Jasper to Dawson Creek

As we left Wabasso campground, on our way up to Jasper, we saw a bear right on the side of the road - I even got a photo. Our first photo of a bear!

While we are enjoying these beautiful parks and the Canadian Rockies, we are anxious to continue on with our journey. You see, Canada is nice - nice and expensive!!! Gas is over $4/gallon here! And groceries are expensive, and it costs $17.80 a DAY to just BE in the national parks, and camping is an extra $20 on top of that, for unimproved campgrounds! So we're talking about $38/day just to camp in the national parks in the Rockies. Didn't make us feel like lingering too long, though it was beautiful.

We went up to Dawson Creek from Jasper via the "Scenic Route to Alaska" - a bit of a short cut. We missed seeing the neat couple we met in Baja who live in Edmonton by doing so, but it is getting late and we want to get to Alaska before it closes! Just kidding. I really regret not taking the extra side trip, time and miles to visit Alethea and Bernardo - they were just a wonderful couple, but we needed to get to a place with WiFi by Monday so Devin could do some work, and we wanted to be on the Alaska Highway asap. Dawson Creek is "Mile 0" of the Alaska Highway.

The "scenic route" paled by comparison to the incredible Icefields Parkway and scenery of Banff and Jasper, but it was pleasant. We drove through forested rolling hills, crossed a big river, and drove by a very large coal mining operation of some sort - not a mine, but where the coal was either shipped from or processed or something. We passed one small town at the crest of a hill before descending into another river valley, and ultimately getting out onto flatter country.

Getting up to Dawson Creek we left the Rockies and were on the prairie - the towns could be anywhere with malls and housing tracts, except for the Real Canadian Markets and the Tim Horton's. Some beautiful fields of bright yellow flowers - I think it may be Canola oil (Rapeseed) plants. Also, more hay.

Dawson Creek is a nice town - it has a mix of newer shopping areas, and some historic districts around the "Mile 0" marker, and agricultural surroundings. The Northern Lights RV Park where we stayed had some nice views of the sunset over town and was across from more fields.

Nothing too exciting happened in Dawson Creek - Devin worked three days remotely; we got the RV oil and leveler fluid changed. Devin went to clinic for more antibiotics. Friday, my eyelid started swelling again (the same one that sent me to the emergency room in Jackson Hole), so I started on the eyedrops (which I had leftover), and washed the lid with baby shampoo, and it went back down.

The clinic experience is worth recounting: we called to see if we could get an appointment and they said to come on in - they were really nice, of course. We saw the doctor and got a prescription, which we were able to pick up in their pharmacy, no problem. The interesting part was paying - Canada, as you may know, has national health care. So when I asked how to pay, they asked if the price they quoted sounded fair and reasonable. I wonder if they would have lowered it had I said no? But $55 for an office visit and $40 for prescription (10 days 3xday penicillin) seemed quite reasonable. They weren't used to dealing with cash - no credit card method, checks were "a problem" and so they let me go get some cash from the credit union around the corner, and the nurse made change from her purse!

The Northern Lights RV Park has some nice services for travelers - one of their sons does work on RVs - he changed our oil and hydraulic leveler fluid, as I mentioned before, and they also repair windshield chips and make special rock guards for tow vehicles. The rest of the trip we would see these guards and know that those people had stayed at Northern Lights! More on the need for rock guards later.

We had a thunderstorm!! The rain was nice, and it cooled things off for us, finally.

Beautiful sunsets at the Northern Lights RV Park.

Click here for a few more photos

Why we are really taking this trip

Our friend Ushruf sent us the link to this comic, and it's so us, it's scary!! It comes from here: www.xkcd.com

Since I'm on here - here are some quick updates:

• Wednesday 1/31: We got our Jeep!!!! We love it!!!! Pics soon!
• Thursday 2/1: Devin's last day of work!!! Yay!!! (*gulp*)
• Move out: Next weekend!!!
• Last day in apartment: 2/13/07
• First day of the rest of our lives: Valentine's Day... awwww....

More to come when we actually hit the road!

I'm Blogging from the Freeway!!

Thanksgiving Day - and here we are, ambling down the freeway at 55 (or less when the traffic slows), and I'm on the internet, updating our blog!!

We got our Wireless Broadband Card, a Kyocera KPC650 PC Card, and life on the road will never be the same! We don't have the external antenna and amplifier yet, but when we do, we should get cellular service up to 50 miles farther than normal from a tower, and when we aren't getting broadband (EVDO - "Evolution Data Only"), we will get National (1xrtt) service, which is like an old dial up connection speed-wise, but it's still a connection! All over southern California so far it has been broadband, which is pretty darn fast!

This weekend, if we get service, we will experiment with the wireless router, to see if we can both be on at the same time with our laptops. Of course, not while driving... he he.

I like being able to check email, blog, and surf while driving (well, passengering, anyway)! Need a map? Oh, let me just get a Google map of the area... Find a campground? Let me check one of the many online directories! Oh it's so useful, and much more fun than I usually am in the car - head nodding, drooling, snoring loudly... ha.

