driving

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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They call it Blowdega Bay. But why??? Oh.

April 16, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

In life, you get some valley time, you get some beach time. We completed our valley time on Monday morning and headed for the beach. It was kind-of windy on the way. Felt like a headwind. TinMan’s estimated mileage calculator indicated “keep working, bub, you’re gonna need to buy a lot more gas.”

Yeah. We got to Doran Regional Park, on a sand spit in Bodega Bay, and sure, it was breezy.

Kite-surfers, bay, whitecaps, you get the idea.

Sure, THEY liked the steady, 25-knot wind. But it made the Maxxfan moan all night.

The wind was much, much worse the next day. Fortunately, we weren’t there that much — we were being lost on a dozen different Sonoma County country roads. We got rewarded though: friend Pat gave us four bottles of wine she had made herself (already tested… already loved), and we got to spend time with her fabulous Cairn terriers Runa and Rosso.

Runa, brindle-colored Cairn terrier. Gorgeous.

Runa and I are going to be good friends, I could tell.

Rosso the Cairn terrier, yawning, or smiling, I can't tell.

Rosso kept popping up onto my leg to say hi. Maybe he likes me. Maybe he thought I had a treat to offer.

Pat knows all about Cairn terriers. We are Cairn terrier novices compared to her. But it is our privilege to care for two of them, and that is enough. Pat gives us suggestions when we get puzzled about them, and all four of us are better for it. But Pat gave us something even more important than Cairn terrier advice on this trip. She took us to lunch at a charming, small-town eatery. We took two bottles of her own hand-made wine to sample. Dogs stayed behind and played or chilled, we’ll never know.

This is Pat’s wine. She made it. Our job was to drink it. Success!

The next morning, it was time to head back toward home, and we all know what that means… the weather improved. Observe.

When the wind abated, our lives were transformed. For two minutes. Then we had to pack up and head home.

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Team Toto traverses tall peaks, rests in Yreka

April 9, 2015 By drpaddle 2 Comments

Over the mountains yesterday (most of them, anyway). The weather gods were smiling on us: dry, calm, wonderfully clear it was. Traffic fairly light for I-5. I think I counted six passes with their associated climbs and long downhill grades.

Apparently we survived, finding our way to the Yreka (California) RV Park.

Walk around the rig long enough, find the one angle that includes a bit of nature, then crop as needed. Presto! The RV park looks altogether tolerable.

Going up the hills worked out fine. TinMan slipped down to third gear when needed, and we were able to keep up our stately 55-mph speed except on the very steepest parts (down to 50). I think I could have leaned on the accelerator some more and TinMan would have obliged with second gear and a lot of revs, but it did not seem worth the gas or the strain. Much of the time the curves and traffic would keep us down at 50 (even a bit less) anyway.

Interesting to watch TinMan’s estimated gas mileage for the tank fluctuate. We averaged 12.5 in the mountains — better than I expected — but by the time we approached each summit the number would be down to 10.something.

Going downhill was my greatest concern before we left in the morning. I knew it was important to let the engine and transmission keep our speed down, so we wouldn’t over-use (and overheat) the brakes. I wasn’t at all sure, however, about how to time my downshift. For a 4% grade? A 5 or a 6? At the crest of the hill, or somewhere on the way down?

I got my answers in plenty of time. I-5 through the Siskiyou mountains in southern Oregon has been laid out, it would seem, for my education. Some smaller uphill grades showed me what engine RPM I could expect at 55 mph in 3rd gear, so I knew it would be completely comfortable to downshift into 3rd whenever needed.

The first few downgrades taught me: no downshift for 4%… downshift for 5% grades if they’re long… downshift for 6% grades at the top of the hill. Yes, we used brakes, but very little. Just as it should be. I watched the taillights on other RVs to get a sense for their brake usage — I think we used ours less. It all felt very controlled, comfortable, safe. Perfect day for my initiation into mountain driving with Toto following us.

At 4,.310 feet above sea level, Siskiyou Summit, just north of the California border, was the highest pass we traversed. The most challenging, from a driving perspective, was south of that, in California: the Anderson Grade Summit. Only 3100 feet high, but steeper, longer grades all the same, with plenty of sharper curves. I-5 saved the best for last.

My lessons for the day were complete. We overnighted here in Yreka, and today we’ll do our last bit of mountain driving for a while, in Shasta County, then onto our destination at Folsom Lake State Recreation Area. Where there are snakes.

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Lousy drive, happy stop

April 8, 2015 By drpaddle 2 Comments

It’s our very first RV park. Easy freeway access! It seems just fine. Yellowstone it’s not, but, really, geysers are overrated.

TinMan and Toto hunkered down on their parking pad.

Spacious end-unit campsite. Do they call it a campsite? It’s a parking pad. Quite nice, for what it is.

It was quite the trip today. Google Maps says it’s a 4.5 hour drive, but that’s at the speed limit, and we never got close. Just poked along at 55 mph, sometimes a little faster, sometimes a little slower. This was almost entirely an I-5 experience, which is another way of saying… trucks. Oh so many of them. About 6 hours for us, including stops for dog-walking and sandwich-consuming.

In the right lane, with Wally’s window behind me slightly cracked. (Has to be, or he starts panting and then does his chimp impression — quite good at it, he is.) Going 55. Next lane over? A few cars, I think, possibly. But mostly 90,000-ton trucks, going 70. It’s what they do. (I think it’s what they have to do, what with their schedules and their economics.) A few other vehicles, but mostly these behemoths.

No big deal, really, except it was also raining a bunch. Nothing torrential, just a light, steady rain, a saturated roadway, surrounded by billions of droplets, suspended, waiting, until our windshield arrives, then splat. The wiper blades are still fairly new but they were working hard. The road noise, admitted by Wally’s window, triples with all the water. But, really, it was only distracting, only relentlessly irritating, only enough to make you dig your fingernails into your thigh just for the distraction, when a behemoth truck went by. Only about every 27 seconds.

NOTE: I don’t mean to complain here. This is a kind of working vacation for me, and I’m privileged to be able to do it. And I have the whole team with me to make it ridiculously easy. For example: the tuna sandwich on Dave’s Killer Bread, enjoyed at a lovely rest area somewhere near Woodland, Washington. The wagging tails when we brought the dog’s vest-harnesses out this morning — when they knew, at last, that they were coming with us, wherever it was we were headed.

Before Portland, the rain abated. Then, when we took the 205 bypass to avoid downtown, the traffic abated — somewhat. I began to focus on Gas Mileage. Was it any better than it had been on our earlier trips?

Yes. We had re-distributed weight — remember, we talked about weight — and yesterday I had removed the kayak rack from the roof, in an attempt to enhance TinMan’s aerodynamic qualities for this long, sans-kayak trip. One more thing: I drove, perhaps, just a bit slower than on our previous trips. I tried to stay around 55 instead of 58. We had planned short travel legs each day, so why hurry?

Our best gas mileage to-date had been on our February trip to Cape Disappointment — 13.1 mpg. Today we got 14.5. Glorious. Isn’t it? Sure it is.

On the forum I visit far too often, some of my fellow Escape Trailer enthusiasts say they rarely venture on to a freeway. (Most of these people seem to be retired; they owe their time only to themselves; nice!) I think they might be onto something.

So… it’s an RV park by the freeway. They call it an RV Resort. What? They must have marketing people involved. It’s really pretty nice, given the location.

View East from Premiere RV Resort of Eugene, OR. Fields, hills, trees, nice.

Sure, it’s right by the freeway. But look at this view, steps from Toto’s parking pad.

That’s all for the moment… back on the road and over the mountains today.

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