October 2012 - Nanaimo, Saskatoon, Port Angeles, Rufus, Ely, Cathedral Gorge, Cedar City, Cedar Breaks, Zion, and Bryce Canyon

October 2nd - Nanaimo

 We are now in a driveway at some friends in Nanaimo waiting to take the trailer in for its annual servicing on Thursday morning before heading to Vancouver and Saskatoon for a week.  The Coho Ferry out of Victoria is booked for Saturday October 13th so not long now!  Thanksgiving in Saskatoon with Kristi and Jason will be fun.... although someone is expecting me to cook the dinner!

 

October 6th - Saskatoon SK

We arrived in Saskatoon Friday at 12:35 pm ... right on time.  Kristi took us to Cranberry Flats, along the south Saskatchewan River with her two dogs for a walk.  It sure lived up to the "prairie look" complete with gopher holes.  Beautiful day and about 6 degrees.  Quite a difference from the 20 degrees in Nanaimo!

It was even colder over night into Saturday morning ... -3 at 7am with the possibility of flurries!  Oh well, only a few days and then back to the island for the warmth.  Luckily they have extra warm hats and gloves for us to wear.

Went shopping today with Kristi so she could get her puppies ready for Halloween.

We've sure enjoyed our stay here and for expecting some severe cold during our visit the temps haven't been all that bad.  The forecast is for it to getting colder with flurries, so glad to heading back to BC where it's warmer.

October 13th - Vancouver BC

 After flying in from Saskatoon on Wednesday, we drove to Squamish to see Garrett and Sandra. Their new place is really cute, the perfect size for them.  They are sure enjoying the lifestyle that Squamish offers them with the hiking and biking right out their front door.  It is hard to believe that we lived there 25 years ago.  The town has not expanded too much in single family homes but there is now lots of density housing and big box stores, I'm guessing to service ever growing Whistler.  The improvements to the highway are huge which makes commuting for Garrett and Sandra quite a breeze. We did not get any pictures as the day was really gloomy.

We arranged to meet with Mom for lunch at Trolls before heading back to the island from Horseshoe Bay.  We picked up the trailer and went back to Taunia and Jason's to pick up Freya and reload the compartments with all of our stuff we took out for the repairs.  A nice evening with them in the "man cave" with beer and pizza followed!

Good thing we got back a day early as the rain began that evening and all of our stuff would have got wet!

October 16th - Departure Day on our Great Adventure

After doing a few errands we were on the road to Victoria on Friday by 11 am.  We decided to get on the Coho Ferry a day early and loaded on the 3 pm sailing for arrival in Port Angeles at 4:30 pm.

Here comes our ride

One excited lady with The Empress Hotel in the background

Here's some pics of Victoria's Inner Harbour as we departed.

BC Legislature Building

West Bay RV Park... we'll have to stay there another visit

MacAulay Park - The last of Canadian soil

Port Angeles Harbour

 After settling in the KOA we went to the huge Walmart and picked up a cooked chicken and a few supplies and back to the trailer for the evening.  The monsoons have begun!

We had a great time at the crab fest on Saturday morning.  Lunch was crab bisque, seafood bisque, grilled scallops wrapped in bacon, and crab cakes with beer of course!  We also bought two freshly cooked crabs to take home for dinner.  They were 2 lbs each .... honkers!  The feast was excellent.

Deb's in the crowd somewhere

We left Sunday morning and headed for the Lucky Eagle Casino in Olympia. We stayed overnight and ate a wonderful dinner at their steakhouse with the best prime rib we've ever received in a restaurant. Joining the players club gave us 25% off. Basically the meal cost us the same as a camping fee at a top notch RV resort. ($40)

Monday up early and on our way to Wilsonville, just south of Portland to Camping World.  We bought a few necessities like new zero gravity chairs. We were a little surprised the store is as small as it. They obviously do more service work as the complex is half garage. We almost stayed the night there but decided to push on to Woodburn another 20 minutes south to the Portland-Woodburn RV Park. The outlet mall is at the back gate! We both enjoyed a great time looking at all the stores. The truck also received its 8000 km regular maintenance so we stayed for three nights. We are still working on the best option for us regarding internet service and phone. Should be resolved today.... I hope
 Tomorrow it is back north through Portland and then on Highway 84 east. We are going to try some  boondocking for a few da.

October 18th - Rufus, Oregon

 Yesterday we made our way from Portland to John Day Dam Recreation site at Rufus Oregon.  This will be our first attempt at boondocking since we got the four extra batteries installed.  All seems to be working well.  It was only about a 3 hour drive with both Ray and I driving so a nice beginning.  Interstate 84 is a beautiful drive along the Columbia River.  Lots of pull off spots to rest if necessary.  It sure reminds me of the interior of BC.  There are train tracks on both sides of the river as well as highways on both sides. The north side is Washington while the other side, we're on the Oregon side.

 There are lots of tugs pushing barges up and down the river.  It seems there is a dam every 5 - 10 miles or so. It must be quite the lock system to move them through.  Some have rail cars and what looks to be piles of potash on them.  Others seem to be a tank system.  There is obviously a great sports fishing industry here as we saw lots of small boats fishing as we traveled along.  There were lots of floats for traps up and down but we are unsure as to what they are trying to catch, possibly eels.

The RV site is basically an old gravel pit.  Lovely little spot for lots of rigs.  It is windy, as the Columbia Gorge we past is world renowned as a kite surfing spot.  A local clerk told Ray there are as many people as windmills here,  The Rufus sign indicted a population of 287.

 

John Day Dam Lock

October 20th Farewell Bend, OR

 We  departed John Day Dam headed for Farewell Bend State Park in Huntingdon Oregon for a night. Hit a little rain, but the sunshine greeted us by the time we got to our destination. 

