Category: RV Travel in Camp Casa

The hot springs are only accessed by boat or seaplane and are 26 miles from Tofino BC. Tofino is located on the Pacific Ocean (west coast) of Vancouver Island. We took the boat over which took 90 minutes and the airplane back for a short 15 minute flight. First time in a seaplane, which was a 1947 Beaver, loaded with 7 passengers and lots of camping gear. Not ours, three guys camped at the springs.

After getting off the boat there is a 45 minute walk thru the Forrest on a boardwalk to get to the springs. The boards of the boardwalk are engraved by past hikers. We found one that could of been ours: Happy Campers, from Denver CO.

We left the RV in Nanaimo and took a 4 day mini vacation and drove 135 miles west to the Pacific side of Vancouver Island to a town called Ucluelet. We stayed in a lovely cottage where the road ends at the Pacific Ocean.

Being on the west side of the island we had great sunsets while hiking the wild pacific trail. The weather typically is cloudy and wet, but the weather gods were were with us and gave us clear skies and temperature reaching nearly 80.

As we kayaked we saw Black Bears, Eagles, Star Fish and Sea Lions. The Sea Lions swam and barked along side us beckoning us to get out of the kayak and play. The bear tipped rocks, as if they were feathers, looking for food. We stayed our distance, but Karen without realizing it drifted a little close. We wandered how fast they can swim.

Put in point was Brechin Boat Launch adjacent to the BC Ferries operation in Departure Bay and where seaplanes take off and land.  We first tried kayaking around the island during the day only to find wind and white caps on the open water side of the island.  As we kayaked back into the bay close to the town of Nanaimo we heard music, we pedaled in the direction of the music and remained in the bay, listening to the Nanaimo Blues Concert.  After about an hour we returned to the boat launch location and return the next day at sunset to try circumnavigating the island during the full moon.

As the sun was setting we launch at the Brechin Boat Launch and decide to kayak to the south toward the Nanaimo bay and the south side of the island.  We continue around the island and enter the open water as the sun was setting and the moon was rising.  The calm water became choppy with larger waves.  This was the no-go or go point, where we were about 1/3 of the way around the 7 mile route around the island.  We can see the lights of cruise ships and ferries in the distance, and decide to continue.  We turned off our headlamps and it was dark.  The headlamps served two purposes, one for others to see us and second to see any waves were approaching us.  As a pilot, if you turn on the landing light and don’t like what you see turn it off.  We kept the lights on.  As we approached 2/3 of the way we heard a large horn and bright light pointed at us.  It was the BC ferry headed toward Departure Bay, the same place we were headed.  The ferry was in the middle of the open water as we hugged the coast line of the island.  As the ferry passed, we wandered how their wake would affect us.  There were waves, but only slightly higher waves, that we already had encountered.  As the ferry docked we passed behind it to enter Departure Bay and the Newcastle Passage.  We had the lights of the take out point in site.  What a great 2 hours we had kayaking around the island in a full moon, a definite highlight.

After exiting the Weir (lock) we floated down the Cowichan river.  This was a 2 hour slow and relaxing float.

We love Kayaking Lakes and Rivers, today we kayaked Cowichan Lake.  This lake is one of the largest bodies of fresh water on Vancouver Island, BC.  The lake has a boat lock (weir) between the lake and river, where the lake is approximately 3 feet higher than the river.  To enter the lock, you pull on a cord on each side which rings a bell to alert the wer attendant who lives close by in a RV.  We first entered the lake from the river, the attendant opened the river side gate to let us in the lock.  As the gate was closing it made creeking sounds as we wandered if we will lost if the Cowichan Lake Weir.  The gate closed and the attendant opened the lake side gate ever so slowly to let water into the lock.  in our Kayaks we were riding up 3 feet as if we were in an elevator.  The gate opened enough for us to pedal out of the lock and into the lake.  We made it into the lake and told the attendant we would be back in about half hour to return to the river.

We approach the weir this time from the lake side and ring the bell for the attendant to open the gate.  We enter the weir and the attendant slowly lowers the creaking sounding gate.  He then slowly opens the river side gate and we slowly get lowered three feet to the level of the river.

This gave us great experience for this fall we will be entering the panama canal and lock system in a slightly larger water vessel.

 

We took the ferry from Horseshoe Bay, about 15 miles north and west of Vancouver, to Departure Bay, Nanaimo on the east side of Vancouver Island.  The ferry was huge with many commercial tractor  trailers making our 38 foot 5th wheel and dually one tone truck small in comparison.  The ferry ride was Just under two hours.

We drove off the ferry and arrived at the RV park, Living Forrest Oceanside RV Park 10 minutes later.  We will be staying at this park Nearly three weeks touring the island.

