then across the border via the Detroit/Windsor tunnel. We pressed on to London Ontario where we once again boondocked due to the hour we eventually stopped at.

Awaking on our last day it was bittersweet. We had been on the road for a month, we had seen so much, yet only a few hours from now it was all over except for the aftermath of unpacking and resuming our normal lives.

For the kids, I think that the last several hours was the longest day of the trip despite only covering a short distance. Of course, the anticipation of finally being home and getting to see their friends was bearing upon them, and I can’t say I wasn’t going to be glad to get home myself despite all the fun we had.

Arriving at the house we found everything exactly as we had left it a month before. We unpacked the trailer in record time and I went and parked it.

Returning home was nice, but I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. :-)

(Pics, followup and such to follow…)

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

We departed the Mount Rushmore area on Monday shortly before lunch. The poor weather from the night before had washed out any chance of one last campfire before a long stretch on the road, and also left us packing up in a particularly muddy campsite.

The next few days would take us 1400 Kilometers (~900 miles) east, eventually reaching Gurnee Illinois (Just north of Chicago) where we planned to spend a day at the Six Flags theme park there. We had absolutely no schedule or itinerary for these 3 days, agreeing simply to go wherever the wind took us and take in any interesting sights or attractions along the way. With a fairly leisurely schedule requiring slighly less then only 500 Kilometers per day of driving we should have lots of time to stop as we saw fit.

The days blended together. With the beautiful mountain scenery that we had spent the last few weeks enjoying now behind us, the transition back to the flat-lands was a bit of a let-down. This particular stretch of the I90 is rather nondescript and with the exception of a few tourist attractions we stopped at (the, in our opinion, much over-hyped “Wall Drug” being one of them) it was a fairly unmemorable ride.

One notable exception was a lunch stop in the picturesque city of Fairmont Minnesota where we enjoyed a relaxing few hours taking a dip in the lake after eating. Our Garmin GPS really proved worth it’s weight in gold when it came to leading us to great little areas like the park we were at, and then back to the interstate again afterwards.

On the third day we did spent a day in Wisconsin Dells (in Wisconsin, obviously) which is monikered “The Water Park Capital of the World”. After a few days on the road this was a good opportunity to wind down. We chose one of the smaller water parks which was fairly quiet compared to the larger most-popular ones, and this led to a day without lineups and frustration.

We opted to boondock for this entire section of the trip - no campgrounds, no hookups - just us, the RV, the generator when we needed power, and the road ahead.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Our luck with the weather had started to wear thin - we received the brunt end of a storm through the night that was loud enough to scare my daughter into waking up in the middle of the night assured of the fact that she needed to sleep with us, instead of in her own bed.

The storm passed, but the crowded bed arrangement lasted for the rest of the night, leading to a less then ideal nights sleep.

Regardless, when the morning arrived it was once again bright and sunny, so we’ll take it.

Todays sole goal was to visit Mount Rushmore. There was some question if we should go through the day, or if we should wait until the evening hours and perhaps catch the supposedly great laser and fireworks show at the nearby Crazy Horse memorial. If we waited for the evening hours we planned to enjoy some of the wide-variety of entertainment at the campground through the day, or vice versa.

Unsure if we actually wanted to visit Crazy Horse (the cost was surprisingly steep compared to the extremely reasonable $10 Mount Rushmore charged) we decided to go to Mount Rushmore right after breakfast. This would turn out to be a wise decision later in the day.

Mount Rushmore itself was amazing. Clearly they have spent a lot of time and effort improving it in recent years and it shows - the grounds, buildings, walking trails, and everything else about the memorial was top-notch. Without actually seeing it for yourself there’s not much that can be said for the experience, but for anyone who is in the area, don’t pass it by.

We spent a surprising amount of time at Mount Rushmore and it was well after lunch when we finally departed. We decided to visit one other attraction that was a short distance away but wanted to stop for lunch first. Unfortunately we discovered that the dining options in Keystone South Dakota were limited at best, especially if you wanted something to eat on the run. With little other option we eventually settled on grabbing fast-food from Dairy Queen. The food was OK (for Dairy Queen) but clearly there was a huge tourist-town price gouge going on as it cost us nearly $40 for 2 kids meals, 2 adult meals, and a few extras.

