British Columbia

This forest is really making a living

July 6, 2015 By drpaddle 3 Comments

As we have discussed, we snagged an “oceanfront” site for our one-night, July 1 stay at Living Forest Campground and RV Park just outside Nanaimo, BC. It is a big place — lots of sites for RVs, lots for tents.

Our campsite was almost perfect. Perfection would have moved the kids’ swimming beach somewhere farther away; it was quite noisy during, uh, swimming hours. But at least they were happy sounds.

Did I mention it was hot? It was hot. Sooz set a fan out for us to enjoy the gathering dusk without melting. You can see the terraced “ocean view” sites back behind ours.

Just far enough away from our site, a cafe of sorts serves good coffee and foods. For breakfast we treated ourselves to bacon/egg/cheese sandwiches which were quite good.

This place also has a nice deck for relaxing and staring at the Georgia Strait.

Nearby tree, Georgia Strait, mainland BC mountains at dusk. Nice.

Mainland mountains for Toto to ogle.

We got ready for the drive to Tofino on a windy July 2 morning. Note the authentic whitecaps.

Big ferry, little ferry, mountains behind.

In the morning the ferries entertained us while we prepared to toddle over to Tofino, on the island’s west coast. When the ferry on the left grows up, she’ll get to go where the ferry on the right goes.

When we left the Living Forest, I managed to make a wrong turn — or, rather, miss a correct turn — and we went toward Victoria (instead of Tofino) for a few kilometers before I could get us turned around. We survived.

We also survived the drive through Port Alberni and onto Tofino. The second half of the drive features many sharp curves and unadvertised bumps. It’s not a bad drive, really, just a little tiring. If things follow their recent pattern, it will seem easier on the way back.

Along the way we drove along the attractive and charming Sproat Lake, and noted the presence of a Sproat Lake Provincial Park. Two days later, when smoke from BC’s many early-season wildfires filled the air above Tofino, we read that a number of cabins alongside that lake had to be evacuated while crews fought the flames. Bummer for those folks trying to enjoy their Sproat Lake holiday. Hope no one got burned.

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Getting ourselves to that big island

July 5, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

On July 1, Canada Day, we drove from Chilliwack, BC to the Tsawassen ferry terminal near Vancouver. Got there early, and so hung out at the terminal’s long-term parking for a couple of hours. We had reserved a late-afternoon sailing because BC Ferries offers quite the discount for long rigs on sailings after 4 PM on Wednesdays and Saturdays in the summer.

It was hot here, too, but not as hot as Chilliwack. I took advantage of this layover to do a copywriting assignment for a client. There was also ice cream for Sooz. Whee!

I should note that, in the ferry lineup, we saw another Escape trailer — a 19, I think. We all waved to one another. At one point I walked over to chat, but they had gone off to get ice cream or a soda or whatever. Oh well.

Tinman and Toto in the hold of the Coastal Inspiration.

At last, onto the BC Ferries Coastal Inspiration and into the bowels of the ship. Very warm bowels. Doggies not allowed anywhere else, so we walked them around the car deck and took turns going up to the passenger deck to get food. It turns out the Cafe serves up some excellent salmon filet sandwiches and Caesar salads. Best ferry meal ever, not that that’s saying much.

We spent most of the time inside Toto, reading, sharing sandwich bites with the boys, and wishing it was a little bit cooler. It felt like we had been uncomfortably hot, off and on, for three days, and that was just enough, thanks. We were all pleased enough when the alert sounded to get in our vehicles and prepare to disembark.

Terriers in car seats on the ferry to Vancouver Island

Tyler and Wally wondering if the day would ever end. “We gotta get out of these car seats, Dad. We’re cramping up. And what exactly does disembark mean? We don’t like the sound of it.”

It’s just a ten-minute drive from the Duke Point ferry terminal to the Living Forest Campground and RV Park. It’s a big place! We’ll be back here for two days next week — this is just a one-nighter to break up the travel to our ultimate Tofino destination. Because we only needed one night, we were lucky to snag an “oceanfront” site.

