Information Echo

Sure enough when we woke up Sunday morning it was raining, and had been on and off through the night. Many of the one-night local campers were disappointed and promptly packed up and departed early, but we were in no rush, not technically having to check out until 11AM, and with only a planned ~300 kilometer drive today to Kamloops British Columbia.

I was glad that I had done much of the outside packing the night before as although it was not pouring rain there was a constant drizzle that would have made much outside work unpleasant.

We fixed breakfast and enjoyed a morning coffee before getting ready to break camp. Since we had been stopped for several days there is a bit more work involved in getting underway again - all the goodies inside that make there way out of storage during a multi-day stop must all be stowed again, and all of the umbilicals that tie a trailer to a campsite need to be disconnected.

The drizzle let up long enough for me to take care of much of the last minute requirements outside - unhooking the water, hydro and sewer connections, rolling up our mat, stowing the awning, and lastly, hooking the trailer to the truck again. Christie and the kids busily packed inside and then came outside to help. It wasn’t long and we were ready to roll out of Banff.

One of the advantages of driving in an area like this is that you are never at a loss for interesting scenery. The next several hours brought us upon one scenic mountain vista after another, one seemingly more awe inspiring then the last. Countless mountain streams and waterfalls dotted the landscape keeping my daughter busy “Oooh”ing and “Ahhhh”ing. Unsurprisingly our son had his face back into his video games and movies again, but he did lift his head to see the notable scenery when prompted.

It wasn’t long before the famous Rogers Pass was upon us - the uphill climb seemed relentless at about 13 kilometers long, and just short of 6%. The 6% grade was notable (but we’ve been up steeper), but in conjunction with it being 13 Kilometers long (and pulling a heavy trailer), it did call upon the truck to work hard, which it did without a hitch. Once at the summit there is a gift shop and historical/interpretive center, and a short distance after that the official summit marker - we stopped briefly at both.

While decending the other side of Rogers Pass I noticed the alternator on our truck had stopped charging as indicated by a charge guage that showed no activity. Sure enough as time wore on the battery voltages started to drop, confirming my diagnosis. Grr - we’ll have to address this on the road somewhere. It had been problematic for some time, but apparently the heat built up under the hood pulling the pass had finally cooked it for good.

The half-way point of todays drive put us near Revelstoke British Columbia where we decided to stop for lunch. Being a large ski-town I expected Revelstoke to be quite different then it actually was, but it turned out to be surprisingly bland after what we’ve come to expect of tourist destination cities in the mountains. We parked in the designated “RV Parking”, which turned out to be little more then the shoulder of the road, and had burgers for lunch.

I ran the generator to not only power up the trailer, but manually charge the batteries in the truck. Curiously, our parking spot was located immediately adjacent to an auto-parts store, so I went in to see about the cost of a new alternator for the truck, having little hope that they’d actually have the (very rare) model in stock. I was surprised when they said that they did indeed have it in stock, but after some discussion it became clear that there was nobody local that could actually install it for me, and I didn’t bring the tools necessary to do it myself. With no ability to get it installed locally I passed on the actual alternator purchase, deciding to address the issues in Vancouver instead.

After a little shopping afterwards we hit the road again. The last leg of the drive would take us into Kamloops BC where we planned to spent one last night on the road before the last leg into Vancouver on day 11.

It was interesting to see the landscape change once again as we got closer to the Kamloops area - the scenery changed from the lush mountain landscape we had gotten used to and became surprisingly desert-like as we approached the city.

The first campground that we stopped to investigate didn’t really seem like it would fit our needs, so we moved on into town and decided to checkout another. Unfortunately it was only marginally better, but by this point we were all fairly tired and the priority was setting up and making dinner, not finding a nicer campground. Aside from that, the winds were absolutely miserable, making it quite uncomfortable to even be outside when coupled with the cold temperatures. I did the bare minimum to get the trailer hooked up, and then retired indoors to turn on the furnace and warm up.

We did venture into town after dinner, but there was little notable - unfortunately the historic steam train that we were interested in was not yet running on a full summer schedule that would have allowed us to take a ride the following morning, so it was looking increasingly like day 11 would be an early start into Vancouver.

Despite the winds howling outside we soon asleep.

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