Our Touring Past

Our recent holiday to Canada was a great experience but we are certainly pleased to be home. And no sooner home and Coledale was upon us, our first with the van. I took lots of photos of RVs and trailers while away, not much old stuff though so hopefully over a few instalments some of it may be of interest, certainly different to our local scene.

We had been looking at a trip to Canada for many years but finally bit the bullet earlier in the year and decided it was time. Barbara wanted to do a train trip and a cruise and I thought well why not bung them in the Canada trip? More interesting than doing them here maybe, so the cruise turned into the 7 day Alaska trip out of Vancouver and the train trip a 3 day trans-Canada jaunt from Jasper to Toronto so we could go to Niagra Falls too. I wanted to drive the Rockies rather than do the Rocky Mountaineer train trip so we both were accommodated. Sydney to Vancouver, 10 hours on the plane, maybe we can break it, a few days in Hawaii? Sure, both ways? Why not, a nice little rest on the way back! So with a large chunk out of our savings and all the paperwork done we were set.

Of course I had old cars and vans on my mind right from the off and I spent some time looking for car museums in Canada on the www. They don’t seem to have a lot but there were two I wanted to fit in if I could, one in Alberta which I’d heard great things about and the other at Oshawa near Toronto which had two Vauxhalls listed in their collection. I also found that Alberta has the only town in the world actually called Vauxhall and I thought we might be able to slip in there too. Then I realised that if we were in Toronto we weren’t that far from Detroit where the only other Aussie built 34 Vauxhall Big Six roadster the same as mine resides, could we maybe slip across the border Nothing found as far as vintage van (sorry, ‘trailer’) site relating to Canada so it was just see what came along. We thought we might even get to stay overnight in a trailer park in an older van, maybe an Airstream

So, starting at the beginning I guess Hawaii needs a mention. Our accommodation was in Honolulu at Waikiki Beach, all very nice I suppose but too commercial and it seems if you want to see a nicer Hawaii you go to one of the other islands. Not much in the way of old cars and certainly NO trailers Our bus driver on a tour mentioned the lack of trailers and RVs saying there was no need for them, if you want to go camping you just do it, pull up on the side of the road anywhere and camp, put up a tent, bit of tarp etc, and they do just that come the weekend. And of course you can circumnavigate the island in a day! The only trailers we were likely to see would be something to do with a film crew, of which there were many, and sure enough when I did see one on our return visit it belonged to a film company. No magazines relating to RVs or trailers in any of the shops either

Our biggest culture shock was the coffee, crap coffee even in the cafes. In our hotel room there was only a drip coffee maker with coffee bags, tea bags were supplied too but no jug, guess you made it in the coffee machine as I did but you MUST remember to remove the old coffee bag first No milk, only whitener. “You want milk sir? Go to the convenience store and buy some!” When in Rome, suffer And, only paper or foam cups in the rooms to drink from

Maybe Canada would be more civilised. No, same deal with the coffee in our hotel in Vancouver Did I mention no spoons either, just plastic rod for a stirring stick, bloody backward Plenty of Starbucks though, shame we don’t like it. With a spare day in Vancouver before commencing the cruise we booked up for a bus tour to Vancouver Island and the Capital, Victoria. Early pick up and out to the ferry terminal and line up, some time for a pit stop and look about so I headed straight out into the line up of RV’s and caravans getting ready for the trip. We hadn’t seen many until this point but I was soon staggered by the size of their outfits. There were a couple of 5th wheelers and I had a chat to one driver, stepped back to take a photo and as I did something of interest (SOI) just appeared in the background on the view screen The photo shows a typical 5th wheeler, and there are thousands of the things on the road over there. If I could have bought one thing home from Canada it would have been a cheque for the fuel pumped into pickups and RVs for just one day and I reckon I could have a very good time for a long time The ‘something of interest’ (I’ve bunged an arrow on it in the photo) turned out to be a Boler fibreglass caravan, a bit of a shrunken Sunliner, made from the late 60s until the late 80s according to web site and like the Sunliner old moulds were used by other makers too, more on that later. A modern version is still manufactured by Trillium trailers in Calgary, Alberta.
It was quite a nice little van (considering they started out as a septic tank ) and the chap towing it had his wife and two little girls with him and they were off for a week on the island, said it was light and towed like a dream, the tow car was only a regular station wagon. As it turned out the vans were quite popular and over our 7 days on the road though the Rockies we saw 8 in all. A search on the web found they had a Bolerama for them in Canada back in July, an interesting time I’m sure. Do we have a ‘Sunerama’ for Sunliners
This is another Boler we saw in Golden, Alberta, on Highway 1.

