(written on the 22nd from notes taken previously. Originally, I had part of this written as having happened on the 7th, but I don’t remember at this point. My notes say fixed morning of the 8th… so… I’m moving all that stuff about finding and fixing to the 8th. Maybe happened part on one day and part on the other. Who knows.)
Woke up this morning and figured I needed to find cause of the small and get it fixed ASAP, before heading out on the road again.
So once again, I looked and looked and looked, and then finally, while crawling around underneath the van in the rear by where the generator was (where my mom said she could smell it super strongly), I spied a few drops that smelled like gas.
I followed them up and found a fuel line that was completely open that had been leaking gas.
😶
Umm…
Crazy.
Maybe it was smelling so much because of all the jostling on the super bumpy road after just recently filling up the tank?
Maybe we only ever smelled fuel when we had a completely full tank?
Whatever it’s been, fuel had been squirting out that hose into the compartment where I keep all of our fluids and our jack and jack stands and what not.
So what was that fuel line for? Well, it was the fuel line that used to go to the generator. I had taken the generator out, and I hadn’t even thought twice about that fuel line since I took the generator out. There wasn’t any fuel in the line that I can remember when I took it out.
And… I still don’t even know how that fuel line is connected to the rest of the system because I removed the fuel tank to do the fuel pump job, and I don’t remember another line coming off of the tank for anything, so I’m… pretty stumped about that one.
Regardless, I was grateful to find the source of the leak and even more grateful that it wasn’t anything related to the functionality of the vehicle.
Once again, the issue that I had with the van was self-inflicted. 😅
I ended up using one of my tire repair tools to plug up the fuel line, clamping it with a screw clamp that I had brought with us just in case we needed one.
And that was that–elusive problem found, and a band-aid fix applied.
😌
When I first got up, I headed over to the bridge to look at the river.
Beautiful raging River.
And excitingly, little bits of Mount Baker were visible through the mist, encouraging hopes that we might get a view of the peak.
🤞
So we continued driving up the bumpy, rough road, with the intent of following it until it got the closest that it would get to the peak itself before winding back the other way. We skipped breakfast for the moment, intending to eat it when we got to a good view.
And a good view we indeed got.
😁
It wasn’t a non-obstructed view of the peak, but it was a beautiful view of the blue glacier below the peak with I think occasional glimpses of the peak through the clouds.
It was a super beautiful view looking across a valley between us and the glacier and waterfalls and Main peak and what not.
We stayed and took pictures and ate breakfast and enjoyed the Vista for a good little while, before clouds started rolling in, completely covering the view we had seen in front of us.
On the way back down, we found an awesome camping spot at the base of a cliff in a little clearing after driving through the trees a little bit.
It had a fire pit and was just perfect, so I took some pictures and noted down the GPS coordinates just in case I ever go back that way.
We headed back through glacier and a couple of other small towns until we reached Sumas, the little border Town where we were going to cross.
With rain gently falling, we got gas and ice before going across the border, as gas in Canada is a fair bit more expensive than in the states, ate a little bit of food, and then headed across.
Unfortunately, The cosmic crisp apples that we had bought earlier were confiscated at the border. Fabulous apples.
Darn it.
We also had to surrender the bag of fire starting dried moss and bark that I had collected.
Darn it.
Oh well.
…
Canada!!! The Great White North!!!
Hello!!!
We crossed the border started heading up highway 1 toward the Canadian Rockies. Didn’t really have much of a plan, other than seeing beautiful scenery, so our course of travel was pretty much completely up in the air.
The main thing was that we were wanting to spend our time enjoying the beautiful Canadian Rockies. We just… Didn’t know exactly how we were going to go about doing that. 🙃
It’s a massive part of the chain of mountains, and the Canadian Rockies are by far my favorite–so rugged and wild in comparison to the American Rockies.
At first, we planned to go up to Prince George And then head down, but we changed our minds and headed Northeast toward Wells Gray Provincial Park.
It wasn’t a quick drive to get there, so we wound our way up highway 1, periodically taking pictures of beautiful scenery, and then switching over to highway 5, and taking more pictures of beautiful scenery along the way.
It’s funny, Even though there’s not really anything that logically says you should feel different in another country, especially Canada, since they speak the same language, and the terrain is in many ways just an extension of what’s in the US, but for some reason, I just get that feeling of being in a foreign place. Not like being in a different state. It’s that feeling of being in a foreign country.
Not sure how to explain it. Just feels… Different? More exciting?
I don’t know.
Anyway, along our way, we started seeing signs requiring certain types of tires for the winter months, starting October 1st, and since we had already begun October, we were a little concerned. We were also concerned because we were going to be going back and forth through mountain passes on a regular basis and were wanting to be prepared with chains for the tires.
We ended up stopping in Merritt, British Columbia, basically the last place we could stop to get what we needed.
They actually had a Walmart there, so we stopped in at the Walmart, but we weren’t able to get any chains there. They recommended going to another place, a combination auto parts store/auto shop, so we headed over there, But the prices were super high, and they didn’t have the type of chains that we were looking for, only having the ones that are super super basic.
We needed/wanted the chains that were for larger vehicles like ours.
So we didn’t buy anything there, and the other places that might have what we needed were closed by that time, closing a lot earlier than they do in the states. I think the other auto place closed at like 6:00.
So we gave up for the night and planned on staying in Merritt at the Walmart, but it was time to eat, and we weren’t really interested in what we had ourselves. Since we were in Canada, we were hoping to find a place that was more Canadian to eat at instead of just another American chain, I noticed a couple that was parked charging their EV at the charge station, and I went over and chatted with him for probably 20 minutes, and they recommended a little place called the Kekuli Cafe.
So we headed further into town, found the little Kekuli Cafe, tried to order what was recommended by the people I had chatted with, but it was within like 45 minutes of closing, joe they no longer had any of that particular thing.
So I just asked them what they recommended and ordered that. The food was ready lightning quickly, And it was decently tasty. 🙂
Bannocks.
They made just about everything with Bannocks, including our food, and As we were finishing up our meal, The lady came out with two bags of bannocks and asked if we would like them, otherwise they were going to just be thrown away.
🥳
So we got two free bags full of bannocks, maybe a dozen in total–a welcome addition to our menu. 🙂
From there, it was back to The Walmart parking lot for the night. I had a lot on my mind, And I ended up calling one of my brothers and chatting with him about the immediate stuff I was trying to work through for maybe 45 minutes as I just wandered around the parking lot back and forth and back and forth around and around.
I noticed one of the other people in the parking lot had a Great Pyrenees, one of the breeds of dog I grew up with–always cool to me when I see one of those. Shortly after, I saw someone else had a German Shepherd.
I wandered and wandered and talked, trying not bother the other people who were spending the night in the parking lot. Definitely grateful that this Walmart was friendly overnight campers.
Much grass, Walmart, much grass. 🙏
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 