Lava and Sunsets, life on the Pacific Coast

As we haven’t had internet access we hadn’t managed to post what was written below, so to update, today we visited Mnt St Helens – the only erupting volcano in the lower 48… Coooooooool! We had to drive along the longest dead-end road in Washington State – 51 miles to be precise and then back again, but the end of it was well worth it. The Volcano is pretty big, but the area surrounding it is amazing. All the trees are still laid flat from the 1980 blast, the river bed still covered in mud slide (up to 1000ft deep in places) and, well, basically it looks like a war zone. We watched both an excellent film and attended an excellent ranger talk. The most amazing thing? There are two Glaciers up in the crater! The volcanic ash reflects the sunlight allowing the glaciers to grow, it’s the only recorded place in the world for glaciers to be forming at present. If you can see in the photo they’re forming around both edges of the lava dome in the centre of the crater. At the moment the volcano is depositing about a truck load of lava every 40 seconds and there was quite a bit of steam at times, as well as constant earthquakes.


We couldn’t walk up to the crater as you have to apply in advance for special passes, so just enjoyed the views from the observation deck before heading towards Oregon’s coastline. We eventually got there about 5ish, completing our East to West Coast – Wahoo! And took a leisurely drive to the next campsite with the sunsetting to our right… sigh… this is the life :-)

Tomorrow hopefully we’ll hit the Oregon Sand Dunes Recreational Area… and according to our sources we’ll be able to see how well Charlie Camel copes with the dunes! Pass us the shovel someone…

Vancouver

We arrived in Vancouver on Saturday to blue skies and a campsite that can only be described as an open-air hotel. The drive down from Whistler was beautiful, although completely road-work filled, there is obviously a lot of money ($600 million according to one sign) being invested for the infrastructure for the Winter Olympics in 2010. We have, however, decided we don’t like the 2010 Olympics as they might well be doing away with Whistler’s bike park – BOOO!

Anyway, back to Vancouver, we got there early afternoon, had some dinner and I promptly fell asleep, whilst this was much needed, it turned out to be a bit annoying, as that day was pretty much the only full sunny nice weather day we had in Vancouver. We spent the evening in the campsites hot tub and swimming pool, which was great for the aching muscles we’d picked up in Whistler!

We made a list of things we really wanted to see in Vancouver and set off on Sunday for the aquarium. Based in Stanley Park, the aquarium is in a truly beautiful setting. On the advice of the campsite we got an all day travel pass which allowed us on the sky train, buses and water taxi and decided to get the sky train to the waterfront and walk around to the park… it was a lot longer than indicated on the map, but a very cool walk. We walked all along the waterfront admiring the predictable Gin Palaces and expensive apartments in and around the marinas, but we did find some cool house boats:

Should you visit Vancouver I’d recommend the aquarium. It’s one of the best I’ve seen with interesting exhibits which are especially good for Canada’s coast line. We saw the Beluga Whale’s which were AMAZING, them usually living in the Artic Waters means our chances of ever seeing them are slim, so it was great to see them there. It was also great to see a HUGE sea lion and some dolphins as well as the usual aquarium fare. What I especially liked was that you got to see the research projects going on and explanations as to why they are important, which, in my opinion, was pretty cool.

Beluga Whales:


One of my old favourites:

By the time we left he aquarium the day was already getting short. We walked back down the main shopping streets passing some little organic markets and the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Shop… ok, we didn’t PASS the Rocky Mountain chocolate shop… We made the most of being in Canada and stopped at a pub (probably our last until England now!) for dinner and a couple of beers before wandering back to the campsite.

After realising that Vancouver is actually quite massive we decided to take the bikes into town on Monday as we wanted to investigate Stanley Park. We also managed to re-use our travel passes as we didn’t realise you were meant to validate them in a machine with the date on, so that was a bit of a bargain! Stanley Park is an indication of what Vancouver was like before the building started and although it has been quite badly damaged from a storm a few years ago, is pretty cool. We cycled around the sea wall taking in the tourist favourites of the totem poles:


And the HUGE trees, they reckoned this was 800 years old (we didn’t count the rings so can’t confirm!):

We also spotted an owl asleep in one of the large trees, I’m sure there was a more peaceful place to sleep, but he seemed content to sit there and watch the world go by:

Before getting to the beach for lunch and watching the bit tankers avoiding the little private boats:



On our way out Stanley Park we checked out Gastown, the oldest part of Vancouver and followed that with China Town. Although there was some beautiful parts, including a steam powered clock in Gastown, it’s best to say you should only visit this part of town in the daylight. Still, nothing we had to worry about and Dan got very excited as there were lots of little alleyways ‘like you see in the movies where a dustcart always pulls out during the car chase!’