That Escape 19 checked in not long after us — I saw their site, not far from ours, on a walk the next morning. Again, I missed the people, but they certainly have wonderful taste in RVs.

View of Georgia Strait from Nanaimo campsite.

From site 141 at The Living Forest Campground and RV Park in Nanaimo. We drank in the view, and also some wine.

Parked, set up. Surprise! Though the Living Forest website had suggested we would need to unhitch and park TinMan beside Toto, the site was plenty long enough for our rig, and flat enough that we didn’t need to do much leveling. We sat outside — still in the high 80s (F), so we plugged in a fan (Toto has an outdoor electrical outlet), which kept us cooler and discouraged bugs, too. Meanwhile (after a good walk, of course) the boys were conked out in the trailer. Pretty soon, so were we.

We liked this campground and we’re glad we’re headed back to it for two days next week. Now I have to go for a walk on the beach. Someone has to do it.

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Chilliwack, British Columbia, a perfectly nice place

July 4, 2015 By drpaddle 2 Comments

Lots of travel and not so much downtime the last few days, but very many hot times to share with you. As in 30 degrees C, or 92 degrees F, or just plain boiling. I know that some people live in that sort of warmth all the time and do just fine, but Team Toto doesn’t include any of those people. Lots of good times anyway.

We’ve had a trip to Vancouver Island planned for many months. We like to get out of the USA when July 4 rolls around, because the Americans celebrate their Independence Day in manner that’s far to disturbing to Tyler and Wally. They are Earth Dogs, not Fireworks Dogs.

Our plan was to stay in Washington State Park just south of the Canadian border on the 30th and the 1st — to avoid the Canada fireworks on the 1st — then dash over the border and catch a ferry to Nanaimo on the 2nd. From there we would make the 4-hour drive (3 in a Miata, definitely 4 for Team Toto) to Tofino.

But two developments developed. First, the geniuses at Escape Trailer Industries somehow convinced Dometic, the manufacturer of the refrigerator, to replace the units like ours with a better-performing model. And the company offered to do the swap for Escape 21 owners like us for a nominal fee. All we had to do was get Toto to Chilliwack, and they would do the rest.

The other development was months in the making. The Washington State legislature found itself unable to pass its biennial budget. That meant certain non-essential state services (including State Parks) would shut down late on June 30. And there we would be, with no place to camp. While the shutdown wasn’t a certainty, the State Parks people offered to let people with potentially affected camping reservations cancel without the customary draconian penalty.

Wait — there was a third development. BC Ferries announced steeply discounted fares for “oversized rigs” (like TinMan and Toto) on certain sailings.

So we changed our plans a little and began with a trip to Chilliwack.

Toto on the main car deck of the Kingson-Edmonds ferry.

The drive to Chilliwack goes through Seattle unless we’re willing to shell out for the Kingston-Edmonds ferry. But driving anything (much less a truck and trailer) through Seattle is a hellish thing. Washington State Ferries to the rescue.

TinMand and Toto tucked into a nice campsite.

We booked two glorious nights at Camperland Bridal Falls RV Resort outside Chilliwack. It’s right next to a day-use Provincial Park that’s all about a waterfall and is therefore nearly vertical, as we learned when we hiked to the falls. This is campsite #76, which was just fine, and 180 degrees (figuratively and thermally) different from campsite #26 where we spent our first night.

So, CamperLand at Bridal Falls. Or Bridal Veil Falls. We saw it both ways, so apparently there’s no universal agreement on what to call the falls. It was 95F / 31C when we arrived at 3:30. The friendly staff assigned us to site 26, which was just long enough for us to back into and not have to unhook — a good thing, because we would be hauling Toto over to his birthplace the next morning for a refrigerator swap and the now-legendary wall-reinforcement-for-a-TV-mount.

Got parked (very tight quarters, but we made it), got leveled, got plugged in almost. No juice at the current bush. None. Tried all my little gadgets to test it… no juice. None.

