Day 4: Prince George

I'm sitting in Mark's brother's house in Prince George and Mark has just left to collect our truck from the mechanic. Yes, that's right, car trouble! The best part is, our car trouble started 15 minutes into our three week road trip.

Damn!

When we left Victoria we noticed almost immediately that when the truck was idling it was making some pretty intense "vroom vroom" racing noises. I was not so happy. We pulled in to a garage on the way to the ferry and even though they were booked up until 5:30 that evening (it was about 9am) once Mark mentioned that we were on our way to Dawson City, the mechanic's eyes lit up and he started telling stories about how he used to live up in the Yukon. As a result, someone was literally peering into our engine within 2 minutes of our arrival at the garage. (Thank you thank you lovely garage employees!) Their diagnosis was that the engine wouldn't be destroyed if we kept driving, so we kept driving. About 400 km later the "service engine soon" light came on. A harrowing 400 km after that, we arrived at Prince George and finally put the poor truck into the shop. I was waiting with baited breath for the diagnosis, which turned out to be: there was a piece of plastic in our something-or-other assembly, which thus had to be taken apart, emptied out, and re-assembled, and I blame the "mechanics" who did an oil change for us less than a week ago. You know how your car is great, then you take it to the shop for some innocent reason, and then every other part of the engine breaks down after the mechanics are done with it? What's up with that?

In any case, car trouble aside, our trip's been pretty decent up until now. We haven't been covering any new territory yet, as we've been to PG before, but starting tomorrow it's all new. We'll be heading out of Prince George and the next destination will be Whitehorse. Yay!

So far the weather's been passable, with the notable exception of today's fishing trip. To get to the fishing spot we had to drive 20 minutes out of town, 10 minutes down a nasty dirt road, then hike about another 20 minutes down a VERY rough, steep, overgrown, wet path in the forest with two cliffs that we had to use ropes to transverse, and then another 15 minute hike down an uneven rocky riverbed. We finally made it, dogs and all, and the boys (Mark and his two brothers) fished for a while and cought NOTHING. Not a bite. They had fun anyway though, and we started hiking back to the truck.

Some lovely dark clouds had rolled in while they were fishing, and once we got into the forest (did I mention already that it was a very steep, very muddy, very wet path?) it started to rain. It was an absolute downpour and even under the cover of the trees we were soaked through almost immediately.

Then we lost the path.

As soon as that happened, it started to hail.



It wasn't fun any more at that point. Mark's younger brother had a run-in with some Devil's Club and ended up with some nice welts on his arm, and the rest of us really weren't doing that much better than him. We luckily found the path again before anyone started panicking and finally climbed, sopping wet, into the truck - which at that point started smelling like wet dog, sweat, and a few other things. The dirt road was pretty mucky on the way out thanks to the storm but it felt lovely to sit inside the cab and not be rained on.

As soon as we reached town, the skies were blue and the rain was gone - go figure!

Anyway, the journey continues tomorrow, with our fixed-up better-than-ever truck. I don't know whether we'll set a distance goal tomorrow or just stop when we want to - probably a combination of both. We'll have to put some serious mileage behind us each day until we reach the Yukon though, or we'll run out of time.

I'll put some pictures up when I get a chance. I'm not sure when I'll have access to the internet again but I'll try to collect some good stories to tell you.

Off we go, into the unknown!

Vacation approacheth

Our Yukon trip is exactly two weeks away.

We don't have an ironclad itinerary and we like it that way. We'll leave Victoria on Saturday and plan on arriving in Prince George on Sunday afternoon/evening to spend some time with Mark's brother Matt and his family.

Really, other than that, nothing's concrete. We're hoping to eventually make it to Dawson City and spend a few days there. I'm sure adventures will find us on the road whether we plan them or not. What do you think we can count on? Hmm...coffee shops...bears...deer...immature photographing of suggestive signs or random objects...we're hoping for some northern lights. Lots of hiking and of course camping in the Boler!

