Nerd Nomad

After a week in Portland, to wait for my passport to arrive, we made a beeline for the Canadian border. Various delays in the journey up the coast meant August was already in full swing by the time the passport arrived. Alaska has a short summer, and it begins to wind down in mid-September, with an occasionally severe rainy season emphasizing the change of seasons. So, if we were going to have a month or more of reasonably nice weather before we had to hightail it home, we needed to move fast.

We mostly camped in rest areas on I-5 through Washington; conveniently, the state has a nice map of all of the locations, though there are slight inaccuracies in which stops have RV dump stations (there are more than shown on the map). As with California, there is an 8 hour time limit on rest area stops, but I never saw state police enforcing the rule (and once at a more desolate rest stop in Oregon, we saw a couple of people breaking down tents early in the morning, which definitely crosses the line into “camping”). I prefer rest areas when traveling, as they’re usually a bit quieter than truck stops, and trucks rarely leave the engine running when they stop in rest areas.

Somewhere along the way we bought another TV at one of the Walmarts where we overnighted (I like Walmarts almost as much as rest areas, because I can stock up and sleep with only one stop, and the lots are huge and easy to park Hugh in). While we were camping out in Kiki’s neighborhood in Palo Alto, we’d returned the prior Samsung we’d bought at Costco just didn’t take well to being mounted, and the front panel kept trying to separate from the TV. The new TV is a Vizio Razor LED 22″ model, and it is absolutely perfect. Doesn’t shake much even when the roads get rough, and looks really good at the front of house.

We crossed the border late at night in Sumas, after a panicked day of trying to line up Gidget’s paperwork. Dogs need a certificate of vaccination from at least 30 days prior, which I didn’t have. I called Adobe in Los Altos, where she’d had her shots and checkup just before we hit the road, and they heroically faxed over a certificate the same day. Totally awesome service, and one of the benefits of having a big vets office like Adobe (someone is always there, and in this case, the vet who’d given her shots also happened to be in the office even though it was after 7PM when I called).

Crossing took about 30 minutes, and included a pretty predictable interview as well as a cursory search of the Hugh Laurie. They mostly seemed concerned that I might want to stay in Canada permanently, which is an absolute riot; I’m a weather wuss. I don’t live in cold places. They couldn’t pay me to come to Canada during the winter. There was also concern that I might be selling my three guitars and sneaky not paying taxes on them. I explained that this was the bare minimum number of guitars I could possibly survive with…and this represented my collection after a *severe* purge of instruments. One acoustic, one electric, and one bass. How could I possibly travel with less?

Once we crossed, I rushed to the Rogers store to attempt to get a SIM card and service so my G1 phone would work in Canada. I was thwarted in this first attempt by the fact that the wireless folks we only in the store until 6PM. Apparently Rogers Plus is like a Blockbuster, that also happens to occasionally sell wireless phones and stuff. Weird. I didn’t know video stores still existed. Who rents DVDs anymore?

Since it was late, we camped at the Walmart, and stocked up on frozen foods and such for the long road ahead. Canada thins out fast when you drive north…it only takes a couple of hours of northerly driving to be in very sparse territories with 50 or more miles between towns.

The next morning, I tried again to get Rogers service, but was thwarted by the rules for getting data service. I would need to buy a SIM card for $10, activate an account for $35, and then in a month pay a cancellation fee of $30. This probably adds up to less than using T-Mobile’s roaming rates of $10/MB, but only by a small amount. Insane in either case for something I would only need for a week or possibly ten days (remember, we’re in a hurry to reach Alaska, we’ll take our time in Canada coming back down, as weather allows).

