On the Road Again!

We left home June 26th for a six-week summer vacation. We had originally thought that this was to be our Alaska summer, but it turned out that we had less time and less $$ than we had anticipated, so readjusted our plan accordingly. At the Life on Wheels RV Conference in Moscow, ID last summer, I attended a seminar on touring British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. In the opinion of the presenters, Mike and Teri Church (authors of the guidebook that became our Baja bible), British Columbia’s scenery rivaled Alaska’s. The slides they showed were spectacular, so we thought we’d give it a try. However, trying to see the entire Pacific Northwest in just 6 weeks seemed a bit daunting. We decided to leave the Oregon coast for another time, go from east to west to make sure we spend as much time as we want in the Canadian Rockies, and then see as much of Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula as our remaining time allows. We figure we can hit what we miss when we do the Oregon Coast—maybe next year?

Our big news is that we are no longer in the Royal Palms. We’d had our eye on the Winnebago View since it first came out, less than a year after we bought the Palms. We liked everything about it—the layout, the quiet Mercedes diesel engine, the fact that it was over a foot narrower which made it much easier to drive –everything except the price (don’t ask!). But the narrow roads on the Baja Peninsula, where we definitely want to go back to, and the rise in fuel prices made us rethink. Steve did the math and figured that we would actually be saving money by spending it. My kind of math!!! Within a few weeks of getting back from Baja, we traded in the Royal Palms. Our new house on wheels doesn’t have a name yet. Royal Palms II doesn’t seem to fit. We’ll just wait to see what comes up.

So here we are, on the road again. Our route so far has taken us up through Idaho and Montana and now into Canada. We stayed one night at Flathead Lake and a couple of nights at Glacier National Park, which Steve had never seen and I hadn’t been to since my VISTA days. While there, we did a couple of great hikes. We especially enjoyed the one to Avalanche Lake. We left Glacier yesterday and crossed into Canada via Eureka on the Montana side and Roosville on the Canada side. If you get to Eureka, we recommend lunch at Café Jax. Because of the holiday weekend—Canada Day is July 1st—all the campgrounds we came to were full. We spent the night in a daisy-filled meadow off a dirt road a couple of hours into British Columbia. It was great, although Ellie was less than thrilled. Turns out there was a den of coyotes nearby. We didn’t see them, but we heard them yipping and barking and howling, and Ellie wouldn’t leave safety of the RV without one of us, and then only reluctantly.

Today, we drove into Kootenay National Park, which is the south next-door-neighbor to Banf and Lake Louise. The scenery is breathtaking—and we supposedly aren’t even at “the good part” yet. We saw a black bear right next to the road. Tomorrow morning we’ll do a short hike from our campsite at McDonald Meadows to Dog Lake, then a longer hike on our way to another campground inside this park. One of the great things about Canada’s national parks is that unlike the US parks, dogs ARE allowed on the trails, as long as they’re on leash. This means Ellie can hike with us instead of having to be locked up in the motor home. The last picture is Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park.