Monday, July 24: Memory Lane in the Canadian Rockies

This is the first morning in about a week that I’ve been able to swallow without flinching, so that is a plus.  I tell you, I have some kind of cold/sore throat thing off and on since we got into Alaska.  It’s been a bit frustrating.  The kids are still passing pinkeye around.  Zip is on round two of it this morning.  Micah and Malachi are the only two to escape so far from the pinkeye epidemic.  I just don’t have the water sources to wash things like I would at home so we keep passing things around.   Bummer.  I did finally break down and buy a jug of hand sanitizer.  I despise that stuff, knowing that it kills all the good bacteria on your skin as well as the bad. But finding ways to wash our hands is proving rather impossible so hand sanitizer it is!  I had started with a bottle of nice homemade hippy-dippy essential oil stuff but that has long since gone.

However, we aren’t throwing up, which really ruins everything.  So we are enjoying this portion of the highway so much more.  The road has been kinder, and the scenery more available than the rather tunnel-like forested road of the Cassiar highway.  There are a few more stops to make in between stretches of vast wilderness.  But the wilderness is absolutely stunning.  Waking up to Muncho lake across the road - Tim and I took a walk to the edge while the kids roused themselves.  The clear blue water and the mountains shooting right up at the edges. Wow.

Creative use of no space to dry our hot springs suits! Lol

The Canadian Rockies are magnificent.  My

little pictures just don’t do them justice. I found myself really impressed with the guys in the US and Canadian armies that blasted through these mountains to build the Alaska Highway during WWII in the 1940s.  Dynamite to blast and horses to move the rocks.  Crazy.  And they managed to finish the road in a matter of months.  I plan to dig up a book on it when I get home…

We had a bit of a walk down memory lane today.  This is the route we took back in 2012 on our move to NC. We tried to find the spot right outside of Pink Mountain where we broke down.  And through Fort St. John we pointed out the campground and the church… Its a story my kids have heard a dozen times or more. We were towing a large trailer with a suburban and hauling 4 kids.  Everything seemed just fine when all of a sudden the engine started smoking.  As Tim pulled over there was some disconcerting noises.  Lifting the hood, there was some kind of liquid pouring onto the ground. Smoke was billowing now.  Almost immediately someone stopped to help and provided a working cell phone (the most frustrating thing about traveling through Canada is your phones don’t work at all - no calls, texts, data for maps or a simple Google search.  With everything relying on those things today it makes getting around a bit frustrating). The man even had a card for a local tow service - 100 miles away in Fort St. John.  A few hours later, a tow arrived with an extra vehicle to carry the rest of the us.  The suburban on the tow, the trailer hooked to the truck, and me and the kids in the rental car.  100 miles later, we pulled into the Chevy dealership, handed him our credit card for a ridiculous amount of money (tow for a car, a trailer and a rental vehicle for 100 miles - OUCH).  It was a Sunday evening and our phone didn’t work and everything looked closed.  We were morbid.  This was definitely the worst that could possibly happen.  But we scraped together a plan.  We had noticed a campground about 5 miles back.  Packing up the only form of transportation we had left - our bikes.  We attached our bike trailers, two kids per trailer, piled in as much camping gear as possible, and started the trek back up the highway.  It was getting dark and as we pulled into the Rotary RV Park on Charlie Lake, the campground hosts peered into the darkness behind us. “Where on earth did you all come from at this time of night?”  After an explanation of our situation, they got us to a campsite and the kind man took Tim in his truck back to our trailer and hauled it back to the campground for us so we’d have our things.

We spent a week at that campground.  The Chevy dealership quoted us $7000 for a complete engine replacement.  Which was basically our entire savings.  We had not been able to sell our house, Tim had not found a job and now we were about to wipe out all of our funds.  We felt really stuck and confused.  Why was this happening??  The move itself had already been agonizingly difficult.  Should we go back?  Go forward?  Buy a new suburban?  Someone offered us a ride in his RV to the border so we could buy a car in the US and then come back for our trailer.  A kind offer…  At one point I was at the playground with the kids.  An older woman was there with her grandkids and we got to talking and my whole story spilled out.  She was sympathetic and, as a confessed believer, encouraged me to believe that God would sort it out and promised to pray for us.  It at least made me feel a little better.  A few hours later, this same woman appears at the campground.  “I’ve been looking for you and your family! My husband and I have been talking and we want to fix your suburban.”  They had a mechanic friend with the right engine in his shop.  They bought it for us and he would put it in free of charge.

It was absolutely impossible to know what to say or how to respond.  We were shocked.  Just blown away.  There’s was nothing we could do to repay these people.  I think we gave them a can or two of our smoked salmon… but I tried to call her once we got into the US and I never got more than a blank answering machine, so I don’t even know if I had the right number.  It was a crazy situation.

And. We had gone to the local pool - biked into town for showers and a swim and just something to do.  There was a family with three kids about the same age as ours and we kept eyeing each other like we recognized one another.  Finally we approached one another and started up a conversation.  It turns out we had never met but we shared the reason for our travels and what had happened.  They invited us to dinner.  And then the rest of the week took us to the grocery store, the bank and even out to a friends farm for horses and pond swimming.  Their church happened to be across the street from our campground and so we attended that next Sunday, our engine now fixed, our plan to leave the following day.  Our friend was speaking that day at church and asked if it was ok if he used us as an object lesson for his sermon. He was preaching on 1 Peter 2:11-12., a verse on aliens in a strange land. At the end of the service, the church took up an offering for us and sent us on our way with $1000 for the rest of our trip. It was incredible.  God came through in amazing ways and it completely rejuvenated our spirits as we faced the uncertainties that still lay ahead.  Just like Pat was probably praying would happen back in Alaska lol.

We had connected with the family that had helped us in Fort St. John with the hopes of seeing them again. Contacting anyone is very difficult through Canada.  Occasionally we’ll hit a spot where a  text will come through or we can shoot a through texts out in response.  I actually got a text randomly from an unknown number from someone who found Lucy way back in NC.  They got my number off her collar.  I was so thankful the text had made it through to me.  I was able to use my little pocket of data to text my neighbor to pick her up but then it made me worry about my dog wandering off.  Now I was really homesick for her. We are all getting pretty ready to get home.  As fast as we are trekking, there’s really only so fast we can go…

Anyway, Lucy was safe and we stopped in Fort Nelson at their visitor center to dump the camper, fill with water and use the wi-fi.  I only had a facebook contact for her and I had let her know at a split second of catching wi-fi at Liard that we were close.  By Fort Nelson the next day, her response came through.  Unfortunately, they were out camping. We could join them but it would off our route.  We took the drive to Dawson Creek to think about it.  Dawson Creek is Mile 0 of the Alaska highway!!  We made it!  Sort of… I mean there are still hundreds of miles of Canada left.  But there is a cool mile marker there that we stopped to take a photo with. 

Even though this visitor center was closed I was able to get enough wi-fi outside to try Erica again. No luck.  If we couldn’t touch base to be sure there was a place to stay at their campground and it was already a few hours out of our way…. we decided it wasn’t the best choice to head their direction.  We were really disappointed to miss them after coming all this way, but we turned on the highway heading south for Jasper.