On the road again

As we continue to continue our continuing journey after 5 days laid up in Chamberlain South Dakota. We spent the time being lazy, catching up on some rest.  We've been on the move for quite some time and hadn't taken a day off.
We'll be busy when we get home, so the rest probably did us good.  We did do some sight seeing while there, we went to a large antique store, a quilt store, a Lakota Indian museum, and the South Dakota Hall of Fame.  I found out Bob Barker and Mary Hart both came from South Dakota.
The truck is working fine now, we got on the road at noon so got a half day of driving.
We're aiming to be home some time on Sunday.

Still waiting

The truck is still not fixed.  Waiting for parts!  With any luck we'll be on the road tomorrow. It will take 3 days to get home from here.  I'm worried about finding a campground this weekend because it's the American long weekend and everywhere around here has been booked up for weeks.  We may end up in the parking lot of the Flying J for the night?
This has been a nice campground, we have a beautiful view of the Missouri river and as you know Lesley and I never tire of watching water.  We went for a swim at the indoor pool and hot tub in the resort next door.  The campground is part of the resort and convention center. The managers here had a cancellation and have held that spot for us in case the truck isn't done tomorrow.  That is really nice of them.  If we don't leave tomorrow I'm afraid we'll be here till next Tuesday.
We'll see.

Truck Problems

Yep! we had trouble with the F 150.  Not sure yet, it looks like it's tranny problems but the dealership isn't open till tomorrow.   I hope it won't take long to fix.   We drove out of the bad lands and had problems right after we stopped at a service center and had lunch.  We phoned Ford Roadside assistance and they were great helping out.  The tow truck driver was really nice and dropped us off at a campground.  It didn't cost us anything.  Ford picked up the cost of the truck and the trailer. While we waited for the tow truck Lesley picked out a campground from our Woodall's Directory, she picked out a gem!  The tow truck took us right to our site and dropped the trailer.  That is no small feat getting through a campground with this rig.  Here is a photo of our site and view of the Missouri River.  The campground is part of a resort so we can use their pool and hot tub.  We had a very nice dinner at the resort restaurant tonight then watched the sun set sitting by the waters edge near our site.

Bad Lands

Today we drove  Band Lands National Park. It's a unique park with beautiful mountains that have a lot of colour.  Pictures won't show the depth of colour that we saw.  Here are a couple of photos and I have uploaded more in the Badlands Photo Gallery on the right of this page.

Patches is helping Mom with the navigation!.

Custer State Park

Today we spent the day in Custer State Park.  We drove around the Wild Life Loop where we saw Antelopes, Prairie Dogs, and lots of Buffalo.  We took a dirt road off of the main loop and almost ran right into the back of a heard.  They were walking right down the road, I didn't see them until I came over the crest of the hill.  It was an amazing sight there were about 40 plus the calves.  They blocked the road for quite a while while they were walking.  Here is a link to video we shot.  Custer State Park Buffalo
We had buffalo for lunch, it was ground and wrapped with bacon.  It tasted very good.



 We also went to the the Hot Springs Mammoth site.  They found skeletons of  Mammoths that are about 26,000 years old.  They were preserved in a mound of dirt. They put a building over the dig site and we could see the bones of many mammoths where they are digging.  The rain held off for most of the day. We hit some rain as we came over one peak and could see where they had quite a bit of pea size hail.  Thankfully we didn't get any of that.
Tomorrow we go to the Bad Lands so I hope the rain stops before we get there.

Jasper, Lake Louise, Banff, Montana

We have had an amazing few days driving through the Canadian Rockies.  We spent a night in Jasper National Park, a night in Lake Louise and a night in Banff National Park.  The mountains were spectacular, I can not describe and pictures don't do it justice.  We have not had internet, no TV and except for 1 radio station in one park we have been on our own.  Thanks to Loris and Kelly & Mark, we had lots of movies on DVD to watch.
This morning I'm working off my internet stick so I won't post our pictures but as soon as we get to a park with WiFi I'll post some to the gallery.

                                   Here are a couple photos of our camp site at Banff National Park.

We are just west of Billings Montana and heading to the Bad Lands in South Dakota.  I'm not sure if we'll make today or tomorrow.

Kitimat

Yesterday we went out in Gail and Kevin's boat for the day.  As usual it was raining and overcast so we were not able to get a good view of the mountains.  It was a really nice ride, the water was very calm.  We stopped for lunch, tied off to a log boom and Kevin dropped a crab trap to see what we could catch during lunch.









When we pulled up the trap he had caught 10 crabs, 7 big enough to keep.  We had a wonderful crab dinner last night.  It was a great day!

This is the view out of Gail's kitchen window. This is the first time we could see the top of the mountain.  Usually the clouds hide the top.

Tomorrow we start are trip back East.  We'll be hitting Jasper, then down to the Bad Lands then home.  The plan is still to get home by June 1.

Kitimat

Yesterday Gail took us on a tour of Kitimat including a fish hatchery.  The fish hatchery was very interesting, Gail was friends of the fellow that gave us the tour, he was very knowledgeable.  They release over 5 million salmon each year including chum salmon, steelhead, and coho.  Today we went to Prince Rupert.  It was about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Kitimat.  It's a port right on the coast. We had lunch overlooking the marina, then went for a walk on the dock.  We spotted several Eagles and a couple of Ospreys circling overhead. We think they were looking at Patches, when Lesley picked up Patches they went away, as soon as she put Patches back down they came back. It was an awesome sight watching all of them.

Smithers to Kitimat

We are now in Kitimat after a beautiful trip from Smithers.  The mountains are are huge and snow covered. We   stayed at a campground on the Bulkley River.  Last night we camped right beside the fast moving river.

It was a beautiful view out the back window of our trailer as the river was full of spring run off.
Tonight we had dinner with Gail, Kevin, Cory, Theresa, Erin and Aiden. Patches had a ball with Gails dogs Seth and Bella, and Cory's dogs Miky Fin and MoJo.

Surrey - Lac La Hache - Prince George

As we continue to continue our "Continuing Journey", we are in Prince George tonight.  Last Monday we spent a large part of the day at Stanley Park.  It was a rainy overcast day but we were able to stay dry as we visited the park.  We also had a quick stop at Grenville Island, just to see what it looked like.
Monday evening we took the Sky Train down to the waterfront, next to Canada Place, and took the Sea Bus over to North Vancouver. We had a coffee at Lonsdale Quay then did the return trip.  Hard to believe we traveled from Surrey to North Vancouver and back for only $5 each.

Tuesday we drove North along the Fraser River.  The scenery was magnificent watching the mountains change from green trees to desert sand. Then we left the mountains and drove into rolling hills.  We camped along Lac La Hache, we pulled the camper around so we could view the lake from our back windows.  We watched a couple of Loons and saw an Osprey.  It was a fantastic sight.
It was to bad that it was cold and rainy again. The temp. got down to 37F  or just under 3 C.  We had both the little electric heater and the furnace on for a while to warm up.


Today we drove to Prince George, a totally different view, the mountains were more rolling and less spectacular but enjoyable all the same.  Today Lesley saw a mother bear and 2 cubs along the road, yesterday she saw a lone wolf just sitting watching the traffic go by.  It was an early stop today so we went into Prince George and did some shopping.  I picked up a case of beer, the cashier said they were on sale.
I explained I paid almost half that a week ago in Oregon so I didn't think it was much of a sale.
Tomorrow we're off to Smithers, another short day as it's only about a 5 hour drive.  Take a look at the Photo Gallery on the right to see the photos of our campsite.