Oliver is ready for his northern trip:


And before you say anything amusing, don't. He gets so cold he shivers on cool summer nights, so extra warmth is a necessity for him. He weighs six whole pounds, has got almost no fur, almost no body fat, and therefore, he's accumulating a wardrobe. So just shuddup about it, okay? No, I'm not sensitive about it. Are we gonna have to stop talking to each other, or are you gonna change the subject already? Fine.

we bought "The Milepost", which is literally a mile-by-mile guide of northern BC, Yukon, and Alaska. (Do you say "The Yukon", or just "Yukon"? I'm not sure. And also, "Dawson City", or just "Dawson"? I'll tell you after we get back.) We've been leafing through the guide and I'm sure it'll come in handy as we travel.

Should be fun. I'm too tired to feel excited about it though - it was crazy at work today. Maybe tomorrow.

Salt Spring with friends

So the Salt Spring Island camping trip was a success. We ended up having a large crowd - I think there were 13 people - and it worked out well because the first people to arrive secured our group of friends a sweet group site on one side of the park, and a little vehicle-accessible site for Mark & I with the Boler on the other side of the park. This meant that we could socialize as much as we wanted to, and then run away to our own private site when we'd had enough! It was great! Well, mostly.

There was the one issue where, the first night, there was a couple with a tiny infant and a toddler camping in a tent at the site next to ours. The toddler SCREAMED everything instead of speaking normally and I couldn't say anything about him using his indoor voice because, well, shit man, he was outdoors. So as soon as he woke up early, early in the morning we got to hear him screaming "MOMMY LOOKIT ME...MOMMY LOOKIT ME....MOMMY LOOKIT ME" and other repetitive useless things. Oh yeah, and the infant liked to cry a lot. In the middle of the night, early in the morning, it didn't matter, that baby cried. And I couldn't ask them to keep it down because mothers do scary things when their children are threatened, like ripping off my head and stuff. I just wanted to enjoy the peace and quiet of the woods and I ended up feeling like a jerk because you're not supposed to hate little children and resent their presence.

Are you?

The second night was much better. The loud and awful family was replaced by a large pack of nice, respectful lesbians. The lesbians liked our dogs and our Boler and didn't make loud noises while I was trying to sleep - it was much better! Also, they left a neat little display at their camp site when they pulled away the next morning.



Oliver the Min Pin came with us so it was our first camping trip as a "family" with both dogs. Since Oliver had been abandoned by his previous owner in a camp site, I promised him that we wouldn't leave his side. We cheated and left him with friends for a few minutes at the ferry terminal (hey Robyn, I thought you weren't a dog person!) but otherwise he was with us 24/7. He made some strange gremlin noises the first day, but calmed down a bit after that. It's gonna be all about exposure for this little guy. We've got to teach him that new situations usually mean fun stuff for him, and that we are worthy of his trust. I think it'll come, with time.

He was cold at night even though the weather was mild, so he got tucked into my hoodie and when we got back home from the camping trip, we bought him a little jacket for the Yukon trip.

Arlo the dog likes camping and had lots of fun, but he aggravated his allergies and ended up chewing some of his skin off of his itchy, itchy feet as a result. Foolish boy! We will make sure to control what he sticks in his mouth on the next outing.

Most of the humans seemed to have fun. It was a really different mood than when Mark and I went camping alone, and although I'm glad all my friends were with me this time, I was glad that we had Gabriola Island to ourselves, and I'm glad that we'll be going to the Yukon alone. A fun bit of trivia: there were 13 people and 7 dogs in our group. At least 3 people in the group suffer from allergies to dogs badly enough that they had to bring medication. Yes, they hang out with everyone's dogs ALL THE TIME, and one of those allergic individuals is in the planning stages of getting his own dog. Our friends are amazing people.

Salt Spring is a beautiful place, but it's on the border between "artsy" and "take-advantage-of-the-tourists-y". We knew that prior to going though, so it's not like it was a disappointment. The open air market was fun to wander through, and I almost got waaay ripped off on a sun hat. It had a price tag of $55 tied to the hat band and I liked it so I tried to buy it. (No other price tags to be seen anywhere on the hat.) I knew I was in trouble when the lady asked me if I wanted just the hat, or the had AND the hat band. Turns out the HAT BAND ALONE was $55, and the hat itself was an extra $60. Um, what? No thanks!