The trip to the island was good, we toured around, went to Butchard Gardens and spent a couple of hours in Victoria looking about then back on the ferry, our van excitement for the day was the Boler, nothing else of interest appeared. No RV or trailer magazines to be found either

Next day it was on the liner for our cruise to Alaska with first stop at Juneau, the capital. With access only by sea or plane I didn’t expect to see much there of interest and I wasn’t disappointed! Not somewhere I’d want to live, a half day visit was fine. A medical emergency the next day on the ship required evacuation of a passenger to hospital. They had to be picked up and flown back to Vancouver as the ship had better medical facilities than Juneau

Next stop was Skagway and it proved to be a haven for RVs and trailers as it has a major highway linking it to the real world! More about that in the next instalment.

George

Skagway Alaska is a quaint little town which survives in the image of the gold rush days. All the buildings in town are original or replicas with timber board walks, sort of how I imagine an old Wild West town would have been. The population is listed about 850 so when a cruise ship comes in it more than doubles the population, and there can be six cruise ships some days. We were the only cruise ship on the day of our visit and the first thing between the dock and the town is an RV park. Not a very big one, and not very hospitable with ‘keep out’ signs all around and a sneaky strand of barb wire added to the middle strand of the wire fence Maybe because of it’s location a lot of people may use it as a short cut rather than walking around. I didn’t go for a wander about but could see a newish Airstream and a few RVs and from the photo you will see it’s not a bad outlook on life to wake up to - in summer at least On the footpath near the entrance was the oddest item I've ever seen, a timber pergola with railing and a nice porcelain toilet bowl attached to the floor Non operational and in full view, just odd I had meant to ask the bus driver the significance but forgot Skagway has a major highway to the rest of the world so RVs were plentiful and in the course of getting around by bus and train there were at least four trailer parks or whatever they call them. A lot of the summer workers use them, our bus driver said they had a trailer in a park for accommodation and in winter they jump in the car and head south to Florida to their other trailer and job. I didn’t see anything exciting as we passed and didn’t have a chance to go back for a look about. There was a Ford Victoria coupe and a Nash Metropolitan in town which surprised me and a familiar face in the car park, a pretty sad looking late 60’s Ford Falcon but it had the steering wheel in the wrong place
There were a few RVs driving about, the flashiest being this Citation Supreme on a Ford. It takes up a fair share of car spaces Otherwise slide on type vans were popular and why not I guess, there are some pretty big pick ups about. I found this older Vanguard interesting; there was also a modern Vanguard RV about too. Another item to catch my eye, apart from a stall selling Reindeer sausage (I wasn’t allowed to try one ) was a pick up with a flat bed slide on tray that fitted on top of the ute sides which had a couple of quad bikes tied on. No idea how you get the bikes the best part of five feet in the air onto the back. I reckon you would need a wide load permit here and maybe there might be some other restrictions too with sharp corners but over time we saw quite a few in Canada.
Back at the dock the tour coach tickled my fancy, nice new thing with fancy advertising on the side for Australia New Zealand tours with pictures of the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and the Barrier Reef, and I went to Alaska to see something new
The only other port of call on the cruise was Ketchikan which didn’t seem that exciting, the pouring rain during our day there didn’t make it in any way appealing and I didn’t see anything in the way of RVs or trailers in the traffic

The story will resume back in Vancouver when I get the hire car with the steering wheel on the wrong side

George

As I can only post 3 pictures at a time here are 3 more from Skagway.

This is the township of Skagway with the liner docked, airstrip in the foreground, as you can see the liner is the biggest thing in town The liner waits for no one so when you leave they advise you to have your passport and means to pay for a flight, meals, accommodation etc to the next port of call to rejoin if you miss the boat as it were, and no refunds of course A photo of the quad bike flat bed mentioned last post. And for those who don't like hardship when travelling, this GMC unit with motor bike might be the answer George

Hi George.
Great shots,
The olny thing is George, you may have just cost me alot of money. Linda and I have talked about going to Canada, but now Linda REALLY wants to go. Lucky we are renovating the house at the moment.
I just love those GMC motorhomes.