I walked over to the office, waited endlessly for my turn, and asked for help. “The maintenance guy will be right over.” Meanwhile, the heat-adverse team simmered (no shade at site 26).

Only 40 minutes later the juice was back on. Someone had flipped a circuit breaker somewhere in a hidden shack. Air conditioning activated. Team Toto formed a sort of prayer circle under the roof-mounted Dometic (yes, same brand as the fridge) and looked toward the heavens. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

Next day, off to Escape Trailer Industries (ETI)! Owners Tammy and Reace treated us like royalty — according to rumor this is how they treat all their customers — and we rode off in TinMan to explore a car wash, the local Safeway supermarket, and… Camperland at Bridal Whatever. We had some time to kill, so we used it to shop for a better campsite, and found one (pictured above). Very shady, and right on the Provincial Park boundary. Very nice.

I think we learned here that it’s okay to ask for a different / better site. They can always say no, but maybe we end up with a better site. We did this time. And, BONUS, it was a shorter walk to the falls, which we did with the boys. That meant pushing them up a stupidly steep cliff in Wally’s stroller. It was a nice view, and worth it if you’re not pushing 70 pounds of stroller and dog.

Trees in Bridal Veil Falls Provincial Park

On the way to the falls. Not steep yet. But soon…

The falls. Well, part of the falls.

And finally…

Obligatory blurry falls image.

There. That was refreshing. Next up: the journey continues with another voyage (and a spiffy new refrigerator).

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Are you tired of hearing about the TV yet?

June 26, 2015 By drpaddle 2 Comments

Because here we go again. We have finally made some progress on the TV front. I know, I know, we shouldn’t even want to be watching TV instead of exploring whatever wilderness we’ve parked in. And we don’t have a TV problem — we can stop anytime we want. We just don’t want.

We head off to the wilds of Vancouver Island quite soon, and the specific wilderness locations we’ll visit include Crystal Cove Beach Resort (this is wilderness with a coffee bar and a DVD library). It’s a real vacation, movies sound good, and so… could we finally settle on a TV setup so we can borrow those DVDs?

Here is where we want to install the TV — in the Toto Lounge, on the wall that backs up to the fridge. Note the 12-volt outlet just above the bully table. That’s going to be handy.

We looked at combination TV / DVD units — 12-volt ones. But to get quality you have to spend too many dollars, and the quality ones aren’t available from companies that have a decent return policy.

So I figured something else out. I found a 24 inch (huge!) Samsung TV at Costco that runs on… 14 volts of DC power.

Samsung TV resting on Toto Lounge cushions.

It’s a Samsung. It’s last year’s model, probably. I got it at Costco for a song. Yeah, it just looks like a TV.

A good strong 12-volt feed, I have read, should be enough to power it, especially if Toto is plugged into a current bush and the power converter is charging the batteries all along.

Just down and across that same Costco aisle I found a Sony Blu-Ray player — a really small, light one. And it runs on… 12 volts.

(Note that both of these appliances are sold as 120-volt AC units. But in both cases, the external power cord includes a “brick” — a transformer, that converts the electrons from AC into DC and squeezes them down to 14- and 12-volts, respectively.)

So all I had to do (in theory) is find a way to tap into Toto’s 12-volt system. And I did. I found an adapter that lets me plug the TV into a 12-volt outlet we had installed in the Toto Lounge. And I tapped into an underutilized LED light circuit to hard-wire the Blu-Ray player, which is now mounted underneath a Toto Lounge cabinet, held in place by Very High Bonding (VHB) tape. Wow that stuff is strong.

Sony Blu-Ray player installed beneath Toto Lounge overhead cabinet.

This gadget weighs all of 1.8 pounds, so I mounted it with 3M VHB tape. I had to use filler boards, of a sort, so that the top of the player wouldn’t be stuck behind a 1/4″ lip at the bottom of the cabinet face. I found some plastic baseboard molding at Home Depot that works great as a filler board (and weighs nothing).