We then headed back to the skytrain to drop the bikes off back near the campsite as… well, tonight… WAS HOCKEY NIGHT! WAHOOOOOOOOO! I was fulfilling one of my ambitions and after watching the Sheffield Steelers for 3 years (until I moved), I was going to a Canadian Ice Hockey Game! Needless to say, much excitement ensued. Although it was only pre-season (season doesn’t start proper until October) the atmosphere was great. Vancouver Canucks vs. Anaheim Ducks. We got in early to watch the warm up and buy the necessary hats, t-shirts and foam hands (hehe), the stadium was big and filled up quickly as face-off loomed and needless to say the match was very fast and truly excellent  There was only 2 fights (still, they were proper fights!) and Vancouver ended up loosing 2-3, but they did take it to sudden death overtime which was excellent. Again, I’d highly recommend going to a game… it’s somewhat different to Basingstoke Bison’s… bless ‘em*.



We awoke to more rain on Tuesday, which put pay to our plans to go to Capilano Suspension Bridge, we didn’t think it’d be much fun in the rain. As the forecast didn’t look to be getting any better over the next few days we decided to head to Land Rover to see if they could change Charlie’s oil again… but they had a 3 week waiting list and lots of Bentleys, Jag’s and Astons in the car park! Lol! So we did some shopping and started heading south. We stopped the night just north of Seattle on I5, it felt only right that we should visit a KOA. As I’m sure we’ve mentioned before there is something reassuring about KOA campsites, and this one had a decent sized pool and a couple of hot tubs to boot.

After having a dip in the pool we had a burst of efficiency and decided to work out where we were gonna go from here. We want to make sure we fit in as much as possible now that we are on the return journey, and we have several weeks already accounted for as Jen wants to spend a week with Mickey Mouse in Florida (well, at the Keys, Miami, sea world etc. ), we both want to do as much biking and off roading as possible in Moab, and there is probably enough stuff to keep us busy in LA alone for the rest of the trip. So the rest of the month was planned as follows:
19th – Mt St Helens
20th-21st – Florence – Sand Dune Driving!
22nd – Crater Lake National Park
23rd – Lavabeds
24th – 25th – Redwoods
26th – Nevada City
27th – 28th Lake Tahoe/Yosemite
29th – 30th Yosemite
And we are already a day late!


* note: Basingstoke Bison games are still fun, if you haven’t been to Ice Hockey – make sure you go!!

Stat's Update (yawn)

Due to popular demand (well, Nige) and having a few days of driving for 10 ½ hours a day I’ve updated the stats. Aren’t you all lucky?! (Correct as of 16 September)

1. Miles travelled: 11,144
2. Average per day: 179
3. Most in one day: 646
4. Mp(American)g: 19, not bad for a fully loaded Camel!
5. Average price per gallon: $3.10
6. Total spent on fuel: $2260 (£1130)
7. Breakages:

* drivers seatbelt, due to mud ingress!
* 2 flat tyres, not bad for over 1,000 miles on gravel tracks though.
* 12” crack in the windscreen
* very leaky gearbox
* 2 front roof tent clamps which hold it to the roof rack departing, must remember to check them whilst travelling on corrugated roads.

8. Number of states & Canadian Provinces travelled through: 26
9. Number of ‘Cheesecake Factories’ visited: 1 (must try harder)
10. Number of ‘Ben and Jerry’s’ pints consumed: 3 (must try harder)
11. Number of times I’ve done the workout I promised I’d do at least 3 times a week: …er.. four it’ll get better when it’s a bit warmer and we have showers though! Honest.
12. Number of miles on bikes: no idea, Dan accidentally reset his computer! Lots though.
13. Number of times we’ve fallen off bikes: Dan: 3 Jen: 5
14. Number of photographs taken: 2,727
15. Most number of wheels spotted on a truck: 50
16. Latest Realisation: Flush toilets are a fabulous invention! Its hard to describe the sensation of a cold draft coming up from the cesspit over which one is squatting, but some are a lot worse than others.

Loads'a'posts

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few days, we've just been having too much fun! And we haven't had any net access. But now we have and I've just put 3 posts up.

Happy reading folks ;-)

Oily bits!