Mark and I got noticeably more efficient at packing our camping stuff into the back of the truck this time around. The funny thing is, we were just gone for two nights, but for our three week trip next month there won't be much more junk to add to the pile. You still need most of the stuff whether it's two nights or three weeks (ie. blanket, pillow, dishes, cutlery, etc.) There'll be a bit more clothing to add, and more food, but not much more. We tried to organize things into bins and milk crates and it worked much better this time and was easy to keep organized. We also have our packing list saved in a word document, so we won't have to re-invent the wheel every time.

We've also gotten a really good idea of the few things we should buy for longer trips. These little weekend outings sure are useful!

That's about all I have to report about the Salt Spring Island camping trip. You can make assumptions about the weekend's activities and you will be correct. (Okay I'll help. There was: marshmallow roasting, alcohol drinking, hiking, weenie roasting, campfire-sitting-arounding, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It was good.)

good times, summer in the city

Less than two months 'til we hit the road to the Yukon...that's so close! Yeah!

We're going to Salt Spring Island for a weekend in a couple of weeks for another mini camping adventure. It is a pretty island in spite of the touristy-ness of the place, and the open-air market in the town of Ganges is fabulous.

Here's an old picture from a few years back when we went to Salt Spring Island with some friends. There's Mark on the right. Hi, Mark!!



The Big Trip is getting closer. We've recently started considering a slight alteration in our plans. I know I said I didn't want to go to Seniorland - I mean Florida - on the way back from Mexico, but we are now considering popping in for long enough to grab a retired Greyhound from one of the Florida tracks to bring back to Canada with us. One of my greyhound rescue contacts will give me the inside scoop on how to go about doing this and I think it's a fun idea. We want a Greyhound sometime anyway, and we can't get one before we leave or else we'd have to ask our families to watch TWO large dogs for us for three months, and that's a bit much to ask. If you didn't know that we were animal & animal rescue fanatics, you can visit our other blog and then you will understand.

Maiden Voyage: Gabriola Island

Mark and some of our friends spent lots of time last weekend fixing up the wiring in the Boler. The signal lights were all wonky, but in the end they got it 95% fixed so we took the Boler on our first trip and....

Dum-da-da-DUM!! It was a success!!

We decided to take a weekend trip to Gabriola Island, which is maybe 2 1/2 hours away. We went in that particular direction because it would take us over the Malahat Mountain, which would be a really really good test of how the little pick-up truck performs with the Boler bouncing along behind it. Oh, and also, we live on the very southern tip of a skinny, tall island and that was the only direction we could possibly have travelled for more than two hours without hitting water.

We slowed down a bit at some of the steep parts of the mountain, but it was nothing out of the ordinary and definitely nothing to panic about, so the test was a huge success and I don't think we'll be (deliberately) taking a steeper route than that at any point on the road trip to Mexico, so all is well.

Gabriola Island was really nice.


Here is the FIRST shot of our FIRST road trip with our beloved Boler!! This was in Nanaimo, waiting for the ferry to take us to Gabriola. I felt all cool, because we could just relax in the boler while waiting in line, lounging around the dinette table & having a snack, in perfect comfort.

We set up camp in Descanso Bay once we got to Gabriola Island. See that huge hangy-downy part of the awning? Total surprise to us. We'd never unravelled it before and we both assumed that it was a normal awning with maybe a little teensy bit of a flap hanging down, but this was the flap to end all flaps. It adds more privacy and is also probably a really good weatherbreak for when the Boler's door is open.

The campground was beautiful and right on top of some really nice beaches and bays. Other than the loud group of people who pulled in late Friday night and decided it was time to party with their car stereos blasting, it was fine. They actually provided us with entertainment more than annoyance. We couldn't hear them from the site we chose except for at first when they had the music extra-loud, but there were two sites really near the party site that each had families with kids in them, and I felt kinda bad for them. The park employees had a "talk" with the young guys the first night and they shut the hell up after that happened, but I could hear them from the out-house (which was close to where they were) Saturday night too. Poor families with kids.

Sunday morning, bright and early, I was making my way to the out-house when I heard "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!!" It was an unexpected thing to hear in the middle of the woods on a Sunday morning, especially considering that it wasn't actually a rooster, but a child. It turns out that the kids had been yelling this over and over all morning at the top of their lungs. I think it was revenge on the loud, and by this time hung over, party group. For the rest of the morning whenever we ventured near that end of the park we could hear them yelling it - especially whenever there was any sort of noise from the party group. A car door slams? COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!! A hung over party guy woops or hollers? COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!! A person emerges from a tent at the party site? COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!! And the magic part was, those stupid hung over people couldn't say a word to those little kids, or they'd have the deadly wrath of protective parents swooping down upon them.

