Whistler and The Caribou, BC

Goodbye to camp friends / Drove to Whistler in the rain / Parked and explored town. #amicaptioninginhaiku? #Airstream #airstreamwithkids #whistler #britishcolumbia

We'd heard some warnings about the Sea to Sky Highway heading northeast from Vancouver up to Whistler. In fact, that section, running along the south side of Horseshoe Bay and then up through forests, was a great road with nice views and slow traffic lanes on the hills. #Airstream #liveriveted #britishcolumbia #seatoskyhighway

Beyond Pemberton and continuing on Hwy 99 to Lillooet, things got interesting. Narrow, rough road, steep climbs that went straight up the slope, bridges with warnings about washouts, single lane sections, a bit of gravel, hairpin turns and long descents. Of course, I'm never one to be scared away from a road or to dissuade others, so I'll add that none of it was anything that couldn't be handled with moderate speeds and a bit of vigilance, and it's a well-travelled road. #Airstream #britishcolumbia #lillooet

The lake at Marble Canyon is apparently a popular destination for fisherman and the escarpment and spires above for rock climbers during the peak season, but the campground was almost empty when we pulled in around 3:00 pm and headed down to the beach to conduct experiments on "which things float, catch the shrimp-like bugs that must be a delicacy for the few geese and ducks who call the lake home and listen to the waterfall tumble down the rocks on the far bank. #airstreamwithkids #childhoodunplugged #throwingrocks

While on Vancouver Island, a provincial park worker we'd asked for change for the automated "sani-dump" had given us a booklet called "BC Camping" with a listing of the provincial parks in the province. Just past Lillooet (where we'd encountered a tight 90 degree turn under a cement overpass followed by a section of gravel), we left a series of First Nation reservations and pulled into Marble Canyon Provincial Park. #Airstream #liveriveted #britishcolumbia #marblecanyon

Yesterday, we went to get our propane tanks filled and were told they wouldn't do it because the certification on the tanks had expired. Nevermind the fact that the ten years had actually been up nine months ago and people had been happily filling them for the past several months of our trip. I managed to load a page listing tank certifiers in Canada on the last bit of wireless we could find and was excited to find one right along our route in the town of 100 Mile House. We pulled in this afternoon and were told that because our tanks only had U.S. DOT numbers on them and not Transit Canada numbers, they couldn't certify them. I quickly ran through the options of trying to fake our way through the rest of Canada until we could find a certifier once we got to Alaska and the good ol' U.S. of A. or just buying a couple new tanks. Anyway, these ran us $99 Canadian each and have both DOT and TSC numbers, though we shouldn't have to worry about this again for another 10 years. Has anyone else run into this problem? Had your tanks replaced or recertified? #Airstream #liveriveted #tanksfornothing

Oh, I mean, that site's nice and all, but do you have anything closer to the lake? After trying to check out two provincial parks today, one for a lunch stop and one to camp for the night, and finding closed signs on both, we decided to check the BC Parks web site. Looks like a lot of them open on May 15th. What's today? May 14th... The private park across the road that was actually on the lake didn't work out too bad, though it took a little while to convince the lady that we really did want the "rustic" site without hookups just feet from the lake for $25 CAD. #Airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #britishcolumbia #laclahache

When we first pulled into our spot last night, I got out and checked the bubble level I'd installed on the front of the trailer just inside the A frame. Never mind that I haven't gotten around to repositioning it so it reads accurately, but suffice to say that I know that if the bubble reads at the first tick on the left side, we're level. At first, it read at the first tick on the right side. No problem, experience told me that each of our orange blocks would correct for one tick, so boosting the left side of the trailer with two should do the trick. Instead of building one of those gradual step up ramps out of my trailer Legos, I just set two blocks in front of each tire and, with equal parts umph and finesse, rolled up onto them. When I checked the level again, it read exactly the same; The blocks had basically just sunk down in the wet grass. At this point, I could have rolled back down and set up a proper ramp up to 4 blocks high. Instead, I just stacked 4 up behind each tire and bumped the trailer back onto them. Now the level read at the center tick which of course means that I needed one more block on the left. With 3 more blocks added to the original 2 and placed in front of the tires, I eased up onto the perch. Now I hope @advodna_ann remembered to latch the cabinets 'cause we're taking the express elevator on the way back down. #airstreamprotip #Airstream #liveriveted #kingofthemountain

