(written on October 17th from notes taken previously)
We woke up in front of my mom’s Friend’s place, and I just stayed in the van while she visited with her friends for a couple hours or so.
They knew me as a little child, but I never really knew them even though they were friends of the family, so it’s not much of a reunion for me to see them because I don’t really know them. They probably think differently since they saw me as a kid growing up.
While my mom was visiting them, I needed a bathroom and didn’t want to use our in-house bathroom, so I drove down to a little park that overlooks Puget sound and downtown Seattle. There wasn’t a bathroom there, but it was a beautiful view of the city, so I took some pictures and then headed to alki Beach because I figured there would be bathrooms there.
Gratefully, there were, and I headed back, helped take some pictures of my mom with her friends, and then we headed over to where my grandparents used to live so my mom could visit with the people that she knew who bought the house.
I just did online stuff while waiting for them to catch up, and When they were done visiting, we pointed Rover’s nose North and made a mad – away from civilization.
😅🙃
Next destination, Canada!
Before heading across the border, we stopped off at the Walmart supercenter in Mount Vernon to stock up on foodstuffs.
We then proceeded to talk to a very eccentric woman in the parking lot who is interested in looking at Rover. We ended up talking to her probably for more than an hour, I would guess, before finally heading out.
By the time we got back on the road, it was already starting to be a little bit later in the day for crossing the border and trying to figure things out from there, so we decided to spend one more night in the states before heading to the Great White North.
In looking for a place to stay, the usual hopefuls were a little less appealing after our latest foray into camping overnight at a truck stop. We also were itching to get out of Dodge, so I found what I hoped was going to be a Forest Service dirt road in the foothills of Mount Baker, but we were stymied. Everywhere we went, it was a no-go. We had initially nixed the idea of actually going up to Mount Baker, but after having failed again and again to find places to stay, found a Forest Road on the northwest side of Mount Baker that went up into the mountain in decent ways that looked promising.
So we set off North, until we got to the little town of Kendall, where we headed due east through another little town until we got to the town of Glacier. On the Eastern edge of the town of glacier, there were a couple of forest service roads going off into the Foothills, and we started taking one Dad yielded one potentially promising camping spot, but we decided to forage on hoping to catch a camping spot that was actually right next to the river (As the Forest Road showed that it ran along the river for a good ways).
What it didn’t show was that the river would be way below us much of the time. So we went along and along and along and found a couple of decent places to stop and camp along the way, but each time we decided to keep forging onward.
We gave one last gasped at trying to find a place by a river, Aunt just as we were about to arrive at our last hoped destination, the smell of gas inside the van got intensely strong.
We had smelled it just faintly a handful of times in the first days of our trip, and of course I was concerned about it enough that we stopped in Price, Utah where I pulled out coils and did all sorts of tests to try and see if we had issues with spark plugs coming loose or fuel leaks or whatever else.
Well, this time, after bouncing along a really rough road, the fuel smell was crazy strong. It was so strong that it smelled like someone had taken a can of gas and poured some of it out inside the cabin of the vehicle.
By this time, it was well past dark, and we were on a rather bumpy mountain Road on the northwest slopes of Mount Baker, but the smell was so strong that we were fairly significantly concerned about what was going on, not to mention the fact that we both would have gotten headaches and or gotten high from the fumes staying inside the van.
So I got out and started crawling around underneath the van from front to back looking and looking and looking for any sign, any evidence of leak anywhere, but nothing.
I was scratching my head trying to figure it out. What on Earth could cause a fuel smell that strongly to enter into the cabin while you’re driving down the road?!?!
The only thing that I could think of, since I couldn’t find any leaks at all near the engine bay, which is where it would have made the most sense for the fumes to come in through the HVAC system and fill the van. The only other reasonable option that I could think of was for the fumes to be coming in through a hole in the floorboard or something. There were some holes where bolts had gone through to hold down seats and whatever else that I had plugged with rubber stoppers. They shouldn’t have allowed fumes inside, but what else could it be?
Figured that maybe somehow I had damaged the top of the fuel tank or not put the fuel pump retaining ring in properly, but I couldn’t imagine myself having messed that up, given that you do all that installation with the gas tank on the ground and you know 100% for sure that you’ve got it on properly.
Eventually, I gave up, and we went to bed. 😕
My mom ended up switching her head from sleeping on one side of the van to the other, both away from the gas smell, and away from our little John.
What at least worked out really well for the night was that where we pulled off to try to take care of the gas smell happened to be right at a bridge going over a very loudly rushing River. We couldn’t see much in the dark, but it was sure roaring quite loudly, so in the end, we got our wish camp out for the night next to the river. 😁
So that was something, at least.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 