I get a big kick out of watching human interaction, and this was a fine performance. You guys all know how much I love loud stupid parties (not at all, especially in the woods where it should be peaceful and pretty) so I was totally on the side of the families and found it funny that the little kids go the last word.

ANYWAY. We met lots of nice people during the weekend, but we also poked around in the woods and at the shore quite a bit. Gabriola has lots of neat sandstone formations, like this one that Mark is climbing around in. He bonked his head off it pretty good. He bent over right after he ricocheted off it and I thought for a second he was gonna fall over or something, but he was mostly okay.



I think this one looks like a mushroom.



Arlo didn't seem to mind being in the Boler. He has his own little single bed in there, but I was worried he wouldn't use it because it's got a table right on top of it. I thought he might be nervous to climb into the space between the bed and the table because he couldn't stand up straight in there, but he scooted in and was content enough to sleep there, which really shouldn't have surprised me. That dog doesn't spook at anything.

He had lots of adventures on the beach. He got very involved with digging up sand. He'd dig a hole, smoosh his nose right down into it, sniff, then snort because he'd sniffed in sand and/or salt water, and frantically dig some more.



Arlo found and tormented a starfish until we made him stop.




He found some crabs but he couldn't catch them. He caught a smaller one elsewhere on the beach and licked it right up, but I think it pinched him because he spit it out again.



Take a close look here: Arlo is putting his entire snout underwater in an attempt to find some treasure. That's saltwater, too. Yuck. He did this a few times, so he either didn't learn from his mistakes or didn't mind saltwater in his nose and mouth. Either that or the treasures were REALLY worth it.


I can't even think of what else we did, but our trip felt like it was waaaay longer than two days (in a good way). We had fun despite the rain we got on Saturday morning. We drove all around while it was raining and managed to get lost for a long time. Keep in mind we had a map and the entire island is only about 8 miles long. It was fun getting lost - our map was about four years old, but it seemed as though they had taken out some roads instead of, as one would expect, adding new ones since the map had been printed. We'd be trying to get to the end of one road because it connected with another that we needed to get on, and the paved road would turn into a nicely graded gravel road. The gravel road would suddenly get much narrower and then get all bumpy and unkempt, and then we'd suddenly be parked in someone's driveway or in the bushes or something, and the road would be behind us, but certainly not in front of us. This happened many times. We finally got away from the region of disappearing roads and went to the other side of the island, where everyone had politely left all the roads where they belonged.

On Sunday we finally drove back to the ferry terminal and wandered over to the bar for some coffee. While sitting outside, drinking our coffee like responsible adults, we noticed something fun. Do you see the rock wall behind the building? Do you see the bars that are attached to the rock wall?


I thought they might have been put there to climb on. I climbed on them.


They were pretty good bars.

Reconnecting to NS

So, in a year we will likely have just arrived back in Nova Scotia from Mexico. Already our calendar is filling up with social appointments to go to once we're back and some engagements that are dangerously close to our admittedly fuzzy E.T.A.

I feel so loved though! I've been away for seven years, and now that we're coming back there are going to suddenly be all these activities involving all our friends and family - it'll be like a homecoming overload! I'm starting to think that maybe we should have some sort of party too, to celebrate our return, but the logistics...just thinking about it makes me nervous:

1. We don't know where we'll be living in the province. One should know these things before inviting others over. Will we rent a place? Crash at someone's? Truro? Halifax? Bridgewater? The Valley? IDUNNO!

2. Like I said, we're not entirely certain just when we'll be back. How does one invite many people to a party to which some of them will have to travel significant distances, and not give a firm date for said party? IDUNNO!

3. We're planning on building such a great place once we buy property - I'm sure we'll want to have a party to celebrate our official "settling in" when our place is built. Should this be the homecoming party instead? IDUNNO!