The other attraction we visited was called Cosmos - a unique attraction based solely on optical illusion. It was difficult to explain exactly what it was all about, but once again, if your in the area, it’s worth the $8 admission.

The afternoon was wearing, and with the kids wanting to get back to the campground to go swimming we decided to head back. Dinner ensued and the kids did get a swim in, but then the weather started to take a turn for the worse, eventually deteriorating to heavy rain and hail shortly before sunset.

Our good weather stretch was officially over, and our decision earlier in the day to go visit Mount Rushmore in the daytime hours (instead of the evening) was now turning out to be a very wise one.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

We slept in, but as the sunlight bathed the mountains and cleared out the deer, cars once again ventured up and down the roads and the traffic noise eventually work us up through our open windows. We did the usual morning routine, snapped a few pictures (the scenery was actually quite nice from the outlook) and the hit the road.

Enroute again we stopped in the city of Sheridan for some quick shopping. I once again made a few more phone calls to local repair facilities in an effort to find someone to attend to our still ailing truck, but being the Saturday of the fourth of July weekend it quickly became clear that everybody was closed tight.

Anxious to get to the Mount Rushmore area we simply pressed on - the truck was running better now that we had descended from the high altitude, seemingly having an easier time making boost again with the now denser air. It was far from perfect, but it was performing much better now, so my fear that we actually had fairly serious engine problems started to fade away as it seemed that the problem might be nothing more then a partially blocked catalytic converter. We could deal with that later - the roads ahead were easy in comparison to what we just surmounted.

We made good time and arrived at the KOA Campground we chose to stay at in the early afternoon. We discovered upon arrival that this was actually the second largest KOA Campground in the entire KOA system, and despite being borderline stupidly expensive (Really, $75 a night for a campsite?) it did offer a great deal in the way of entertainment, from several pools, a small water park, hot tubs, water slides, and a large variety of activities.

We checked in for two nights and crashed for the rest of the day while the kids played. We would save the tour of Mount Rushmore itself for tomorrow.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Sure enough the next morning it was plenty cool in the trailer - my forgetfulness that led to me forgetting to set the furnace thermostat led to a frosty morning as it the temperature had dropped significantly overnight.

After getting the trailer warmed up everyone else eventually crawled out of bed and we did the usual morning routine.

Todays plan had us heading east out of Yellowstone with an intended destination of Sheridan Wyoming. Ahead of us lied not only the descent out of Yellowstone along the much maligned state highway 14, but the (as we would discover) marathon climb to the summit of the Bighorn mountain granite pass, and then down the other side again - a full day was ahead.

After saying farewell to the friends we had made the night before we departed, but not until after a long (and annoying) wait ensued at the RV dump station in order to empty our holding tanks and pickup a full tank of fresh water.

Once on the road the miles flew past. The horror stories that I had heard of the descent out of Yellowstone on 14 seemed like a non issue really, given prudent and careful driving.

We stopped in Cody Wyoming for what turned out to be either a really late lunch, or an early dinner. Cody itself was an amazing little town that we could have easily spent a day exploring - it had that characteristic (almost stereotyped) “wild wild west” town look and feel to the point of looking like a movie-set at times, except it was a real town. Unfortunately with plenty of miles ahead we had to suffice with a quick drive through town, and our lunch stop at the local Pizza Hut.

It wasn’t long after hitting the road again that we reached Greybull WY where the warning signs of the mountainous roads ahead began. After another aborted attempt to find someone to address our trucks ongoing issues (a long story in itself) we eventually decided we needed to make a run for it and get up, over, and down the mountain range before darkness set it. So, off we went.

The Bighorns turned out to be one of the most challenging mountain ranges we experienced on this whole trip. After passing Greybull the roads took a precipitious upward pitch, and it seemed to go on forever. I’d estimate that the roads were easily anywhere from a consistent 8% grade to upwards of 10% in brief stretches, and since there were only relatively short distances between switchback turns it was near impossible to maintain any momentum.

The truck, despite being signifigantly down in horsepower due to the boost issue huffed and puffed it’s way to the top without a great deal of fanfare. At the summit I snapped a picture of our GPS unit reading just short of 9,100 feet of elevation. Wow!

