Test trip

Saturday, May 19, 2018

We were up pretty late last night, packing things up for this test trip, then woke up at 6:30 this morning, and finished getting ready. We ended up leaving an hour and a half later than we'd planned, which is not unusual for us. We're hoping we get faster as we get used to traveling.

We headed down HWY 39, towards Drayton Valley, where there is a weigh scale. We stopped there quickly, to weigh the trailer, then doubled back to HWY 620, heading to Lodgepole. 

We stopped for lunch by the Brazeau Dam. Feeling adventurous, we drove right down to the water over a sand and rock beach, where there were other people with boats, enjoying the water. I climbed into the trailer and found our tuna salad, buns, etc. with no problem. I made lunch, while Ryan checked everything over. He showed me that one of the trailer hubs had lost it's dust cap, which we will have to sort out later on.

Headed out again, then turned onto HWY 11, stopped at Nordegg for gas, and Ryan got some plastic wrap so we could wrap the trailer hub with it, to keep the dust out. That's worked fairly well, so far. We also got to 200,000km on the odometer at Nordegg!

We very briefly stopped at a pullout beside Abraham lake just because it looked so beautiful.

We drove through a place we'd driven through 2 1/2 years ago, when there was a fire. The trees were blackened, but you could see that the fire had burned fast; the fire had only burned the bark, and the wood was showing where the burned bark and branches had fallen off, also, there were trees the fire had skipped, completely. 

We saw a sign that concerned us a little, because it said that tire chains were necessary for the road ahead, but when we got to the Banff park entry, the woman we talked to said not to worry about it, they just hadn't taken the sign down yet. 

Soon afterward, we noticed snow closer and closer to the road, until there were snow banks around the road (in plus 17 degree weather!), we saw an avalanche path, with the snow still rough chunks and small trees partly knocked over. We drove up a fairly steep and very long hill, where the car had to be in 2nd gear most of the way, because we were behind some people who started out pretty slowly, and at the top, there was a parking lot off to the side of the road, that still had snowbanks pushed up in it, for cars to park. We turned around so that we could see how the brakes would do, going down the hill, and had to go back up even slower, because of another slow person ahead of us at the bottom.

We headed on and stopped quickly at the Columbia Ice Fields, so I could pull a snack out of the trailer, and for some pictures of our rig.

The potholes in the gravel parking lot were massive but we made it through there without damaging anything and we left the Columbia Ice Fields, turned off onto HWY 93A, which isn't in great shape, anymore, and made it to our reserved campsite at about 7:40.

We found a group of people to help us lift the trailer top, since we haven't devised a working lift system, as yet, set up camp, and I started making soup for supper, because I'd forgotten the hamburgers at home. 😞

A man came over to talk with Ryan, because he is planning to build a similar pop up trailer. He had a lot of questions, and Ryan and he talked for around 2 hours, and looked over the whole set up. 

Meanwhile, supper was done, so when the man went back to his family, we had supper, just after 10.

Our fancy schmancy plastic egg holder had destroyed about half the eggs we'd taken along, so there was a goodly amount of mess in the one cooler. I threw that junky thing away, and cleaned up the mess, did the dishes while Ryan set up the bed, made the bed, and then (after teethbrushing) we climbed into it and slept pretty well. I think this bed will be great for our trip.

 This is a link to a video of when we left our house, the campsite and inside our trailer.

Monday, May 21, 2018

Yesterday, Ryan slept in a bit, we tried out our shower, cooking equipment, went for a walk, listened to a Mark Driscoll sermon, etc. and started making a list of the things we'd either missed, or not thought of, before the trip. 

This morning we tried to get up at the time we plan to, on our actual trip, packed up the trailer, cooked breakfast, washed dishes, and found a helpful man to aid us in lowering the trailer top. On our way out of the campground, we emptied our freshwater tank that is under the trailer, to see how much that would help with the towing. 

The Canadiana's speedometer was acting up the last part of the trip on Saturday, so we went to Jasper to find some lubricant to fix it. It being May long weekend, Home Hardware was closed, but Ryan found a bicycle shop which carried something he could use for a substitute. 

We decided to go to Miette Hotsprings, so we set off down the curving, twisty, road, about an hour's drive from Jasper. There was still snow on the grass in the parking lot!

We soothed our muscles in the lovely water and then made lunch

While we were driving to Hinton after that we planned out a practice shopping trip, to see how long we could count on it taking to shop. We did the actual trial shopping trip in just under 40 minutes, Ryan found some duct tape at the Home Hardware here, to seal the icemaker, in order to keep the water from splashing out onto any wiring or the inverter under my seat. Then we found the Travel Information Centre; and and I used the Wifi in the Centre, while Ryan looked at maps with the friendly worker.

 It was very hot on the way home so we stopped at Dairy Queen in Edson. Ryan got a blizzard but there was nothing for me being lactose intolerant unfortunately.

Arrived back home around 9 PM, brought in all perishables and necessaries, and had those hamburgers I'd forgotten at the start of the trip for supper. There are clouds of mosquitoes here at home, but there were almost none anywhere else on our test trip.