We took Chase on a whale watching tour on the 14th from Richmond BC SW of Vancouver.  The company guarantee seeing Whales but after 5 hours riding on the water there were no whales to be seen.  The guarantee was if you did not see any whales you can repeat the trip as many times until whales have been sighted.

Well we went on the tour again the following Tuesday, without Chase since he was already home, and saw whales about 1//2 hour from leaving the dock.  The boat followed the family of whales for 2 hours.  What a site when the whales breached the water to a height what seemed like 20 feet.

We had a great 12 days with Chase.  He concludes his trip by taking him to Seattle for an early Saturday morning flight back to Denver.  On Friday, after a two hour drive from Seattle and spending nearly 2 hours at the US border, we visited Boeing’s Future of Flight Museum and took a factory tour.  This is where Boeing builds their jumbo jets such as the 747 and 787.

After seeing Chase off at the airport we did some shopping in Seattle for those items that we had missed and not available in Canada.  We then drove to Bellingham WA to look at RV storage locations.  This is where we would like to store the RV and truck for the winter. We found a storage facility that had large covered car ports for RVs that our Camp Casa will enjoy the relative mild Washington winter months.

We made it to Vancouver!!!!!  That was the goal so many months ago, wow, so many memories and miles since we started.   You can’t come to Vancouver without spending time in Stanley Park, perhaps the greatest bike ride in the city.  A one way, paved and dedicated circuit around the park, has everyone going in the same circular fashion.  The entire ride is about 7 miles with lots of places to get off and see the scenery, have lunch or even go to the beach.  You can see the bridges, the seawall, the harbor it is really a wonderful vista around every turn.   Unfortunately, I spent more time riding than I did taking pictures, so we are going to do this ride over again.

In a belated moment, Chase had wished he had gone swimming at the beach, so we found Sunset Beach and lo and behold, the water was COLD!!!!!!  so that was a quick swim.  Better to have ice cream with Grandma and Grandpa.  The RV park where we are staying has a unique set of rules, all cars and trucks are kept at the front of the park, by the office.  The upside is that the roads within the park are mostly empty during the day, the perfect place for kids on their bikes, and playing ball and running all over the place.  It really is kind of nice to have such a kid friendly park, who has kept the cars far out of the way , especially since we have a kid who is  right in the thick of cops and robbers.

The best of the best, USAF Thunderbirds and Canadian Snowbirds in one show.  This was Abbottsfords’ 50th Anniversary of the Airshow.

Small town Canada.  The kind of place you can ride your bike to the town park, sit on the park bench and visit with your new neighbors, or get an ice cream and look at the view.  That’s just what we did — with a little kayaking thrown it.  Harrison Hot Springs is a wonderful place, two streets.  The kind of place that Vancouver folk use to get away from the city.  I dare say we were the only Americans in the RV park, and by people’s reaction to our license plates, perhaps the whole town.

It is surrounded by snowcapped mountains, and a glacier fed lake.  A lake so beautiful and so large, it empties into a gently flowing river, 10 feet deep.  Perfect kayaking for the boys.  Three hours across the lake, down the river, goofing around, taking pictures, making memories.  Chase asked if he could go home a take a nap!!!  So off they went, while grandma sat and talked, sat and read, sat and sunned.   A win, win sort of day for the whole family.

The Kettle Valley Recreation Area is the perfect place to float.  The section of the river we floated was between two campgrounds: park at one, shuttle driver takes you back to the other….   and in between was 5 miles (11 kilometers) of slow moving, crystal clear water.  The water was 18 inches deep, so if you really needed to reposition your place in the river, just stand up.  Chase would say “Ah, this is the life, it is so peaceful,”  then an osprey would fly down the center of the river, in agreement.  A picnic on the beach and an ice cream at the end (of course);  it was a perfect first day, warm sunshine, warm water and a chance to show off some of the beauty of Canada with our grandson, Chase.  Chase is joining our trek for 12 days, and we intend to do lots of cool stuff so stay tuned.

 

We rented mountain bikes and rode 25km on a ‘rails to trails’ which included 18 trestles and 2 tunnels in Myra Canyon above Kelowna BC.

The greatest show on earth!  100 years old!  Yaaaaa hooooo!  We saw the commercials on television and all the written hype in the newspaper.  We thought these Calgary people really like their annual party.  But now that we have come and gone there is a lot to like.

It was a stand out event, especially if you are passionate about horses.  The grounds are well spaced out and you can choose from up to eight venues, each with some event occurring simultaneously.  Chuck wagon races with mini horses, surrey carts which judges the prancing horses, the history of the large draft horses and their help to settle the west.  That doesn’t count a rodeo with the bucking broncs, and calf roping.   Nor the extravagant night time show, with fireworks starting at 11:15 because that is when it is finally dark enough to show off the wonderful display.

