On The Road With The Bradys

09/07/05 Wednesday

Today is our last travel day with the caravan. Our travel buddies are Jim and Karen Skaggs from California. They are the last couple in the caravan that we had not traveled with. We traveled from Houston to Prince George, which is about 190 miles. We had sunshine and good roads and a very uneventful trip.

Prince George is the fourth largest city in British Columbia. Its population is 80,000 and it is in an agricultural region that mostly is based on cattle and feed for them. There is also a very large logging industry on the route that we traveled. We saw three pretty large sawmills. One of them was really large. The stacks of logs on their yard ran for a long distance along the road, as did the stacks of finished lumber.

We are in a nice RV Park with big pull through sites and full hook-ups. We have learned to appreciate the space because many of the parks we have been in on this trip had less space even though they were nice. We also have 52 channels on the cable so we get a variety in our TV watching. I tried to load our satellite TV and got a response, but could not load the programming. Today is the first time we got any kink of response since July 18th. We also got our cell phone signal back today for the first time since we left Alaska of August 28th. You don’t realize how inconvenient it is to be without a telephone until it happens. We needed it several times every day.

I forgot to mention that during the unloading fiasco our closet rod was torn from the ceiling by the big bump when the coach came off the truck. We took the clothes out of the closet and worked on it last night. I used some wood glue to try to help the screws hold better so I needed to let it set before hanging anything on it.
I finished it today. A neighbor had a drill that set the screws back in easier than I could have done it with a screwdriver.

Mary went to the laundry here in the park and caught up our washing. We have been dry camping since Friday Sept. 2nd, so the washing was kind of piling up. I guess we are about ready to head south and get back into the US. I needed to wash the care and Motor Home but it is raining and supposed to rain tomorrow and Friday. Maybe I’ll get a chance to clean up the rig in California where it doesn’t rain every day

09/06/05 Tuesday

At eight o’clock this morning a mechanic came out to our coach with a laptop computer. He plugged into the on board computer system which checks the data coming from the engine and confirms that it is running right. He got nothing back from the engine. He had to get under the coach and check out all the wiring to discover why the engines computer was not talking to his. He found a broken connection where the on board computer was connected to the engine block. He repaired the connection and got the link between his computer and the on board computer. That computer gave him three code numbers to be checked and the entire repair job was done on the computer. He never laid a wrench on it. Being a mechanic has come a long way. The Cummings Service Center where we are does not do warranty work for Holiday Rambler (Monaco) so we had to pay for the work and get reimbursed by Monaco. We will get our money back when we are in Indiana on Sept. 22nd.

The owner of the towing company asked the service center to check out the damage done to the coach when it was being unloaded. They actually repaired one of the leveling jacks and replaced a clamp on the exhaust that seemed to have been broken by the stress. The owner of the towing company was very cooperative and gave them his credit card number to pay for those repairs. The fiberglass repair is going to be done by their insurance company. The insurance company is very cooperative and has agreed to have an appraiser meet us at the Monaco Service Center in Indiana where we are going to have some other work done. We can have the body- work done there at the same time.

We went to an Internet Café and did some computer work after we were finished with all the stuff about the coach, We got an e-mail from Bill with news that Liz’s Grandmother, Bettye King, had died. Betty has been ill for some time and her death was not unexpected. Bill and Liz are in Tennessee for the funeral.

We were ready to get back on the road and rejoin our caravan in Houston, British Columbia. We had passed them when we were being towed and they were in another RV Park for two nights. They re-passed us while we were waiting for the work on our coach, so we had about a three and a half hour drive to get to Houston. It rained most of the day in Terrace and it continued to rain all the way to Houston. It was still misting and wet when we got to the Shady Rest RV Park and drove in. By the time we were stopped in the street and getting out to unhook the car, we were surrounded by members of our group. We had a reunion that kind of interfered with me getting set up. We had to tell our story, hear how relieved everyone was to have us back, get a lot of hugs, and we were told that a bunch of prayers were sent up for us. In fact, every time there was a group meeting they had a prayer for us. We appreciate the group for their concern and feel closer to them than before.

