Livin' on the Edge!

Ready to hit the road!

We left Hillsboro, OR at 8:30am this morning. It was 56 degrees and a littly drizzly with spots of sunshine which made it kind of humid. There was very little traffic (much different than leaving on a Friday night and taking 2 hours just to get to Vancouver, WA!). About an hour down the road we realized we had forgotten coffee! Oh well, we knew we could pick up some at our first overnight stop in Lynden, WA.

Our first stop of the day was the Toutle River Rest Area at mile post 54 (10:00am). Nothing exciting to report here. Business was done and we were on our way. It started to rain as we left.

At 1:00pm was our second stop of the day at the Smokey Point Rest Area. A little more exciting than the first stop with a thousand year old tree stump. The bummer part is that the picture of the tree stump is on Facebook and I wasn't able to download it to this blog. Don't hate. Just take my word for it....way more exciting than the first rest area.

At 1:15pm we came upon the infamous Skagit River Bridge. You know, the one that collapsed in the river about a month ago. So a temporary one has been built and my fear was that we would be the oversized vehicle to make it go down again. But, thankfully, all was well as we travelled across safely.

We arrived in Lynden, WA around 2:00pm and quickly decided that there was just way too much time left in the day for us to call it a night. So, we stopped at an ARCO for gas ($3.99 for diesel), cancelled our reservation at the RV park and continued on to the border crossing. We figured we could just find a campground somewhere and hope that we wouldn't be staying in a WalMart parking lot. We are so spontaneous and livin' on the edge!

It only took us 10 minutes to cross the border and they checked nothing! We were asked where we were going, what we were doing, where we were from, if we were leaving anything in Canada, if we had any firearms and that was it. They didn't ask us for a complete list of food or how much alcohol we had or if we had potatoes. Nothing! Apparently everything we read online was a scare tactic. But we weren't willing to risk it!

We made our way along Hwy 1A and soon came to Hwy 1 which would hopefully lead us to a nice RV park. The speed limit on the highway is between 100-110km/h which is about 60-65 miles/hr. But cars and semis were flying by us. It was still raining pretty hard but the scenery was beautiful. The hills were getting higher and higher and waterfalls were everywhere. They weren't trickling down the hills either. They were more raging waterfalls. We passed a few RV parks and decided to try Silver Lake Provincial Park. While we kept telling each other that we were on an adventure the road to the campground was screaming, "Turn around!" But we didn't listen. Even after it turned into a gravel road. Even after we passed a scary looking woman camped on the side of the road with her make shift camp. Even when we couldn't turn around because the road was too narrow and the raging river too high on both sides.

We finally decided enough was enough and found a small logging road that we thought might work to give us enough space to maneuver the McMansion around. I got out of the truck to help navigate and quickly sank my flip flops in the mud.  As Scott was twisting and turning the trailer, two park rangers came down the road and quickly passed us without stopping to help or even talk to us. At this point, I think Scott was so frustrated that he continued backing up not really caring that the trailer was taking out every bush in his way while I stood staring wondering how many branches would be sticking out of the back bumper of the McMansion while we continued on our "adventure." I really wish I would have taken a picture at this point. The mud covering the truck and trailer at this point was really impressive.

Down we went back to the highway and continued our way on Hwy 1 eventually to Hwy 5 towards Merritt and hopefully an RV park. Again, the scenery was beautiful as we traveled over the Coquihalla Pass with a summit of just over 1000 ft. It reminded me of traveling over the Santiam Pass in Oregon with its signs warning against passing snow plows. And again, semi trucks continued to fly by us on the downhill stretches while they chugged their way uphill on other stretches.

Finally, at 5:40pm we found a sign indicating a campground near Merritt and decided to continue living on the edge and give it a try. Another gravel road had us leery but we kept going and found Moon Shadows RV Park, a AAA park.

After setting up in our site which is right next to a very full river flowing swiftly, we made a delicious dinner of homemade pizza and turned on the local news. Uh oh........

It appears that there is flooding all over Alberta, especially in Canmore and Calgary, where we plan on being in just a week. There are evacuations happening. We're not sure if the campgrounds where we have reservations are being evacuated or not, or if they are flooded. We've checked the weather and it shows that rain should stop in the next couple of days. As I type this though, the rain continues to pound on the roof....

We'll continue "livin' on the edge" and won't let the weather ruin our vacation. We're looking forward to heading up to Clearwater, BC tomorrow especially since we shaved so much off of our travel time today. We're heading to the Columbia Icefield on Monday and are planning on driving down south afterwards to check out the highway that is supposedly closed now due to the flood and see how far we can get. Wish us luck!

P.S. I will post more pictures hopefully later. The wifi connection isn't that great and my computer keeps freezing up.