So, on to Costco (did you know Canada has Costcos? It’s true…I was more surprised by the number of Walmarts, actually) to buy a GPS. We bought a Garmin 265WT, which I am deeply ambivalent about. It works, I guess, but it’s slow. Slower than Google Maps running on the edge network (and much slower than Maps on 3G). It’s also incomplete. It doesn’t know of the existence of about 50% of places I ask it about, even when I *know* I’m asking for the exact right name. Like Google Maps, it also has no idea of rest areas, park information centers, and other stuff that is extremely relevant to RV travelers who love their Inter-agency Annual Pass and its sweet ability to get them into any federally managed chunk of land that has a fee (best 80 bucks an RVer can possibly spend; I made that back in about two months). I’ve grown accustomed to the quirks of the UI and the insensitivity of the touchscreen, but I still find a have to repeat a lot of actions, due to typos and mis-clicks. Its one redeeming quality is that it works without a network of any sort. Google Maps has left me in an uncomfortable and confused position on more than one occasion due to becoming useless once off network (I’ll frequently plot a course *to* a national park, and then once I get there, I can’t get a course back because parks rarely have wireless service).

At our first stop for gas a few hundred miles into BC, but before the Alaska Highway, I talked to the attendant who brought out a Bell’s Alaska Highway guide, which turned out to be my most-consulted reference along the way. It provided exactly the information I needed most for almost every city we passed: Where to get information, where to get Internet, where to dump/refill, and where to get gas. Sure, it’s advertiser-supported, and so is missing a lot of details and competing options, but those bits of information were incredibly useful. I was excited when I got to Alaska and found the Bell’s Alaska guide, but it fails to provide all of those vitally important bits of information, and so is pretty much worthless. There are pretty much no Internet and dump station listings in the Alaska guide, whereas nearly every city in the Alaska Highway guide had both. So, huge thumbs up for Bell’s Alaska Highway, and a big “meh” to the Bell’s Alaska guide.

Most of British Columbia is a blur, but I remember Prince George has a city ordinance preventing overnight parking at Walmart, which means I kept driving until I reached Dawson Creek, which proved friendlier to my kind. (Note to city governments: Most RVers don’t take these signs to mean “Go spend money in an RV park or motel instead.” we take it to mean, “You aren’t welcome here. Keep driving.” and that’s exactly what we do, taking our grocery and gas and propane money elsewhere.)

Dawson Creek is the start of the Alaska Highway, and it has the feel of a busy port city (though it’s not actually a port). There are hundreds of RVers in Dawson Creek, either coming from or going to Alaska, on any given day during the summer. We spent the night at Walmart, gassed up, checked tires, stocked the fridge and pantry, bought lots of water, etc. The highway turned out to be very civilized nearly all the way to Alaska, so preparations were mostly unneeded, but it doesn’t hurt to be over-prepared. I asked for advice on food at the visitor center, opted to ignore the advice as the fellow clearly seemed confused by a request for “a good vegetarian friendly restaurant”, and ended up eating pretty bad Chinese at The New Dragon Palace. Service was friendly, but the buffet was rather pitiable rather than “deluxe”. I believe there were three (mostly, though I discovered meat in the chow mein toward the end of the meal) vegetarian items on the buffet, and none were particularly great. Henceforth, I’ll remember to always *ask* if a buffet is vegetarian friendly in the future. I’ve just never met a Chinese buffet that wasn’t, even in small towns, and many even have helpful labels with little vegetables and fishes and cows and such to indicate what’s in the dishes. I like that sort of iconography. It’s comforting.

After a night in Dawson Creek, we drove through Fort St. John, stopping only briefly for WiFi and lunch, and on to Fort Nelson where we spent the night. We met a couple at a rest area before near Cache Creek who recommended Liard Hot Springs, and then I met another couple later who also recommended it, so it rose to the top of our “must stop” list. I planned to get there early enough to visit the springs and take Gidget for a nice hike, so we left Fort Nelson soon after waking and drove mostly straight through.