09/03/05 Saturday through 09/05/05 Monday

We got ready to leave Tatogga Lake Resort with Bill and Rossana Hayes who were to be our travel buddies for the day. As I started to pull up onto the road, our engine died and the check engine light came on. The RPM needle was bouncing around, but the engine was not surging. The battery reading was very low and it also fluctuated a lot. We were the next to last pair to leave the park, so Billie our “Tail Gunner” came out and checked everything out. He could find no evident cause for the problem so we shut down and tried to call the help line at the factory. I had all kinds of problems with the telephone taking my pre-paid calling card to the 800 number I needed to call. Since there was no cell phone service in such a remote area, the pre-paid card is the only option we had, and I had no phone number except the 800 number. I finally decided to start the engine again and see if it had changed. I thought it might clear the computer and run smooth again. It seemed to run smoothly and the check engine light was not on so we decided to try taking it on the road. About an hour had passed so Billie had sent his travel partners on with ours and we were traveling together. About an hour down the road the engine light came on and the computer shut down the engine and a light came on telling me not to restart it. We were dead on the side of the road between Slate Creek and Burrage River. Billie looked everything over again and found nothing that he could do to get it going so we decided that I would go to Bell II Lodge and use their phone because we were in such a remote area that our cell phone did not work. That was the location of the closest phone and it was 47.9 miles away.

I went to Bell II Lodge and they had only a satellite phone service. It cost four dollars a minute to borrow it. I called our Emergency Road Service and told them our situation. After several calls back and forth they arranged for a truck with a lowboy flat trailer to come and get us and take us to Terrace, British Columbia where there was a Cummings Engine Service Center. To get a truck large enough to haul our Motor Home they had to bring it out of Watson Lake which was about 300 miles north of us. The Service Center where we had to be towed in Terrace was about 350 miles from us to the south. There were no towns on the highway between those two towns. There are RV Parks, Motels, Lodges and one First Nation Reservation, but no towns. I was finally told at about 5:00 pm that we would have a tow truck by noon on Sunday. We had broken down at 11:00 AM.

I drove back out to where we were stranded and about 6:30 Billie and Jaye left us there and went on to catch up with the rest of the Caravan. They are staying in Stewart on Saturday and Sunday night. I might mention that on the way back I saw a Black Bear on the side of the of the road, and he just stood as I slowed down to about 20 MPH and passed within thirty feet of him. I didn’t have a camera to get his picture.

After we had supper and read a while I went to bed. We were actually blocking part of our lane of traffic, but we had orange cones out and the Mounties came by and said it was as safe as we could make it. We saw four Royal Canadian Mounties during the afternoon. I had been asleep about two hours and Mary stayed up to read. She came in and woke me and told me to come see what was outside. I have never seen anything as wondrous as the display of light and color reflected in the northern sky. We stood on the highway for about 45 minutes and watched the Northern Lights. It was amazing!! At one time an eighteen- wheeler pulled up and stopped and watched with us for a while. He said he had been watching it as he drove for quite a while. I was amazed by the number of people who stopped to see if there was anything they could do to help us. We especially had a lot RVers and Truck Drivers, but there were some people in cars as well.

We slept late on Sunday morning and got up to be ready when the truck got there at noon. At 3:15 pm I decided to drive back to the telephone and see why our truck had not come. I found out later that just after I left our truck came with another Motor Home already on it. He saw a broken down RV and just stopped and picked it up. The driver of the RV was not expecting a tow until Tuesday morning so he just took ours and did not say anything to the driver of the tow truck, when they got to our coach the tow drover realized his mistake. He took the wrong RV on to the Lodge where I was using the telephone then came back for us.

Meanwhile up at the lodge, I had called our road service and they called the towing company. They set up a conference call and got me on the line with the dispatcher and she said that she had just talked the driver and he was approaching our position and should be there shortly. I headed back out and met the truck with the wrong RV before he got to the lodge. When I got back to our place Mary was a very unhappy lady. They had stopped and talked to her, so she knew what had happened. We did not get started on our trip to Terrace until about 8:30 pm on Sunday, so altogether we were stranded on the highway about 33 hours. We did see two more Black Bears on our trip through the Bell River Canyon.