4. I'm certain some of our old friends & family members are not sure how to treat us now due to our "dirty hippy" tendencies. It's been an easy problem since we've lived so far away, but you'd be surprised how often and in what sort of weird situations this catches people up. I remember a time when Mark's poor mother didn't know what the hell to feed me whenever I came to visit. There was a lot of mac 'n cheese and veggie soup from a can, and I think she struggled even with that. She seems to have gradually stopped being afraid of hosting vegetarians at meal time, which is cool cuz it's not too hard really, especially with (mostly) non-fussy and difficult-to-offend guests, but what are our friends and family going to do with our composting toilet? Will we have a party, but before it starts, take all these salt-of-the-earth folks down to the bathroom and give them a lesson on how to use it? Will it freak anyone out? IDUNNO.


Anyway. In some ways this will be like straddling two worlds. I don't want any of our friends and family to feel uncomfortable around us and I hope that doesn't happen, but all we can be is ourselves.

My my, this is turning into an introspective post!!

So the social appointments we have to look forward to so far:


- Mel's getting married in June in the Valley!! Yay!!




- Tanya's getting married in May, presumably in Halifax! (this is the one that's borderline in terms of timing.)




- Our friends from Vancouver Island, Kristina and Jeff, are planning on flying out to visit us and see a bit of Nova Scotia that summer too!



There are some odd changes to look forward to. Mark's mother now lives about four blocks away from the house that he's lived in since like grade 3. My parents just moved out of Lower Sackville (finally! I hated that non-town!!) about three days ago, and bought a house in a rural neighbourhood outside of Truro. Hey mom & dad, if you're reading this, where do you live now? What's your phone number? I've been trying to reach you, but guess what: You moved away AGAIN without giving me any forwarding info. Are you trying to tell me something?? Wait, don't answer that.

I must quote Stan Rogers again, and the song that our blog is named after. From "A Northwest Passage":

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life; I threw it all away
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

Spring is here

Savings goal: SAVED!! We celebrated by ordering in some Chinese food for supper.

Now we are saving for :

1. Living expenses here until February,
2. Trip to Mexico & back expenses.

We haven't made any sort of budget for these things. I guess we'll just keep working until one of us says "hey, why are we still working?" Whatever. It's casual.

I am happy to report that the Boler has weathered out the crap-tacular fiasco known as "winter" here on this island with no visible damage of any sort. I swear, the weathermen are not needed here for six months out of the year. Sometime in early November they should just say "...today we're expecting sunshine, and on Tuesday it'll be sun and clouds in the morning followed by about six months of overcast drizzle" and then they should go on vacation in Hawaii.

What was I talking about? Right, the Boler. When we first got him we put a tarp over him and put some stuff inside that sucks moisture out of the air, and he weathered the storms perfectly. We're gonna leave the tarp on for the time being and Mark has promised to make a play-date with our friend Jeff to fix the wiring for the tail-lights, and then we'll have to start thinking about the trip to the Yukon.

K that's all for now.

$$ Goal - sooo close now!

First of all, here's a pic of Mark and Arlo that a photographer took:



:)

We did a little survey of our finances the other day, and we are only a teensy smidgeon away from having 100% of our "buying land and living in NS" funds! We're so close - we're practically there now. Yay!! In fact, if we hadn't already bought our travel trailer, we'd have that base savings in the bank!

It's basically academic at this point though. Once we have those funds intact it'll be a nice feeling, but after that we still need to save up enough for our trip, and enough to live off of while we're still in Victoria. We're leaving in February 2008, which is now only 10 months away!

Speaking of travel trailers, we're still bouncing between two very good name ideas. One is "Southbound Pachyderm", which I thought up and is the name of a song we like, and the other is "Good Hope" which is less funny but much more noble and my dad suggested. Which do you like? Leave a comment and tell me. Southbound Pachyderm will become a misnomer once we leave Mexico, since it'll be southbound no more. Am I allowed to name it that just for this trip, and then do a name change? Is that allowed? Is it lame?

Anyway I have four more weeks of working at the accounting firm and then I'm free! I'm more than ready for it too. Still no word on when Mark will leave his job. He's asked for time off for our Yukon trip, so at least work won't interfere with that stuff. We have our dates for that trip: we'll be going from August 25th 'til September 16th. Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, you guys can't come visit us then, K?