2012/05 Western USA trip - Arrival in Hope |
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Dear All,
This is the story of John and Edna’s trip to visit us and our camping trip with them around western North America. The trip lasted ten weeks and included Michael and Lauren’s wedding. On our way, we visited over fifty parks and stayed at almost as many different campsites, so the story will come in about a half dozen parts. This first part covers our drive south from British Columbia to California.
Visitors to North America rightly expect the southern parts to be warmer than the north but they rarely take altitude into account. So although Las Vegas may be warm in January, the nearby but much higher Grand Canyon may still have snow cover in May or even June for the north rim. Planning a spring and summer trip through the mountains was going to be tricky, so we only had a vague list of places to visit, with some alternates that would depend on how the weather turned out. So, how did the weather treat us? To be honest, not that well, but who could have predicted a snowstorm and a sandstorm in California or the USA’s worst drought in over fifty years?
The weather cooperated though for our week at home between our trip to England and Minnesota and John and Edna’s arrival. We cleaned up the garden and put in baskets and bedding plants we thought might survive our absence, and set up our irrigation system for while we were gone.
It was also time to make sure that all our camping gear was going to work together. We’d be driving the truck with the camper body on and towing our Little Guy trailer, as shown on the front page. Sandie and I would be sleeping in the trailer. A test drive showed that the truck hardly noticed the weight of the trailer, which was good, but also that the trailer was invisible to the driver. Small trailers are notoriously difficult to back up and this one can’t be seen by the driver until it is already into a jackknife. Backing into campsites would be difficult. The trailer’s jack post was also a bit close to the ground so we’d be doing some scraping on rough roads, but hopefully not enough to cause serious damage.
Tuesday May 15th
The weather was cooling down but still sunny. We drove down to Vancouver Airport in the Jeep to collect John and Edna. We thought we had plenty of time but one of the tunnels was closed and we only beat them to Arrivals by a few minutes. They’d had an uneventful series of flights but the worst part, as usual, was getting through US Immigration to their connection in Los Angeles. We stopped for dinner in Langley and they tried to stay awake long enough to eat after a very long day of travel and fourteen hours of jetlag.
Wednesday May 16th
We walked into town for some shopping and to pay our house taxes before we left. This was an opportunity to show them downtown Hope, or what there is of it anyway. Too many closed businesses these days. The walk back was a lot better, along the Coquihalla and Fraser Rivers. The woods had greened up nicely and the rivers were running high with snow melt. The Fraser was nearly full but not yet up the bank; we still had a few feet of beach.
We spent the rest of the day packing John and Edna’s stuff into the truck camper and ours into the trailer. They always pack light so there was plenty of room.