A short distance after the summit we stopped at a gravel pull out and the kids were amazed to see snow, and plenty of it. We stopped to get out and stretch after the long climb and the kids took turns trying to climb the long trail of snow that led up the granite walls, and then we all had a snowball fight. In the middle of July. In shorts. Great fun!

The summit reached, the reality of going down the other side was upon us - the roads down were just as steep, and now the added challenge of keeping our truck and trailer under control from a speed perspective was my primary concern. Thankfully the truck once again did a great job but it was slow going - second gear was marginally too high at some points to maintain our speed without the need for brakes (which would quickly overheat and become useless if not used sparingly) so at times we had to crawl along at about 15 MPH in first gear, switching back to second in areas where some speed was OK.

Unfortunately we were behind schedule and darkness was falling, and with that, the number of deer on the side of the road, and increasingly darting across the road was becoming concerning. At about 4000 feet (2000 feet above the city of Sheridan below) we pulled off into a rest area / scenic lookout so that I could check the trailer brakes for temperature. It turned out that the rest area was occupied by plenty of people sitting in lawn chairs along the guard-rail. It suddenly dawned on us that they were waiting for the 4th of July fireworks.

We quickly made friends with a few people and subsequently did the same thing, pulling out our lawn chairs and taking in the show (from three different cities, none the less) ourselves. It was a great evening.

After the show, with continued concern about proceeding down the rest of the mountain with the deer everywhere, we decided to simply camp-out overnight at the outlook - it was cool and comfortable, and with virtually no traffic to be seen, it was silent with the exception of the crickets.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Despite a good effort to get up early, I slept in. I had slept like a log, but still didn’t feel well rested when I got up - this altitude thing is getting to me more then I expected. At least I hadn’t fallen prey to the head-splitting headaches that many with even less altitude tolerance fall prey to - I can at least deal with lethargy.

After a good breakfast I walked back to the shop to check on the truck.

The good news: It was ready.
The bad news: The bill was horrendous.
The worse news: It only partially fixed the problem.

As I drove the truck back to the campsite it was clear to me that something was still awry - there was still a serious lack of turbocharger boost with a corresponding lack of power.

With few other ideas of exactly what could be wrong, I decided we’d set off down the road and see if the problem cleared up - perhaps a sensor wasn’t registering the high altitude of Yellowstone correctly and it was incorrectly metering fuel, or wasn’t adjusting the turbocharger waste-gate properly. I was grasping at straws, but with few options for mechanical repairs in West Yellowstone and no indications that driving the truck as-is would lead to impending doom, we departed.

Unfortunately we weren’t 20 feet out of our campsite when another gremlin took hold - we had no trailer brakes. No amount of tweaking the brake controller of checking the electrical connections would remedy the situation. WTF?

To keep a long story short, we happened upon a mobile RV repair as we cruised towards the exit. With zero interest in descending the (notoriously steep) mountain roads exiting Yellowstone to the east without functioning trailer brakes, I commandeered their assistance to troubleshoot the problem. The story got even longer, but it ended up being a bad brake magnet, the problem which was solved by methods I won’t discuss here.

The good news: We had functional brakes on the trailer again.
The bad news: It took an hour to diagnose and repair what turned out to be a stupidly simple problem.
The worse news: It cost us another $100.00 for the hour worth of labor.

What the hell else could go wrong?

Todays plan took us about an hours drive away to Bay Bridge campground, which was actually a state park within Yellowstone National Park itself. We wanted to spent at least one night inside Yellowstone, and having made these changes very last minute we were lucky to get a reservation at any campground at this side of the park, so despite being one of the lesser-preferred locations, we took it.

Once again the drive through Yellowstone resulted in a number of animal sightings (Bison and deer) but not in the numbers we had expected, and to my daughters dismay we didn’t see a single mountain goat, moose, or grizzly/black bear.