We got to Terrace about 4:00 AM. I tried to get the driver to wait until daylight to unload our coach, but he had to do it and get on the road back up to pick up the people he left at Bell II Lodge. I don’t know what that did about the tow truck that they had reserved for Tuesday. The unloading was a mess. They lowered the trailer, put 12” wide boards down to run the coach off on and hooked a winch to it. There are no towing hooks on the front of the coach, so they tied a chain to the front axle to winch it off. The trailer was angled down and the winch was pulling the chain upward so when the coach got far enough forward the chain hit the fiberglass body and the door of the generator bay that slides out. It did a lot of damage.

Even though today is Monday it is Labor Day and most stuff is closed. I did talk to the Roadside Service group and I talked to the Wife of the owner of the towing company. Tomorrow I will get my coach inside the service center and get them to look it over and see if there is any damage that is not visible. Then I’ll talk back to the owners and get involved with their insurance to get the damage repaired. Maybe these people can even fix this thing so the engine will run and we can get back on the road!!!

09/02/05 Friday

Today we left the Alaska Highway and began our trip over the Cassair Hwy. We traveled with Billie and Jaye Lundrigan. Billie is our “Tail Gunner”; he always goes last and helps anyone who has trouble on the road. He is a factory trained service technician and can do most things to keep everyone going. He had to help us once. Some of our lights quit working on the car when it was hooked to the coach. He rewired the electrical cable that goes from the coach to the front of the car. It took a little trial and error to get the wires all connected to the proper posts, but he did it. We left the park at 9:15 AM and of course everyone else was already gone.

The Cassiar Highway was completed in 1972 to connect Yellowhead Hiighway with Alaska. If you are traveling to Prince George, British Columbia, which we are, you can save about 130 miles taking the Cassiar instead of the Alaska Highway. We traveled through some small mountains called the Cassiar Mountains during the early morning. We came to higher more scenic mountains called the Horse-ranch Mountains. They are the oldest Mountains in Northern British Columbia. There are a lot of different types of mining in the area. The Cassiar Gold Strike produced a lot of gold in the 1870’s. A miner named Alfred Freeman found an all gold nugget (no quartz) that weighed 72 ounces. This was in 1877 and it is still the largest all gold nugget ever found in British Columbia. There is still active goal mining in the area. The most profitable mining taking place now is jade. Canada produces several different kinds and quality of jade. In fact, the Cassiar Mountains provide about seventy five percent of the worlds jade supply. The latest and most valuable is Artic Jade, it is a favorite for jewelry making. Mary bought a small piece of it to make jewelry in her classes this winter. Now there are basically two stores that sell the raw jade and actually have artist there who make items to sell. They are in Jade City. It used to be a town, but now the two stores are all that is left.

We crossed the Stikine River Bridge in a rain shower. The Stikine is an Indian word that means “Great River”, and it is. We went downhill for five kilometers before we got to the river. When we climbed out of the canyon Mary tried to look back and see the river in the distant bottom. I don’t think she saw the river, but she saw a beautiful rainbow and got a picture of it. We did not see Mount Edziza because it was covered by clouds and fog, bit it is 9,143 feet tall and is a dormant volcano. I believe that you are able to see the lava flow paths from the highway. It is in a wilderness park that has no road access.

We are staying in Tatogga Lake Resort and RV Park. It is on one of the many lakes that we passed today. The lakes are huge and all connected by streams and rivers that make it possible to travel from one to the other. This makes it possible to go great distances in Canada and Alaska on water. I thought we were going to need a boat while we were setting up. It rained a lot and it rained a lot on us as we traveled today. We were on a lot of gravel and dirt roads so our rig is a mess. I hate to even touch it. I’m not sure how long it will be before we get to a place to clean up.

We are about ten miles from Iskut, a small Tahltan Indian town with 283 population. The park has an electrical system that runs off a diesel generator. We don’t have enough power to run everything we need. I unhooked and we are using our generator and inverter to provide our electricity. We still don’t have cell phone service and tonight we have no Internet access. We miss the conveniences, but we love the wilderness. Mary thought today was the prettiest scenery we have seen on the entire trip.