 So far I have managed to plan to stay in the sun! Nice park, 50 amp service. Good thing, as it's 4 degrees or less this morning. After dumping we headed out for our next destination Salmon Falls Creek Reservoir in Idaho. I took my turn again driving the rig. Managed to get diesel for the first time and backed into the campsite. Took me longer than Ray,  but hey I did it!

October 2 1- Farewell Bend State Park, ID to Salmon Falls Creek Reservoir

As we left Farewell Bend State Park our plan is to head for Cave Lake Park just outside of Ely. I did a lot of the driving as we had to push south as snow is forecast. About an hour North of Jackpot, Nevada we realized Ely is to far a destination and decided to make a left and visit the Salmon Falls Creek Reservoir and stay at the Lud Drexler Park. Very nice place with big sites and sun shelters.  Local farmers put the dam in place, but you can see the water shortages are affecting the water levels.

 

October 22 - Ely NV

The Cave Lake Park was too small to fit our rig so we headed back down towards Ely and stayed on a siding beside the road. The winds picked up to 50 miles ... not kilometers for a few hours. Quite a bit of rocking and rolling. The forecast is for snow the next evening so we pushed on further south early the next morning.

October 23rd - Cathedral Gorge Park, NV

We ended up in Cathedral Gorge State Park, southeast Nevada.  What a beautiful park.  We can't wait to explore tomorrow.  We might even get the bikes out and do the 4 mile route.  We will stay here for a couple of days and regroup before trying for Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park.  As long as the snow stays north we would be good to go. 

Nice Campsite:

Ray and I took the 4 mile route around the park, riding on our bikes through washes with the dog.  We managed to finally tire her out.  She is styling in her own pack, carrying her water.  Lovely scenery along the way and Freya loved it.  The part we'll remember most is Deb trying to finesse her way over a small ditch.  I didn't quite make it and rather went ass over tea kettle and almost face planted into the sand.  Later, Ray tried to out due me by falling sideways into the sand and onto some Goat head.  Here's some pics along the way:

 

Later in the day, Ray doing what he likes to do best!

A few more pics of the park closer to the campsite:

Freya... Rabbit!

Tower built by the Civilian Conservation Corp

The next day, Ray drove the car to the North End of the park for these pics:

The campsite is way in the distance to the top right.

This is a beautiful small state park with wonderful people who work here.  Very peaceful and lots to see.  The topography was very interesting.  We always saw these types of things on TV but did not really think that we would see them up close and personal.  There is no restrictions to climb up any of these rocky/sandy spires.  If this was BC or Canada everything would be roped off and to look at a distance.  We were able to climb up them, see into caves without any restrictions.

The best part of this destination turned out to be meeting some nice people from Victoria who winter in Arizona.  Malcom and Kathy Warrington and their dog Tekky invited us for happy hour ... lots of margaritas.  It was sunny and about 20 degrees this afternoon! They were heading in the same direction as us, so we arranged to stay at the same campsite.  

Malc and Kathy Warrington.

October 28th - Kanarraville

Well we have been in Cedar City, Utah for the past three days. (Actually 12 miles south at a little town called Kanarraville). The weather has been fantastic, although chilly overnight to about -4 degrees.  It warms up to about 18 degrees. We have had happy hour with our new friends, gone out for dinner and stayed today, Saturday, for their Heritage Livestock Festival in Cedar City.

 What  a parade!  We saw things we could never believe!

You should see all their RV's ..... chuckwagons! Must have been about 30 of them!

And the final part of the parade .... Here come the sheep.  They had about 500 sheep herded down the main street.  To Ray's chagrin they were all well behaved and not one of them tried to escape!

After the parade we took a drive to the Cedar Breaks National Monument, about 26 miles from town. Quite a windy road.  We have opted to go around it to get to Bryce Canyon in 2 days.  Here are some pictures that we took this afternoon.

Relaxing Time

Tomorrow we will take a day trip to Zion Canyon, just 1 hour down the road.

October 29th - Zion National Park

 Today it's off to Zion National Park.  Wow!  Spent about 3 1/2 hours walking and travelling on their shuttle buses to the various viewpoints.  It was the last day for the shuttles and we were glad to use them as the narrative was very informative.  Ray took many, many pictures and here's a few highlights.

The highway into the park is gorgeous:

Lots of Rock Climbers along the way

Virgin River

Hanging Gardens - a trail zigzags through

Weeping Rock

October 31st - Bryce Canyon National Park

We're on our way to see Bryce Canyon.  We planned to camp at Ruby's Inn RV Park, but faced a bit of a dilemma on the way.  Our fifth is 13'6" and the tunnel in front of us is 12' 6", oops.  OK so off to Hatch and their RV park.  The park was closing down but allowed to stay a few days, so long as we didn't mid the water turned off overnight.  No problem. Here's a view from our campsite.

Don't think we would fit!

We enjoyed the most marvelous day touring Bryce Canyon National Park yesterday. Ray's mom told us her favourite part of their visits to the US was Bryce and that is why we wanted to come here our first year of travel... she was right! It's indescribably beautiful. The temp is -5 degrees when we left at 9am and warmed up to a balmy 19 degrees by the time we left the park. It is the type of place, that if we came again, we would camp in the park and visit it for several days instead of one. You can just stand at the lookouts for hours and study the rock formations and see something different each time. There were miles of trails up and down the canyons looking like ribbons of sand. Most of the hikes were quite strenuous according to the posted maps and with Ray's back, we declined. Here are but a few of the shots we took. (Total pictures between both of us was about 350.)

Driving through Red Canyon and the home of Butch Cassidy and his "Wild Bunch" gang.

Here we go!

Home sweet home!

This is definitely a place to spend more time in, but the road is calling to us and we are going to head further south and see the Grand Canyon in a few days.