We stopped at a few scenic lookouts (most of which I simply pondered what was going on under the hood of the truck while Christie and the kids took pictures and enjoyed the sights) and then arrived at Bay Bridge. We checked in, listened to the same “there are bears in this campground, stow your food inside, etc etc” speech that we had heard many times before in Banff and other campgrounds, and then headed for our site. We had problems actually getting the trailer to fit since this campground was clearly designed in the days of much smaller trailers. I’m quite adept at maneuvering our trailer around, but given the locations of berms, trees, signs, and the narrow bits of asphalt that they actually give you to work with (with warnings that you must stay on them) it was tough. Eventually, with much wiggling and several blocks of wood on one side to get us level, I managed to get it situated so that we could unhitch.

We enjoyed the evening and met another couple from Pennsylvania who’s children enjoyed the company of ours. They came over after dinner and we enjoyed the campfire together at our site - the social aspect of camping is one thing that I greatly enjoy, and we’ve met some great people while RV’ing.

The weather threatened as the evening wore on - the winds came up, the skies blackened, and lightening was visible. I was sure that we were going to be dealt our first real downpour of our vacation, but as has been the trend it seemed to simply skirt past us once again, dropping only a handful of rain-drops on us.

With the temperatures dropping and the evening wearing on, our neighbors headed back to their RV and we retired for the evening. We tried to get a television station to catch the evening news (I’ve been feeling particularly detached from the news, although I think that’s a good thing) but as I expected there was no television stations (or radio stations, for that matter) to be found on the dial. Instead we ended up watching “The bucket list” on DVD.

We headed off to bed, but I forgot to set the furnace beforehand. Ooops - a cool night was ahead.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Yep, Beautiful weather, again. The only moisture to be seen was what the RV parks sprinkler system had deposited on the side of our trailer through the overnight hours.

I planned on being at the garage bright and early with the hope that they could get started on the truck ASAP and hopefully (if their estimate held true) have us back on the road by noon-ish. I dropped it off, and walked back to the RV park which was actually only about 10 minutes away.

Since we were going to be stranded in town for at least the first half of the day we decided to make the best of it. We registered the kids at the “Junior Smokejumper” program in town (which was free with donations accepted) and me and Christie took the opportunity to have a bit of alone time. We checked out many of the small shops, bought a few things, and then wandered some more. I decided to take in the Yellowstone museum in town (Christie sat it out, opting to curl up in the sun and read instead) and was quickly pleased that it was not only priced reasonably, but actually turned out to be extremely interesting, at least from my perspective. It was kind of nice to not have the kids dragging me along with the usual “Can we leave now? This is boring!” situation.

With the kids still occupied me and Christie ducked into the only Chinese restaurant in town and treated ourselves to what turned out to be a scrumptious meal.

The kids called us on the FRS radios to let us know that they were done just as we were finishing up lunch, so we trekked back the few blocks to pick them up - turns out they’d had a great time and enjoyed the program a great deal.

I decided to run over to check on the truck (everything is only a few blocks away in this little town!) and was dissapointed to see that despite it being noon, they hadn’t even touched it. Ugh. The more I hung around and inquired, the more it became obvious to me that we weren’t going to be seeing the truck back much before 5PM, if at all today.

Sure enough, I called at 4PM and they were having nothing but problems repairing the issue and they said that we could come and get it in the morning.

With no other option we simply hung around town for the rest of the day. There was plenty of neat little shops and such that kept us occupied, and then late in the day Christie and the kids decided to take-in the local Grizzly and Wolf interpretive center. With the extreme lethargy still upon me I opted out, deciding instead to hang out at the trailer and try to get some sleep. Of course, despite my best effort (and seeming exhaustion) I couldn’t sleep, simply tossing and turning in bed instead. I decided to make myself useful and got up to make dinner instead.

With West Yellowstone being small, as mentioned, one advantage was that our FRS walkie-talkie radios worked effectively to and from just about anywhere in town - we were always able to touch base at the press of a button, which is exactly what I did when dinner was ready.

We chowed down and the kids took off the play while me and Christie flaked out. I was still utterly exhausted and took the opportunity to head to bed shortly after 9PM.

This time, I got to sleep.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

For fear of sounding like a broken record, the weather was once again perfect. Our luck continues.

We slept in and even after such I still felt groggy when waking up. Even the usual morning coffee just couldn’t seem to wake me up. I remember reading that some people are effected differently by the altitude of much of Yellowstone, and given some of the massive elevation changes over the last few days (being at sea-level only a few days ago) it seems that I might be falling prey to at least the “lethargy” part of the altitude sickness.

