How We Decided to Trade our Popup for a Travel Trailer
Our 3-week adventure in our popup trailer, Penny, began in Warrenton/Astoria with our friends, RVing Women. The weekend was spent eating, celebrating Gina's birthday, playing games and checking out Astoria's Sunday Market. We also christened new rigs including Penny. Little did we know, this was also her last trip.
Waiting for the trolley in Astoria.
The birthday girl
May 17th - From Astoria we crossed into Washington and spent our first night on our own in a KOA park in Port Angeles, WA. Before getting here we stopped in Forks, WA. This is the town the Twilight Series is based in though none of the filming was actually done here. The town is making a few bucks off the whole thing though - good for them!
The weather for most of the trip was on the chilly side and overcast for much of it. It rained our first night and we ran out of propane. Luckily we had an electric heater. May 18th was a little nicer and we tried out the hot tub at the KOA. Then we went to see Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park. It was quite a drive up into the mountains. It was partly overcast so we really didn't know what we would see. It turned out to be well worth the drive though this was just an appetizer to the mountains we would see in Canada.
Our next stop was Burlington, WA. We took the ferry from Kingston which cut about 150 miles of driving off the trip. We landed north of Seattle so we also avoided having to drive through that area. We did get lost looking for a Sterling Bank and had to find a place to turn around in a residential area. We eventually found the bank and then made our way to the KOA in Burlington. It was a nice day and we thought we would try putting the awning up. No sooner had Jancy gotten the last tent stake in then the wind started to come up and it got real stormy looking. We struggled to get the awning down as we had no ladder. But I got on the Rubbermaid step we had and we rolled the awning up. By stretching I managed to get a hold of the zipper and get it zipped up. We're never putting it up again!!!! No sooner had we finished then we heard a big crack and the top 20 feet of a tree about 100 feet away snapped off and came crashing down. It was next to a tent, but luckily didn't hit the tent. An RV awning on a rig about 200 feet away blew up and over the roof of the rig. No one seemed to be home. We hurried to get everything battened down. The TV weather said there were high winds in the entire area. We rocked and rolled that night away, but the next morning we were upright and thought all was well. It was - until we went to crank down the popup as we prepared to leave. It got about half way down and then was stuck. A fellow camper tried to help and discovered that if we held the crank straight where it attached to the popup, we could get it down. We babied it like that for the remainder of the trip. And we never even got a photo of the awning up - dang!
We stayed two nights or longer in most places because schlepping everything back and forth to the truck from the popup and vice versa was a lot of work. We did get a pretty good system and got to a point where we could get it down in less than an hour, but as the trip progressed we became more and more sure we didn't want to keep doing this - thus the idea of trading for a travel trailer was born.
Our next destination was Clearwater, BC. We had no trouble crossing into Canada and stopped briefly in Chilliwack to deliver a homemade wine bottle for RVing friends. The Clearwater KOA was quite rustic and surrounded by a high fence - to keep the bears and other critters out. We found a Dairy Queen a short walk away and learned something new - Canadian DQs don't have chocolate soft serve ice cream! So I had a blizzard instead.
It rained overnight (again) and the next day was fairly overcast but we went to check out some of the local scenery anyway. There were a number of waterfalls in the area that we wanted to see.
Sandy loved to ride in front in our laps
This moose statue was by the information center in Clearwater. Much to Jancy's disappointment, it was the only moose we saw on the entire trip. We did keep a lookout for them too. We saw bear, goats, deer, elk, and coyotes but no moose.
Helmcken Falls
in Wells Gray
Park, BC
Dawson Falls
Mushbowl
May 23rd - We drove through Jasper National Park on our way to the KOA in Hinton, AL. Once again, the weather wasn't that great but the drive through the mountains was gorgeous. The Canadian Rockies with snow are unparalled to any other mountain range in the world! The next day we went back to Jasper and went up on the tram to see the mountains. It was one of the few sunny days we had and the view was spectacular.
Mt. Robson is the highest peak. It is about 70 miles away.
Lake Maligne
Some of the locals...
May 27th - We went to the West Edmonton Mall. In 2004 this was the largest mall in the world. Now it is 7th. It contains over 800 stores - so many that they actually repeat. But the highlight of this mall isn't all the stores - it's all the other things they have here.
A full sized
ice rink.
100 foot bungee jump.
Janet jumped from here
in 1992 0r 1993
A full sized replica of the Santa Maria
A water park with slides
and waves.
An amusement park
with a carousel and other rides.
Pretty dang amazing but I guess they need something to do in those long winters!!!!
May 31st we drove to Lake Louise. We thought it would make more sense to stay in Lake Louise and drive to Banff from there since it was more centrally located to where we were going after Banff - starting the drive home. What we didn't count on was there would be no hookups in the Provincial Park. Dry camping with the popup was not so much fun so instead of staying two nights, we got out of there after our day trip to Banff on June 1st.
Columbia Ice Field
J & J at a semi frozen Lake Louise
Lake Moraine
Banff is a very picturesque European looking town that caters to the tourist population with many shops selling a variety of gits.
After Banff we were on our way home. That night we stayed in Canbrook, BC. We actually stayed there two nights - needing to rest a bit from the constant work of putting the popup up and taking it down and stowing everything in the truck.
We crossed back into the states on June 3rd and stopped at a lovely RV park in Boardman for the night. That's when we found out we lost the crank for the popup. Well, I lost it. I think I left it on top of the popup when we were fastening the corner latches and we drove off with it up there. It probably slid off right in the RV park, but we were 100's of miles away when we discovered it. A length of pipe loaned to us from the maintenance garage enabled us to use the tire wrench to get the popup up and back down the next day. From here we drove along the Columbia River eventually getting to I-5. A stop in Wilsonville at Fry's is almost mandatory and after that we continued until we got home that evening.
We found a message from the salesman at Porter's RV on our phone. They were having a 40th anniversary sale. We decided to go down the next day. Saturday morning we got another call from Porter's and we told them we would be down there soon.
We looked at several used travel trailers and then one that was new. The interest on a new trailer was better than used and the trade in we got for the popup was so good we made a deal then and there. They sold the popup in less than 2 weeks - right time of year for them. So now we have a 28 foot trailer for our new adventures. Be sure to check back for a page on our October trip. TBA
Packing Penelope up for the last time on our trip.
Fiona Ford and Jennifer Jayco (our new travel trailer)