National Geographic ranks the drive between Banff and Jasper National Park on the Ice fields Parkway as one of the best 10 drives in the world.  It could have been easily labeled highway to heaven, it is so filled with spectacular scenery.  There are 22 ice fields (glaciers) along the 79 miles of the Canadian Rockies, and you can see more than half of them from the Ice fields Parkway.

At one point we visited the Columbia Ice field, and the Athabasca Glacier.  We took the buses with those large tundra tires and drove to the brink of the land that time forgot.  Glaciers that were hundreds of years old — thousands of years in the many kilometers of ice that are found compressed thickly, beneath the surface.  They didn’t let you wander too far, there are crevasse that you could fall into, and we left our crampons at home, but it was enough to see the power of mother nature.  This huge glacier will be gone in 80 years based on the current rate of melting.

We hiked up to Peyto Lake,  Peyto was an early mountain guide, who, after he got all the “tourists” settled down, would move himself over to this lake, since the campsite he set up was too crowded.  This is a great place to call your own, the color of the lake really is turquoise green.  It is caused by glacial flour, a fine-grained, silt-sized particles of rock, generated by mechanical grinding of bedrock by glacial erosion.  Because the material is very small, it becomes suspended in river water making the water appear cloudy, which is sometimes known as glacial.  If the river flows into a glacial lake, the lake appears turquoise.

We spent three weeks in a small town called Canmore, 12 miles outside Banff, and used it as the base for the central mountain day trips.  Banff National Park is Canada’s first National Park.   Unlike the US, the Canadian parks hold entire towns within their boundaries.  Banff is a spectacular town (A destination in its own right) and has a spectacular setting.

It has one of the grand hotels built by the Canadian Pacific railway where we enjoyed lunch one rainy day.  The town gondola takes you up the mountain so you can appreciate the the unending chain of snow topped peaks and the large number of glacial lakes carved out out of the countryside.  We took a boat tour on Lake Minnewanka, it is 22 miles long and very cold and deep.  The boat trip was was really cool.  The lake with the green tint is Moraine lake another glacial lake that we thought was particularly beautiful, with the mountains hanging so present.

The rocky mountains are omnipresent, you really drive down the road from one park into the next.  They are all beautiful, I have not experienced this much jaw dropping vistas in a very long time.  Water is everywhere, either in lakes or streams, a  consequence of the snow melt and glacial retraction.  We spent hours going up and down roads saying, “wow, look at that one”.  Pictures, I am afraid, cannot do it justice.  In the two months since leaving home, we have put 9,000 miles on the car and 2,500 miles on the truck/RV.

Took a day trip to this wonderful lake inside Banff National park.

As we enter Alberta, Canada our first stop takes to the Canadian side of Glacier National Park.

Dreams come true.  our first stop, was Waterton Lakes National Park, the Canadian side of Glacier National Park.  In Canada, the national parks are the best place to stay because the township is completely encompassed by the park, so it is a double header, you get both the town and the park.  What you don’t get is wi-fi, and that’s a large part of our story.  We could rarely find the bandwidth to upload pictures and so the blog got more and more behind . . . .  Sorry.

It’s been raining, the pictures certainly show cloudy skies, but animals need to eat no matter the weather, and since we are early in the season, the wildlife are plentiful.  The big horn sheep were just wandering down the road.  It was too wet to hike, so we decided to let the horses do the walking . . .  We enjoyed a three hour meander through prairie and mountains.

Another component of Canadian parks is their grand lodge system, so in nearly every major park, there is a grand lodge, (this was the Prince of Whales) a picture perfect place for lunch.  Note to self:  Repeat this process every single place we go.

Photos from West Glacier and East Glacier.  Going to the Sun Road was closed during our visit to the park.

Home of Flathead Lake, National Bison Range and Kerr Dam.

Memorial Day Weekend.   After emptying out our House in Aurora, we visited Shadowcliff and our Son’s family in Battlement Mesa.  On our journey back to Beaver Utah where we had stored the RV we stopped at Capital Reef National Park.

 

 

Highway I-15 is a long road, it stretches from San Diego, California to someplace in Montana. Thank goodness it also has excellent cell service. During our 3,000 miles of driving we discovered the house sold, on the first day – in a bidding war, and subsequently passed inspection. Luckily, I-15 also intersects with I-70. We parked the 5th wheel and went back to Denver, deliver the remaining furniture and clean our way out of a empty house. We originally left home on May 3 and by May 23 we headed “home” for the last time. What a roller coaster.

So we are on the road again, I-15 to Montana, Glacier National Park, then on to Canada. The uncertainty and the work already behind us, literally. Glowing and completely jazzed about our new lifestyle we can write, take pictures and enjoy this wonderful world.