Once again putting the truck problems in the back of my mind (as much as possible as I was quite honestly freaking out about what could be wrong, still unsure about the exact issue) we decided to start the day by taking the tour to Old Faithfull.

After lining up at the actual park entrance (about 15 minutes) we paid our entry fee and headed into the park. With a keen eye open for any of the famous Yellowstone wildlife we headed for Old Faithfull. Within 10 minutes traffic was slowing down, and then almost stopped. We had heard of the famous Yellowstone traffic jams before, but had hoped to be able to avoid them, but it seems that wasn’t going to happen. After about 10 minutes in the traffic we came upon a curve in the road only to see that the jam went on for at least another mile. Ugh.

As we came around another corner we finally got to see what the jam was all about - a bald eagle nesting site was just to the side of the road and people were slowing down for pictures. There was signs instructing people to not slow down, not stop, and not park, but despite the presence of a park warden, clearly people were slowing down regardless and causing the jam.

Once past this area the traffic (thankfully) opened up and we reached the main loop road, turning south.

It wasn’t long and we were at one of the many famous Yellowstone thermal attractions. I honestly forget which ones we visited in what order as we stopped at several on the way, but each was a unique site to behold, despite the quite strong rotten-egg sulphur smell emanating from most of the springs and vents that left my kids cracking “who farted?” jokes.

We eventually reached Old Faithfull only to find that the parking lots were jammed full. After much driving around we finally found a spot (which was actually conveniently close to the geyser itself) and unloaded. Many photos, much video, and a geyser eruption occurred. Cool!

We checked out the giftshops (I finally found a “Yellowstone National Park” sticker for our trailer that I liked) and after spending an hour or so headed out. With a 90 minute interval between eruptions we simply didn’t find a whole lot to do to cover the time, and with the crowds growing to crazy proportions we felt like perhaps it was time to run - we’d seen Old Faithfull in all it’s glory.

On the way back we stopped at another thermal attraction that we had passed the first time. As we had endured earlier in the day, we once again waited in line for 15 minutes for the bathroom, which as is the case with most stops in Yellowstone short of the built-up Old Faithfull area) are simply glorified vault toilets of seriously questionable cleanliness. One major pet peeve of Yellowstone was that the bathrooms are simply inadequate. Vault toilets are understandable since many areas don’t have electricity or running water, but to only put two bathroom stalls in an area which potentially attracts several hundred (perhaps a thousand or more in peak times) per hour seems silly - there were constant lineups at all times at every attraction, with some people in line clearly not doing very well with the whole waiting thing, deciding to run off into the bushes instead.

After our bathroom adventure we headed out onto the catwalk and checked out the massive hot springs and steam vents at this attraction. There are signs everywhere warning people of the danger of as much as stepping off the boardwalks as many areas apparently look firm, but are simply skins on top of scalding hot water. I had no trouble with staying on the boardwalk until the point when the winds suddenly picked up and the skies suddenly blackened. I had to grab ahold of my hat and take extra caution to not get blown off the catwalk due to the still increasing wind gusts - I thought we were about to get soaked as we could see the rain in the distance, and it seemed to be heading our way.

That said, as has been the theme with this trip, our luck held firm and the storm skirted to the north of us, leaving us dry and free to enjoy the rest of the attraction, despite having rushed through some of it due to what appeared to be an imminent soaking.

Unfortunately our mechanical problems were still in the back of my head and I wanted to head into town with enough time left to find an open repair facility and have it assessed, so we headed for West Yellowstone once again. As we expected traffic was still backed up at the eagles nest, and with the park warden now absent people were blatantly ignoring the rules and parking on the side of the road, exiting the vehicles, and blocking traffic to get photos.

Arriving back in town I found a shop willing to deal with our issues, and made arrangements to drop off the truck the next morning bright and early.

We did some grocery shopping and browsed around town a bit, and then retired to the campsite for the rest of the day.

I had a bad feeling about tomorrow. I think this is going to be expensive.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

Again, nice and sunny. Our luck has been excellent from a weather front.