Before we left we had a new gearbox fitted. Since that day what we thought was the Transfer box has been leaking and leaving a steady trail for all to follow. I bought some ep90 when we got here but haven't had to top it up much so assumed that the leak looked worse than it was.
Well, a couple of weeks ago I finally found the leak! You may remember the gearbox oil saga... well, continuing on from that... The oil that Cape Cod put in was a 75/90 gear oil. It looks pretty much the same as MTF94 which should be in the box, and EP90 which is in the transfer box. And seeing as the transfer box sump plate had always had a bit of a leak I assumed thats where it was coming from. AFT, which is the oil we have in the gearbox now is red... very RED! Yep you've guessed it. The leaking oil is red and must therefore be coming from the gearbox... ARRRGGHHH!!!! So anyway, I bought a litre of AFT a couple of weeks ago after realising this and put the WHOLE LOT in! Yep, the gearbox had leaked over a litre of oil since Calgary! So I bought 2 more litres, but fortunately only managed to get about another 100ml in. Now, those of you that know about these sort of things will know that the only place the oil can be coming from is the oil seal on the main gearbox output shaft. To sort the leak will require removal of the transfer box, which I ain't willing to do at a campsite! So anyway, now that we know where the leak is coming from we will just have to keep an eye on it and keep it topped up until we get to somewhere that can do the job for us, or better still, lend me their facilities so I can do the job myself.
Gearboxes.... who'd have 'em, eh!

Whistler, awwwwwwwwesome dude!

We pulled into Whistlers jolly expensive campsite after the office had shut, so had no idea how much it was going to be. We figured it wouldn't be too bad as the only space they had left was in a car-park, so thats where we stayed.
I like Whistler :-) It's a nice town... and it has the most AWESOME bike park, dude!

And you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d just walked off the set for “Dude, where’s my Car?” (a classic American teen film!). The town is vibrant and full of people from all age groups doing 2 things… biking and having fun! And they really do call each other “dude” all the time, even old people (like Dan - Jen).
So anyway, we spent a couple of completely cool days in Whistler. Our first day there we had a wander around the town itself. There are loads of "outdoor" type shops there all selling seriously overpriced skiing, snowboarding and biking stuff, buts its cool nonetheless! Then in the afternoon I decided to check out the extreme downhill stupid bike trails. I took an instructor led afternoons biking together with 4 other people (all English!!) and was shown the basics of downhill mountain biking. Dave and Terry, my bikin' buddies... get yourselves over here, its brilliant! You get a ski lift up to the top of the mountain with your bike and then you hurtle back down again. The new bike gave me so much more confidence and on the second or third trip down the mountain I was getting some serious airtime :-) And I only went over the handlebars once!

That evening we went into town with our new buddies who I’d spent the day biking with for a bite to eat and far too much beer.
The following morning we decided to do some more biking, but this time a little less “extreme, dude”, although still a respecttable 'blue' classification. We followed some of the volunteer maintained trails in and around the Lost Lake valley, each trail having a somewhat imaginative name.


Jen managed to fall off and draw blood a couple of times which she thought made her look like an extreme biker chick! (it did, if you're not bleeding you're not trying hard enough! Bruise count: 5, including all of both knees, Cut count: 1, 5 inches, Graze count: 3. I fell off a boardwalk once and the second time was after a huge (almost vertical) smooth rock drop, not problem with the drop, but I was so shocked I made it, the bike dug into some sand on the next corner and I went flying! It was great! - Jen
We pushed the boat out again and spent the evening in the village centre, it was handy as it was only a 10 minute bike ride from the campsite and if you're going into Whistler you need to take the bikes anyway! We had a nice meal sat out on the patio of a nice grill watching the world go by and then went to the square to watch the premier of some ski films, the atmosphere in that town is addictive, shame we couldn't afford (literally!) to stay more than a few days. Highly recommended :-)
We got up this morning, grey clouds everywhere and packed up. We are now in Vancouver, a couple of hours down the road and will be spending a few days here as there’s soooooo much to see!