I tapped into a nearby LED light circuit to get the 12-volt DC power this player needs. Much of the wiring in Escape trailers runs beneath false floors in the overhead cabinets, so I had to “fish” the wire I added through that false floor. It worked out okay. Radio Shack sold me an adapter that let me plug my circuit extension into the back of the player. Only 1 hole drilled, and I finished it off with a rubber grommet to prevent the wire from rubbing on any sharp edges.

The bottom of the player is meant to be sitting on a shelf, so it’s not purty. I’m going to find a small piece of polycarbonate (or something) to give it a more finished look. Any day now.

We have also acquired an articulating mount for the TV, and an adapter that lets us take the TV off the mount for travel. I marked the mounting location, but I can’t install it yet — the wall (next to the fridge) needs reinforcement. Right now the center part of the wall is just a flimsy panel.

The articulating mount will go up on the wall above the location it occupies in this photo. My good friends at Escape will install it, and I got a quick-disconnect gadget that will let me quickly and easily pull the TV off the mount for travel.

Hole in TV mount allows access to DC power jack.

This always happens! The mount blocks something important — in this case, the jack where the 12-volt power needs to plug in. So I drilled a half-inch hole. If this looks slightly out of focus, you may need to get your eyes checked. But probably not.

So, about our trip. First stop: Chilliwack, BC, Toto’s birthplace. The Escape Trailer Industries factory has offered to swap our refrigerator for a newer model — almost for free — after having convinced its manufacturer, Dometic, that the old fridge was underpowered for many North American locations.

We can get into Escape Trailer’s unparalleled level of service to its customers at another time — we could go on and on about that. But for now… since they’re going to have the refrigerator out of the way, they have agreed to reinforce that wall and install the TV mount.

And while they’re at it they’re going to reinforce the attachment of the solar panel on the roof. We’ve had no problems with it, but one or two other trailer owners (out of hundreds) have, and the Escape folk, as is their wont, are taking care of it, at no charge, just to make sure it won’t become a problem later.

Wow.

So with the Blu-Ray player we’ll have Netflix and Amazon Prime and all that other streaming stuff. And we’ll be able to play discs. And we’ll be able to watch shows and movies. If we happen to be at an RV park with TV hookups, we can run a coax cable (temporarily) over to the nightstand where it comes into the trailer. And I can permanently (and neatly) extend that coax if I want by running it through cabinets. Not sure I’ll bother.

Of course we don’t have to watch TV. We choose to. When it’s sleeting outside, or when we just have to know what happens next on The Walking Dead.

And hey, maybe, while we’re tucked into the Toto Lounge with the boys, we can watch some Wilderness Shows.

One final note: Sooz is thrilled to have two new remotes in the family. Well, maybe not thrilled.

Remote controls for TV and Blu-Ray player.

Wonder how long it will take me to lose track of these. I see Velcro attachment in their future.

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Going to Chilliwack, the first time.

March 20, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

We were Chilliwack virgins. In fact we had never been farther east in British Columbia than White Rock, just north of the U.S. border. Our BC travel had been limited to Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, and locations en route to those places.

Cultus Lake, just up the hill from Chilliwack. By The High Fin Sperm Whale (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

I think it possible that we might never have stayed a night in Chilliwack if not for our proposed, and then later intended, then finally consummated RV purchase. Not that is isn’t a wonderful place to visit — it surely is. We just didn’t know about it, until we became interested in Escape trailers.

But we did. You’ll recall Sooz’s “I LOVE it!” response to our tour of a nearby resident’s own Escape 21. And what wasn’t to love? So I sent them an email asking how to get on the production schedule so we could have one of our very own.

The response was sobering. Well, they said, our production schedule for 2014 is completely booked, in an early April email. We’re happy to put you on our 2015 production schedule, but it isn’t out yet, and when it does come out we’ll arrange a special, frenzied, phone-in, lottery kind of event at which time you can maybe get on our production schedule and good luck to you. In the meantime we’ll put you on our list of people who want to know about such things.