After breakfast the kids took the opportunity to enjoy the parks pool once again. With a fairly lax schedule today (only a few hundred Kilometers to Yellowstone) we felt no need to rush, eventually rolling out of the campground at around 11:30. We stopped at the local Costco location for a few supplies and then hit the road.

The first few hours were interstate driving, fairly straightforward, however once we exited the highway for the last hour or so into the park, the scenery got much more interesting very quickly. It was very reminiscent of the stretch from Calgary into Banff - you can see the mountains in the distance getting closer and closer, and before long you are upon them.

The stretch from the entrance of the park to West Yellowstone (where our campsite was reserved long ago) seemed level to the naked eye, but referencing my foot on the throttle and the GPS, it was evident that we were actually in a long sustained climb.

I had noticed that the truck was noticeably louder when I started it up this morning, and added to that there was a seeming lack of power. Checking the boost gauge showed that it was only making a few PSI of boost, and looking in the passenger side mirror I could see black smoke under hard acceleration indicating that the engine wasn’t burning it’s fuel completely. Added to that the characteristic “Tick tick tick” noise emanating from under the hood under acceleration, and I knew that I had an exhaust manifold leak. Sure enough over the last few miles into West Yellowstone it got worse. This isn’t good - a diesel not making proper boost is not only going to be seriously lacking in horsepower, but it can be harmful since a great deal of unburned fuel simply generates heat instead of power. As much as the prospect of such seemed terrible, I was probably going to have to get this fixed in Yellowstone.

Putting the problems in the back of my head we logged the last few miles and arrived at West Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park. Check-in was effortless and we were on our way to our site a short while later.

The first thing I observed is that it’s clear we were outclassed by probably in excess of 80% of the RV’s in this park. Everywhere you look there are million dollar private coaches and $200,000 high end travel trailers. There was a spattering of middle-of-the-road RV’ers like us, but I was astounded by how few. This is a fairly high-class (and much more expensive) RV park compared to some others in the area, but I’ve began to notice from park to park that many of the casual campers are no longer coming out, probably because of the price of fuel. For the million-dollar coach owners I’m sure the price of filling the tank is inconsequential, but for middle class families or those on a tight budget it’s been my observation that RV’ing seems to be much lower on the priority list.

We backed into our campsite and were greeted by the mosquitos who immediately targeted us as easy pickings. First priority before all others was to douse ourselves in bug spray, and then setup camp.

As we expected in Yellowstone, the weather goes from one extreme to another - we were sweltering in the AM, got comfortably cool (and then hot again) on the way into the area, and by sundown we were shutting the windows and reaching for the furnace controls.

It was too late to bother actually going into Yellowstone park today, so we opted to simply enjoy dinner, enjoy the RV park, and then retire for the evening.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

The alarm went off at 7AM. The generator was still humming away despite my concerns that it might run out of fuel through the night, and upon inspection it still had over 1/4 of a tank of fuel, meaning it had only burned about $10 through the night - not bad.

I setup a pot of coffee, flipped up the TV Antenna long enough to see that there was zero television channels worth watching while we fixed breakfast, and eventually dragged everyone else out of bed.

We had a quick breakfast and after a bit of sightseeing (it really was a nice scenic outlook!) we set out onto the road again. Todays milage was approximately 550 kilometers which shouldn’t normally be a huge deal, but was once again elongated by the reality that there was some fairly notable mountain passes ahead of us. Once again the truck spiked a few uncomfortably high temperatures that kept me concerned. I would learn tomorrow that it wasn’t unwarranted concern as troubles unfortunately lie ahead.

We stopped in Spokane Washington for groceries and fuel, and after about an hour (and some lunch) we were back on the road.

We arrived in Missoula just before dinner, choosing a KOA to overnight at. I don’t usually prefer KOA campgrounds since they all feel rather sterile in my opinion, but this one had a pool and it was early enough for the kids to be able to enjoy it, so we opted to stay there. Of the many we’ve stayed at, it was well maintained, well organized, and generally enjoyable, but the actual campsites themselves still resemble glorified parking lots as it common at most KOA’s.

