the cruise mobile

Today it feels like our road trip has been upgraded from a budget trip in a tent to a luxury drive around North america in a cruise mobile - i can picture myself a few days down the line - sun kissed ( probably burnt) driving in my car, arm hanging down the side, slightly grubby possibly even a bandanna to take edge of the posh car .... a kinda aged Janis Joplin driving my Mercedes Benz cruising the Canandian highways...

Anyway back to reality….. We hit walmart and bought roll mats and stove, coolbox some camping pans and bits and pieces to make camping more comfortable in fact totally luxurious in keeping with the new image – then we did some food shopping – all cowboy food easy to cook and quick to eat, finally we hit the liquor store and stocked up on beer and wine and finally headed off up highway 99 the ‘sea to sky highway’ to Squamish where we had located a campsite – Dr Freds got used to driving the car and all seems to be going fine.

Our first night camping was grand!!! We were so tired, I think all the excitement had caught up on us plus the complete psych out of driving the cruise mobile out of Vancouver and finding a Walmart – even with the sat nav – just another psych out working how to use it!!! Anyway we were in bed for 8.30 slept like logs although I have to say the floor got very hard… and up with the larks or in this case the logging lorries and off we went to climb Squamish Chief!  Well actually Dr Fred was going to walk up at least one of its three peaks – I was heading for Shannon Fall a more leisurely flatter walk!!

Squamish Chief 

few from top of Squamish Chief

there is a climber on this picture in the middle

We met up a few hours later Fred came back very pleased with himself he had done all three of the peaks and was still standing – I think he was a bit sad he couldn’t spend the next two day actually climbing the granite face of the chief, the campsite was full of fit young things doing exercises and yoga ready to face a day on the cliff face!!!

Our next adventure was to head up the highway 99 to the visitors centre near where we had camped to check out the route and campsites.    There are massive forest fires raging in north British Columbia and places are being evacuated and roads are closed and we didn’t want to get caught in the fire or get in the way or head for a closed road. 

smoke haze from foret fires

The scenery is amazing – the most fantastic mountains covered in forests and snow, everywhere you look its just awesome majestic peaks, some are a little hazy which apparently is the smoke drifting from the forest fires.  We stop in the visitors centres to check the road situations and have had to adjust our route to miss the closed roads – it means a longer but probably extremely scenic route to Jasper – not a problem for us but it’s a terrible situation for the people who live where the fires are 35000 people have now been evacuated!!!

campsite river view

There appears to be plenty of camping opportunities The campsites we are /will be using are mainly in the Provincial Parks, they are very basic with composting loos and not a lot else, its very exciting as there are bear warnings everywhere and campers are not allowed to leave any food or toiletries out or even in the tent.  Everything has to locked in the car to discourage hungry or curious bears.. I looked up how many people got eaten by bears and its fairly minimal but I do hope we get to see at least one (already fed)  bear!!!

So luxury isn’t quite what we are experiencing  – wet wipes have become our bathroom and the second night camping was less good, the floor was even harder… and in spite of quite a lot of exercise we didn’t sleep well and Dr Fred is suffering with a cold!!!

However the weather is fantastic and it’s a shame to give in and motel it so we will brazen out the floor scenario – after all we are not quite pensioners and there is something really lovely about eating dinner in a forest completely surrounding by snow capped peaks 

our luxury mobile home for the foreseeable....