Another rough landing today... Actually, it almost was, given that we just found out that Monday is Victoria Day which is pretty much the beginning of the Canadian camping season. The reservable lakeside campsites at 10 Mile Lake were all booked but we found one of the last spots in the upper first-come campground at noon on a Friday. After a planning session last night, we'd decided to embrace the baby's new willingness to sleep for an hour in the car in the morning and break up our longer days of driving through BC into shorter legs during nap time. Tho given the holiday weekend and the fact that we already have a pretty nice site, I don't think we're going anywhere until Monday. #Airstream #liveriveted #airstreamwithkids #britishcolumbia #tenmilelake #quesnel

Beautiful vintage diesel Mack truck a few sites down from us. Set up to tow a fifth wheel (and turn heads). #macktruck #vintagetruck #classictruck

While hanging out with @mywifesadventure last week, Wynne really wanted to try Luna's pedal bike with training wheels and, unlike other times she's asked to borrow "big girl bikes" from other kids at campgrounds, this time she could actually ride it. In fact, while she's been getting more confident on her Strider bike, she never wants to ride it more than a couple minutes. Yet with Luna's bike, she was pretty much on it anytime Luna wasn't (pic above). Again, at our current campground, she managed to find a tiny pedal bike and talk her way onto it, and again, wanted to ride the entire campground loop despite it being dirt and gravel. I'd been tempted to try to find a used pedal bike for her in Vancouver, but then felt like I was rushing things. I told @mywifesadventure we'd "let the road decide" and see what we came across. Today, while in Quesnel making a stop at a hardware store and Safeway, I saw a Salvation Army store on a corner. I figured I'd just peek in and see if they had a bike, but for some reason I couldn't figure out which side the entry was on. I swung around the back into a parking lot and started walking around. Along the side of the building, two women were getting out of a white pickup truck loaded with donations and a woman in a red polo shirt was helping them. As I passed, I saw the tassels. "Excuse me, that wouldn't happen to be a girls bike with 12 inch wheels would it?" Bingo! They were happy for it to go to a good home, and the woman in the red shirt didn't seem to mind. The road had decided. Well, technically, the road has decided to present me with the perfect bike that didn't actually have training wheels installed and had a flat tire that would require me to drive 20 minutes and pay $20 for the training wheels and a new tube only to get home to find that the wheels didn't really fit but could be made to work with the help of a couple of small ring clamps I kept around for tightening the Water Thief on dump station hoses. When it was all over, we ended up with a very, very happy three year old. Yeah, the road provides, but it can also sometimes be kinda a dick.

While Ann's mom was visiting in Vancouver, we had a real live date night. Without another on the books for the foreseeable future, we decided that maybe one night a week, when we're cooking something we just know the kids won't eat, we'll feed them early, put them to bed and then have dinner, just the two of us, in rare peace and quiet at the dinette. Tonight was the first in-Airstream date night, and it was great. Now for the movie portion of the date, we'll check in with Walt and Jesse somewhere in the middle of Season 5 of Breaking Bad. #Airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #airstreamwithkids #datenightin200sqft

Rockguards installed (thanks @sethkhughes for the hand-me-downs) with one important modification that we felt better represented our family. We'll start up the Cassiar Highway which will take us all the way to the Yukon mid week and make our first stop in the panhandle of Alaska at Hyder a couple days later! #Airstream #liveriveted #mudflapgirl #mudflapgirlupgrade

Well, that didn't last long. Oh right, the exhaust pipe. Anyway, unfortunately, the guards can't be moved farther back, but I should be able to trim away the plastic right behind the exhaust and still retain most of the protection. #facepalm #airstreamd'ohtip #butsmartmudflatgirlsurvived!