Exiting the Information Highway... or not

So what are a couple of computer geeks like Devin and I going to do on the road for a year? I mean, seriously - we IM each other from across the room! Our idea of a nice evening at home involves parallel play surfing the net on our laptops and emailing links to each other! (not to mention updating the blog!) Are we going to be going through major internet withdrawals?

Maybe. But we're taking the internet with us, too!

You see, the internet is really just a bunch of tubes... wait, no - that's not what I wanted to say!

We have a couple of options for internet access on the road:

• Find Wi-Fi Hotspots everywhere we go. This is not that out of the question, but the problem is, more and more people have figured out they need to secure their wireless, so we can't just catch a free wave. Starbuck's, Borders, and other businesses use providers like T-Mobile or Boingo and charge per minute or a monthly fee for access. But we hope to be a little more out of the way in campgrounds and on public land, where there may not be Starbuck's around every corner (gasp!!) Lots of RV Parks now have WiFi - many use Tengo Internet, LinkSpot, Link-N-Go, and The Wireless Web, companies that serve mainly RV parks, and there is also RoadConnect that serves many rest stops on highways.
  
  Devices like this one sniff out any hotspots within range and let you know if they are secure or not. MacStumbler, a Freeware/Donationware program for my Mac works much the same, but this way I don't have to use my laptop's batteries to go "wardriving" in the RV! Of course, there are directories , like JiWire, WiFinder, and WiFiFREEspot, and HotSpotHaven, available for public hotspots, but it's so much fun to cruise through a neighborhood looking for a network named "Linksys" or "Belkin"!
  
  
• Use our cell phones as modems. This would work, but is like dial up - you use your cell phone to dial up an ISP, and it uses your phone's minutes and is slow like dial-up, so screw that! Newer cell phones with a data plan would work similarly to the EVDO card described under the last bullet point, but using that with a data plan equipped phone would be somewhat like using a modem, and not as flexible as we would like, for sharing a connection, for example.
  
  
• Get a satellite internet system. This is what a lot of full time RVers who depend on internet access for their livelihoods, or the education of their children, for example, use. You can get internet virtually anywhere with these - unless you are in a cave or a steep canyon with no view of the sky where the satellite is in geosynchronous orbit. MotoSAT DataStorm mobile satellite internet systems even have a service where you can look at a map and find out where the user is! The DataStorm and Magellan dishes have motorized mounts and use GPS to find your assigned satellite, and you are connected through the HughesNet (formerly DirecWay) or Gallileo satellite networks. You could be in the middle of a disaster area, and still be able to connect to the internet with these satellite systems. They work all over the world - we'd probably have no problem getting internet access from Baja to Alaska (with a big enough dish).
  
  So what's the catch? Oh, yeah, they cost several thousand dollars. And you have to be stationary to use them (so your dish can be pointed at your satellite). The systems that automatically locate and focus on your chosen satellite are easiest to use, but also most expensive. There is the option of using a tripod and pointing it to the satellite manually, but this requires certification and is pretty technical, with consequences (like having your service shut off) if you mis-aim. And they are about $80/month for service, once you've installed your system.
  
  But they are SO cool!! "This is Ground Control to Major Tom..."
  
  
• Get Broadband Wireless (EV-DO or Evolution-Data Optimized) access through Verizon or Sprint. This involves getting a PC card, like the Verizon Wireless v740 EVDO Rev A ExpressCard, which would work in either my Mac or Devin's PC, but only one at a time. Add a wireless router for the card, like the Kyocera KR1 Mobile Wireless Router, and we could both surf using either wireless, or if we wanted to conserve our laptop batteries, connect via ethernet to the router.
  
  This depends on being in range of broadband wireless, which is mostly around larger cities now, but "National Access" or 1xRTT, while slower than Broadband or EV-DO, is available in a much wider area. Since we are already Verizon Wireless customers, we will likely go with Verizon's unlimited broadband plan which will use EVDO when available and 1xRTT when not. To increase our chances of being able to access it, we can also get a New Wilson Dual-Band RV Cell Phone Antenna and a Signal Amplifier (824-894 MHz 1850-1990 MHz) In-building and/or mobile use with soft carrying case.
  
  After the initial investment of a few hundred dollars, it is $59.99/month for the Verizon service with a 2 year contract. This seems like the best option for us, because it is available when in transit (if I need to look up something or make a reservation while Devin is driving), and it is the least expensive for decent internet on the road. The only problem is it won't be available in Mexico. But I've heard a few RV parks there have wireless now...

So we'll probably go with the last option, as it seems most reasonable for us, and just live without internet while in remote areas of Baja, Canada and Alaska. Okay, so we MAY go through withdrawals, but it will be good for us! And we'll have other things to do, like reading, birding, kayaking, writing, drawing, practicing guitar, hiking and exploring, and most importantly, napping!