Since we’d had a late lunch we weren’t terribly hungry for dinner until later in the evening at which point we anxiously visited the local Cracker Barrel. We all absolutely love the Cracker Barrel but since there are none in Canada it’s a rare treat for us, one that we were surely repeat at least several more times before crossing back into Canada.

It was late when we got back to the campground so we retired for the evening. Me and Christie enjoyed the parks cable TV service and watched TV for an hour, and since I had WiFi internet for the first time in days I caught up on my blogging and surfing.

Originally published at Information Echo. Please leave any comments there.

It was Saturday morning, and it was time to pack-up and leave Vancouver. We had a great time, but unfortunately ran out of time to do all the things we really wanted to do - a whale watching adventure, a trip to Gastown, a ferry trip to Victoria and a few other excursions that we had hoped to accomplish simply didn’t happen.

The hot weather had arrived - we switched on the AC for the first time since the trip began and stayed cool while we packed up. Still beautifully sunny, the hot weather coupled with the humidity actually made it a bit uncomfortable, but we weren’t about to complain, although I was now glad that we had fixed the charging system on the truck as it meant that we could actually use the AC, rather then trying to conserve power to make it into the USA.

Our trip towards the border crossing at Washington state was only about 50 kilometers, of about a 45 minute drive through downtown and south towards the border. The trip went well until we reached the border and then came to a grinding halt about 2 kilometers from the border.

Listening to the radio it seems that the expected wait was about 3 hours. Crap. Perhaps we should have considered the fact that this was the Canada Day weekend and plenty of Canadians were headed south. Coupled with some grumblings we heard while waiting in line that there was some sort of border guard protest happening on the US side that was causing the delays to begin with, the wait seemed like it would really screw up our day.

And it was a long wait - for the first hour we moved no more then a few hundred feet. Others were growing frustrated and were shutting their vehicles off and walking ahead to see what the problem was. We took turns driving (a few feet at a time) and the other person would hop into the trailer and use the bathroom as necessary, etc.

At about the 1.5 hour point Christie ran back to the trailer and fixed us lunch which was actually quite enjoyable. Others in the line went hungry, or took the trek to the duty-free shop and payed massively inflated prices for mediocre food at the small cafe inside the store.

Once we actually arrived at the booths (in excess of three hours later) we found out why the delay was occuring - they were spending at least 3 to 5 minutes per vehicle - some sort of protest indeed I would guess. When we pulled up ourselves we got the fuzzy-eyeball on why we were crossing the border so far from home (apparently RV’ers don’t travel anymore?) and then the guard seemed to think that my truck had just been recently painted. Now, I can understand why this would cause concern (stolen vehicles routinely get repainted) but if anyone cares to look closely you can quickly find plenty of indications that despite being clean (I had just washed the truck in Vancouver before departing) it was anything but fresh paint.

I answered all the questions, was patient as he did everything short of crawl around underneath (He was curious why it was so “wet looking” underneath? My rust prevention spray I would guess?) and finally waved us through. Four hours after we left Vancouver, we were finally on the interstate.

This seriously screwed up our plans to be into the campground early in the afternoon - with about 400 Kilometers still ahead of us, allowing for a few rest and fuel stops, as well as the grades ahead, it was looking like we wouldn’t arrived until around 8:30 to 9:00 PM now. Ugh.

The drive went well despite one large grade that gave Rogers Pass in Alberta a run for it’s money - the weather was hot and sticky all day and the truck spiked a temperature that I had never seen before. Rather unsettling, but the truck seemed to handle it in stride.

We pulled into the State Park we had hoped to camp at (Petrified Forest state park in Vantage Washington) only to find it was full to capacity. (sigh) The park ranger came out and spoke to us - I tried to see if there was an overflow area that we could set up in for the night (since we were only here for a single night) but there was nothing available. He did however tell us about a scenic lookout a few miles up the road that might be a good area to boondock for the night, so with little other option at this point we set out down the interstate again.

Sure enough we found the lookout, and at 10PM with all of us tired, it looked pretty good to us - there was no signs that prevented overnight camping, and not a sole up there, so we setup camp for the night. I started up the generator to run the AC and we simply left it on all night long to stay comfortable. We watched a bit of a movie with the kids, and then quickly running out of steam, we crashed for the night at about 11PM.