Making Our Way (Prince George, Clinton, Sea to Sky Highway, Whistler, Nairn Falls)

We had our sights set on making it to Smithers for the night and debated going to a campground, but settled on going to the Canadian Tire Free Overnight Parking area. What's one more night of dry camping?

The next morning we headed out to Prince George, BC and were somewhat surprised at the traffic we encountered on the way to our campground. We had not seen more than a few cars backed up (usually due to construction) in a weeks! Now it felt like the cars were swarming! We stayed a night at a small campground called Bee Lazee RV Park & Campground a few miles out of town, and got lots of laundry done and decided to head into town to get haircuts and groceries. We were both looking a bit shaggy!

On the following day, we were planning to get as far down the road as possible, which landed us in Clinton, BC. But first, we found a farmer's market in Quesnel! Since the motorhome couldn't fit in the market parking area, we found a spot at the Visitor's Center with a beautiful rose garden on display.

Clinton is where we decided to splurge and stay at another campground as opposed to staying in a rest area. We stayed at Gold Trail RV Park for a whopping $20 for full hookups! It seems, you hardly ever find places so cheap, and the park was actually nice. That night, I was finally able to cook Sean what he had been craving for so long!

Fortunately, it didn't take to long to put together, so we went for a stroll around Clinton and had some fun with Molly.

We made it back within an hour or so and came inside to the most wonderful smell!

After some delicious pie and a good night's sleep, we headed down the road to connect with Highway 99 (Sea to Sky Highway). This had been suggested to us by several people, so we were sure to put it on our list of things to see. This is the road that goes to Whistler by way of Lillooet, BC. In our opinion it is a prettier drive than Million Dollar Highway in Colorado.

We decided to eat lunch near a lake we spotted with a beautiful view!

What we weren't prepared for was the constant 11-15% downgrades. We had to stop a couple of times to let the brakes from the near constant use. The exhaust brake was nearly useless in this situation because we were having to come to an almost complete stop to make it around the hairpin turns.

Our stopping point was Nairn Falls Provincial Park, which was 10 miles outside of Whistler. Whistler is a town that Sean had wanted to check out because it was where the 2010 Winter Olympics snow related sports were held. We were thinking it would be comparable to Aspen, CO, but it is not as trendy, in our opinion, though it was still a very nice area.

We were able to track down another farmer's market and since we were stocked up from our last farmer's market bounty, decided to eat some homemade gelato. Yum!

We decided to head back to the motorhome and check out the Nairn Falls while we were out there, and we were glad we did!

Sean and I found a place we could take Molly down to the river downstream from the falls and that is where we found all different kinds of rock cairns and decided to make our own. You can probably easily figure out whose is whose...

Dease Lake/Stewart/Hyder, AK / Telegraph Creek, BC

Wednesday, Aug. 30th: We were excited to get down the Cassiar Highway and be on our way toward Vancouver. We planned to stop in Jade City and pick up a few items. Apparently, this area provided 90% of the entire world's jade. They provided free overnight parking at Cassiar Mountain Jade Store, so we decided to stay the night.

We started back on the road the next morning, and we heard a squealing noise for a short time that soon went away, that's when all the alarms started going off on the motorhome's dash...here we go again! Luckily, we were coming up to a rest area (creepily named Rabid Grizzly) where we were able to safely pull off the 1.5 lane Cassiar Highway. At first, we were both so angry that there was another problem. Once cooled off, we were able to find that the serpentine belt was shredded and that usually means there is a pulley that is seized. We found the alternator pulley took quite a bit of effort to turn and thus was to blame for the belt breaking. We did have a spare belt, and to be sure it was the correct one we tried to fit it through the pulleys. It turns out the belt was not the correct one because it was about 1 foot short...Great!

We unhooked the Jeep and booked it into town (Dease Lake, 18 miles away) and thanks to signs off the highway, we were able to track down a mechanic. He was making his way out of his driveway when we pulled up next to him and asked if he was "Charlie." He hesitantly said yes, and we hurriedly told him the problem. Of course he was in a hurry to go off to work on a job, but was gracious enough to agree to meet us at the rest area when he was finished.

In the meantime, Sean and I would do what we could to figure out what parts we needed, which proved to be difficult since nearly all of the specs in the motorhome manual are WRONG. When Charlie came by, he confirmed that the alternator was bad and gave us a number to the parts dealer in Smithers (6 hours away) so that we could work with them direct. Charlie was leaving for a few days to pick up a new tow truck (which was very nice, btw) in Vancouver, and was trying to track down some parts there, but was unsuccessful. The parts from Smithers would not be ready to pick up until the following Wednesday. We were both scared about touching any of this job ourselves. If we messed up just one hose, bolt, clamp, etc, it would be a 12 hour round trip to get another one.

Just FYI. Where we broke down was 6 hours away from the nearest cell phone service. Pay phones out in this part of the world cost $2.90 per minute for IN-PROVINCE calls.  (Luckily one of the two payphones in town was broken and would spit back money and make calls anyway. Thanks NorthWesTel!)

There were a few days, we are sad to admit, that we didn't wake up until 10a and stayed in to play games on the computer, haha! Though, we did head out to Dease Lake's lake which was a short hike from our "campground." Since we had no hookups, we eventually ran out of fresh water and had to revert to the pioneer days where I made a homemade funnel, and Sean and I scooped water (special thanks to Brian and Patty for the bucket) from the creek running across from the motorhome to pour into our tank. We figured it was safe enough when Molly drank some and showed no adverse effects haha! Thanks for being the guinea pig, pup! True to the rest area name, we also had a resident black bear that was often visible out of the front window of the RV walking around or eating berries. One time Sean thought he heard him trying to get into the bear proof trash cans at the rest area.

We also visited the remote town of Telegraph Creek in the Jeep while we were broke down. Telegraph Creek is only accessible by a a 117 KM rough dirt road through the "Grand Canyon of British Columbia" which features grades up to 24%. If not the most remote place in North America still accessible by vehicle, this town has to rate way up there.  I think that this is probably as close to the middle of nowhere as we will ever be.

 We headed out Tuesday (9a), once we were sure the parts would be ready to pick up, and make a quick trip to Stewart, BC/Hyder, AK area to see the bear viewing platform and Bear and Salmon Glacier. Very neat area! In one of the pictures below, you will see the concrete pillar that marks the US/Canadian Border between Hyder, AK and Stewart, BC, Canada.

We stayed at The Aspen Inn once we made it to Smithers (around 9p), and had to sneak Molly in again, haha! She is always very quiet, and so good when we have to resort to these measures.

The alternator and belts (we bought 4 belts of varying sizes to take with us just in case, we could return them later.) came in about 11:30 AM. After paying for the parts, we took off for the long 6 hour drive back to Dease Lake.

The next morning at 6 AM, we were helping the mechanic take the old alternator off and put the new one on. This was a three person job, as the alternator is heavy and it is hard to access. We also got a belt on and fired the RV up. Everything worked and we were on our way!