Roaming About

A Life Less Ordinary

Category: Van Living (page 14 of 14)

Van Life on Van Island – Part II: The Sunny Spell

Mark and I have been exploring and living in our camper van Zesty full-time since the end of July 2018. Last week, I wrote a blog (with tons of photos) about arriving in Canada, early September, and our first ten or so days on Vancouver Island. The rain was omnipresent, but we managed to have a wonderful time. When the sky cleared, Mark and I left Campbell River (see my Bears vs. Salmon post for one of our highlights in Canada) to explore a more remote and cooler part of the island – the north – before tracing the East Coast all the way to its southern point.

To read the photo captions, hover your mouse over the images, tap them once, or click to make them larger.

Sayward

Few travelers venture north of Campbell River, where island communities are smaller and hardier. It’s colder and wetter up there, so we tried to take advantage of the few sunny days in the forecast. We stopped at the town of Sayward, anticipating to spend the night there at a free campground. Upon discovering that our resource, iOverlander, was wrong – there is a fee to dry camp in town – we checked out the inviting waterfront and moved on to spend the night elsewhere.

The logging industry is huge on Vancouver Island. Continue reading

Van Life on Van Island – Part I: The Rainy Spell

Whistler Moments

From the moment we entered Canada, it started raining. Well, not quite. Before the deluge, we managed to fit a trip to Whistler in with our friend Rachel, whom we met in the South Pacific sailing. Her sister generously offered the three of us a night in her time-share there, so we didn’t have to be in a hurry. Talk about a luxury experience for us. The room was more than adequate, comfortable and modern; Whistler itself was a fun resort town to walk through, eat and window shop. The highlight to me, as always, was nature and what it had to offer. That “last” sunny day provided us with beautiful waterfalls, enjoyable hiking trails and good company!

Vancouver in the Rain

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North Cascades National Park, Washington

After our whirlwind visit to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Mark and I wished to explore Glacier National Park in Montana. My intention was to then continue our trip into Canada: Waterton Lakes NP, Banff and Jasper NPs, and saying a quick “hello” to our friends Sue and Dave in Calgary, before heading west to Vancouver and Vancouver Island.  I write “my intention”, because we never plan much in advance, and this whole itinerary might have been a tad ambitious, as summer was already ending this far north. Why was that a surprise to me?

Upon doing research online about Glacier National Park, we discovered that massive forest fires raged on the western edge of the park. This was the preferred side for us to enter, because it offered spectacular views, contained free camping, the distance was doable, and it made most sense for our route north. But, the western entrance was closed. We decided to skip this park altogether and drove westwards within the United States, choosing North Cascades National Park as our new destination in Washington state.

The Logistics

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Twisted

Every week, The Daily Post, which is a part of WordPress, suggests a new photo challenge theme. This week, the topic is “twisted”. Since these weeks are extremely busy, I planned to find a few photos in my extensive archive that would fit the theme, and be “done” with it. Then, today, ironically, turned extremely twisted, so I wanted to share this most recent experience with you. Maybe you agree.

Since Mark and I are wrapping up our last two-month house sit this week and need to get the camper prepared for an extensive camping trip, on top of our usual jobs, we scheduled a major van repair last week. Before we owned Zesty, somebody once replaced the windshield, scraped off some of the paint around it, and never fixed that properly. The result: since we’ve owned the van, rust has been building up around the windshield, getting worse by the day. It needed a proper fix. The windshield had to be taken out (and most likely replaced, as these things are big and crack easily when removed), the rust sanded down, and matching grey paint applied. The body shop we selected to do the work is called Extreme Twist. That’s right.

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