Miles, miles and some more miles

Well, here we are again whacking up some miles. It’s been a fun filled couple of days.
We left the Motel at Tok on the Alaska Highway after a hearty breakfast at Fast Eddy’s Restaurant and continued on towards Whitehorse. This is the section of the highway that we missed on the way up due to someone thinking it would be a good idea to take the gravel tracks instead ;-)
As we crossed back over into Canada at Beaver Creek we noticed an immediate difference in the quality of the road, it suddenly became very bumpy. What concerned us though was every bump we went over caused a loud banging noise somewhere in the vehicle. We both looked at each other each time it happened and decided that we’d best stop to investigate. We wobbled everything, moved stuff about and made sure that all our kit was well secured, and then set off again. As we got up to speed and hit more bumps the banging continued, so we stopped again, checked underneath Charlie, moved stuff about a bit more, wobbled wheels and exhausts, but could still find nothing banging, so off we went again. But the banging continued! Again we stopped, wobbled, re-packed stuff and again we hadn’t solved the problem. Jen had been crawling about inside the car while we’d been driving trying to locate the sound, but it seemed to be coming from a different place each time… weird! Then Hurrah! Jen was watching Charlies shadow as we hurtled along the road… over the bumps we went with a BANG each time! Then she spotted the problem, the roof tent was taking off at each bump! So we stopped again and found that both of the front brackets that hold the tent to the roof rack had come loose and fallen off. Fortunately they had got wedged between either the roof rack and the roof or the roll cage so we managed to retrieve the brackets, but unfortunately a couple of the bolts had disappeared. We managed to make up one complete bracket with the bits we had left and did everything up double tight, then used a mini lashing strap to tie down the other side. Off we went in relative peace and quiet, i.e. no more banging!
We finally pulled into an RV park in Whitehorse at about 7:30pm, had grub and got an early night..
The following day we trucked off to Watson Lake (where the signpost forest is) so that we could pick up the Cassair Highway, route 37. Along the way though we had another flat. We got it changed pretty quick on the shoulder and continued on to hopefully find a tyre shop in Watson Lake. There are 2 garages in Watson Lake and neither could offer us a repair, so with a major grump on we picked up the 500-odd mile Cassair. By 6pm we were at Dease River Crossing camp ground and had the whole place to ourselves :-) As we had a spare inner tube with us (thank you Richard!) I decided to sort out the puncture. The tube that was in there has a lovely big hole in it and couldn’t be patched so the new tube was put in and the tyre inflated using my super doper pump that I got free with my subscription to LRM some years ago.
While at Dease River we had a visitor. His name was John… or at least that’s what we called him as he wasn’t able to tell us what his real name was.

Seeing as there wasn’t another house around for several miles, we guessed he lived with the camp ground owners. But this didn’t stop him spending all evening with us. As we desided to go to bed, so did John. He curled up on Jens chair and went to sleep. When I got up for a pee at stupid-o’clock in the morning he was still there! When we got up in the morning, John hadn’t budged, he was still in Jens chair. But with the obvious commotion of getting up and having breakfast he decided to have a bit of a funny five minutes chasing bits of grass! When we packed up, we said our goodbyes to John who by now had realized that we were going and just sat there looking at us. We both felt so guilty for leaving him. It was like he’d found his new best friends and we just turned our backs on him. We drove off in silence.
At some point in the day our heartbreak was forgotten as we saw a Wolf! It’d been casually walking along the road, but with the sound of a clanky old Defender being caned along it decided to make a hasty escape into the undergrowth. We stopped nonetheless and had a good look from the safety of the car. And there, about 10 meters away was the wolf, watching us, peering through the bushes. It was just as curious as we were and stayed there watching us for a good couple of minutes, adjusting it’s position every now and then to get a better look. It’d obviously never seen a Camel 110 before!
A few hundred miles later we came across a mummy and baby black bear munching away on the grass at the side of the road. They’d obviously seem a million Camel 110’s as they didn’t bat an eyelid, just kept on eating.

Several million miles later we arrived in Stewart and realized that we shouldn’t have been there… We’d taken a wrong turn! Unlike Blighty, you can’t just find another route as generally there is only one road to a town. Think of it like Hamble, but on a massive scale, sometimes with a couple of hundred kilometers between towns. So we had to turn around and retrace the last 60-odd miles. But I’m glad we did go the wrong way. We were treated to some amazing views of Glaciers, and to top it all off, the Bear Glacier.

Having spent an hour going the wrong way and another hour going back again, we had some miles to catch up on. We’d hoped to get to Smithers on Highway 16. By 7:30 we had made it. We decided to grab a Maccy D’s as we couldn’t be arsed to cook and still needed to find somewhere to camp for the night. We found the Tyhee Lake Provincial Park about 20km outside Smithers (just up the road from Burns Lake) and were overjoyed to find that it had warm showers on offer :-) But the real bummer about these places is everything runs off propane… which means no electricity… which means we had to shower in the dark! Hey ho, all good fun, init!
Today we hoped to get as far as Whistler, about 570 miles south from Smithers, so a long hard day of driving ahead, but the sun is shining and we are swapping seats regularly. Its now 4pm and we are still on route 97 with about 400km to go once we reach Williams Lake, so probably another 4 hours on the road yet.
Update: we finally reached Whistler and the extraordinarily expensive campsite at about 9:30