Arrrggh. Here we were ready to plunk down most of Sooz’s life savings — oh, wait, don’t let her see this part — to buy an RV and the company was telling us ‘yeah, when we’re good and ready for you.’ Zounds! But they are a smallish and growing company with a fabulous reputation for both product and service, so okay whatever we’ll wait.

We talked about it. Maybe it would be helpful for us to visibly demonstrate our passion for their product, we mused. Maybe we should go up there to Chilliwack, take a factory tour, look at the ‘display models,’ and appear to be earnest buyers. Because sometimes it helps to show people you’re serious, doesn’t it? I think so.

So we began thinking about going up there — a 3.5 hour (plus border wait time) journey, according to Google Maps. And then

My client cancelled a meeting in California. Yes! I woke up on a Tuesday, ready to head out to SeaTac airport for a flight down to the Bay Area for a two-day meeting. But I checked my email and the meeting was postponed! I had blocked out the time… I didn’t have any looming deadlines… so I suggested we bug out to Chilliwack. All four of us enthusiastically agreed, although Tyler and Wally will agree to pretty much anything if you ask them the right way.

Online, I found a dog-friendly motel located practically in Escape Trailer Industries’ back yard. Booked a room. We threw together some stuff, put the mutts in their car-beds and off we went.

Through Tacoma, and then Seattle, and then on up to Bellingham, Washington. Then it’s secondary roads and farmland up to the border in Sumas, Washington. ‘You’re going to see the Escape trailers? Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about those. Have fun!’ Even the border agent was enthusiastic.

Chilliwack environs: Vedder River at dawn, Stephen Edwards. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

The countryside around Chilliwack is gorgeous. It’s the wide, flat, lusciously green Fraser River valley, flanked by towering mountains in purple and jade. Tourism Chilliwack has some great photos, which you might want to see since all I have to offer are these Wikipedia images. At any rate, a lovely place. And when you get to the part of Chilliwack occupied by the Escape Trailer Industries factory, you realize you are in… an industrial area.

A small one, really — and still surrounded by all those gorgeous mountain views. Still, kind-of… industrial. Truck stop. Aging motel. Chain coffee shop. And a row of those industrial-looking developments with roll-up doors.

Our Best Western lodgings were more than adequate. When you book ‘dog-friendly’ rooms, your expectations are always low. In this case, the place looked dated, but well-preserved and clean. And there’s a very cool atrium at the hotel where you can eat meals and watch talented-but-possibly-underpaid locals tend the plants.

Before checking in, we drove by the ETI factory. It was almost closing time, but Sooz offered to wait in the car with the boys while I dashed in to begin our Demonstration of Earnestness. One of the firm’s owners, Tammy, asked if I’d like to see a trailer or two, and dispatched her daughter Erin to escort me. I looked at an Escape 21 — cool! Then dashed back out to the car so Sooz and Tyler and Wally wouldn’t have to wait too long. Time to get to our motel and relax!

We did. We got to the motel. And, like all modern people, the first thing we did after checking in was to fire up our laptop, connect to the motel’s Wi-Fi, and check emails. We dared not use our Verizon Wireless network for data; the international roaming data rates costs more than an RV. Per megabyte.

Network up, password in, Terms of Use unread but agreed-to, and… there was an email to me, from Escape Trailer Industries. It had been sent at about the time I was out touring the 21 with Erin — by someone else at the company, Rhonda, who had had no idea we were anywhere near Chilliwack, because why would she.

The email said… we’ve had a cancellation! You want an Escape 21? We can put you on the schedule for a November 14 completion date!!!

We discussed it for a good three minutes, then I replied YES MAKE ONE FOR US ALREADY or something similar.

Our trip to Chilliwack was becoming more eventful (and successful) than we had imagined it might. Yes. Well, wait ’til you learn what happened next.

Soon.

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