The springs were all they’d been hyped as. Definitely hot and springy. I also saw a bear on the way back from my first visit to the spring, and kicked myself for not bringing the camera. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to a wild bear. He or she was a juvenile black bear, probably 350 pounds, and was about 20 feet away from the boardwalk. I was pretty much exactly perdindicular to him on the boardwalk when I heard him and spotted him. He saw me about ten seconds later, and my heart skipped a couple of beats. Making eye contact with bears is not recommended, so I kept walking, and reported the sighting to the park staff, as the bear warning signs in the park requested. At $21 per night, Liard Hot Springs is a bargain. There’s also a full-service campground across the street, but I didn’t see a “Free WiFi” sign, so I opted to stay in the park itself (hookups are almost superfluous to me, and sometimes I don’t even bother to hook up when I’m just staying a night, since the solar panels and water tanks provide all I need; if I want to get a shower and they don’t have nice looking showers, I will plug in power, so I don’t burn propane unnecessarily).

The hot spring fed swamps are fascinating in and of themselves. There are fish and other animal species that have evolved specifically *for* those particular swamps, and are unique to those swamps. To me, that’s just amazing, and awesome to behold. Also, did I mention being 20 feet from a bear?

The day after Liard Hot Springs was incredibly eventful, as well. The day started off with seeing a larger bear on the side of the road (I saw it, pointed it out to Gidget, so she looked everywhere except where I was pointing, and stood in front of me for a bit excitedly looking at the wrong side of the road, so I couldn’t see). The highway meanders in and out of Yukon Territory a few times along the way, so I don’t recall exactly when we really made it to the Yukon or whether the remaining sightings were in BC or YT.

A few hours later we saw the first and biggest part of a herd of buffalo that now roam in northwestern Canada. I didn’t count them, but a couple who stopped at the next rest area at the same time I did did, and the count was 63. I took a lot of pictures. Baby buffalo are ugly and cute. An hour later we saw a smaller bunch, and they walked even closer to the RV. Gidget thoroughly enjoyed both encounters, and made Chewbacca noises in her excitement, while balancing right on the edge of the dash trying to get as close as possible to the open window in order to sniff the delicious buffalo smells.

Many times along the route we saw goats. Usually standing in the middle of the road, and leisurely moving off the road when we arrived. The signs always said to look out for sheep, but these were goats, I’m pretty sure. Maybe I just don’t know the difference between a Canadian sheep and a Canadian goat. Gidget was equally excited by the goats, but I’ve seen goats before, so I wasn’t as excited as by the buffalo and bear. I bet a Canadian goatsheep says, “Eh?” rather than “Bah!”

We camped in a provential park campground on a nice little lake somewhere along the way. As in the US, government campgrounds tend to provide no hookups, vault toilets, and some beautiful scenery for a few bucks a night. In the case of BC and YT campgrounds, they are usually $12/night.

On our last day in Canada, I underestimated the drive time, or overestimated my waking time, and wound up spending the night at a rest area (which seems to be verboten in Yukon Territory, based on the “No overnight parking” signs, though people do it just as in the US and in BC). It was a lovely location though, next to a lake. The next morning the sound of bees outside the RV was a literal roar. Kinda scary actually. Also, mosquitoes. So many mosquitos up here. I thought the cold was supposed to keep them in check.

We crossed the border early in the day, since we’d stopped so close to it the night before. Unlike the Canada crossing, it took about 30 seconds, with a significant portion of that being the border crossing agent giving Gidget cookies. Gidget loves crossing the border now. The interview consisted of, in an incredibly rapid-fire manner: “Who owns this motorhome?” “I do.” “Are you carrying any cash over $10,000?” “No.” “Did you buy anything in Canada?” “Groceries.” “What brings you to Alaska?” “Vacation.” “Welcome to Alaska. Have a nice day.”

We made it to Tok while everything was still open and the sun was still shining (sunset was at around 9:45PM, so lots of daylight hours still). We filled up, for dramatically less than filling up in Canada, and bought groceries and stopped in at the visitor center to pick up maps and such.