Richard.

Hi Richard

It is certainly a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there, I was just checking the current temperatures and in Cache Creek where we stayed it’s minus 12, and it’s still only Autumn

Be a nice guy and take Linda for a holiday the renos will wait.

The next instalment:-

After our week of cruising we arrived back in Vancouver and picked up our hire car, a new Mazda 3, just like home except for the steering wheel. We didn’t want to hang around Vancouver but I did want to visit Grose Mountain and have a look so we headed out of town to the big hill in the background. I took the cable car to the top for a look about, Barbara stayed put not wanting to risk it with her vertigo. Quite a spectacular view but I didn’t spend long and headed back so we could be on our way. In the car park was this RV, Chevrolet based according to the hub caps, amazingly angular and ugly in my book but had to take a photo. Out of town and on the highway it was a spectacular drive, nice gently winding, divided road with mountains on the right and the sea on the left. Only an 80kph limit despite being a great bit of road. Squamish, a town of about 20,000 people was our destination; I wanted to see a Royal Hudson locomotive at the West Coast Rail Heritage Park so a bit of a look around town, found a motel for the night and off to the museum. In town this Chevy Van (its official name according to the badge) with a Van Amera conversion. The wheel cover says they are from Kelowna, B.C. but I couldn’t find much about them searching the www, seems they are part of a company that rebuilds buses and does mobility conversions. A rather unusual style and loved the paint The fully restored Royal Hudson was a beast housed in a new $5 million dollar half roundhouse with only a couple of carriages for company. It was to steam to Vancouver the following weekend but I had to miss it Lots of interesting things for a rail fan including an all timber 85 foot by 151 foot shed which was built in 1914 for use as a rail car shop. When no longer required by the railway it was given to the park and moved over a mile in one piece to the new site, and I have trouble shifting a 14 foot van Barbara once again opted out of this one, a pretty hot day so I suggested she might sit in the shade in the car park as they had no café. That was ok but while in there I saw my only wild bear, roaming around among the carriages When I related this to Barbara she wasn’t impressed, accusing me of leaving her out for bear bait in the car park Can’t win! I took a tour around town later to see what might be sitting around in the way of vans but nothing apart from a burn out van on a block.
Next day it was off to Whistler for a quick look about, very nicely laid out and tidy with only pedestrian traffic in the shopping area, lots of walking, Barbara was making me pay for her sitting about Nothing to excite in the way of vehicles and it was back on the road and what a bit of road, very scenic and great driving and we ended the day in the town of Cache Creek with a population of about a 1000 people. Not a very impressive place given the glorious country we travelled through to get there, as with many of these towns it is stuck between a river and a big rock, more hills in this case. The drive around town, I think I managed nearly every street, yielded some interesting van items however.
The most impressive was old 35-40 foot monster which I think harks from the 1950s; I have some adverts for vans like this from that period. It had dual axles and a tow bar but I think they were intended to just go somewhere and be set up as a home. Not a particularly friendly looking place so I took notice of the “No Trespassing” sign on the front window of the van Note the uninviting background too. Just around the corner in the same street was a Skylark 12 ft van which had a dual axle a lot of rubber on the ground for a little van I thought and more of the uninviting background. I don’t know who made it, it looked 60s ish to me. I can only find current Jayco Skylark vans on a Google search. Still in the same street a small RV parked took my interest for nothing more than the spare wheel cover which featured a Kangaroo of all things. I wonder if Mr. O’Connor has an Aussie connection On that note it was quite common to find baby changing stations in rest rooms branded “Koala Bear Kare” which featuring a baby Koala in a nappy. You would think with all their bears, moose, wolves, bison and other big animals they would use their own, maybe ours are just cuter The other interesting thing in town was the Fire Hall (station) which featured the full frontal of a 57 Chev, a strange decoration for a Fire Station I thought but it seems to be the town logo.
These photos will follow without further mention in another the next post.
So, two days after picking up the car we were in Cache Creek only 350km from Vancouver, maybe we were spending too much time sight seeing. We had been told it would take about 8 hrs to get from Vancouver to Lake Louise but I was beginning to think they too use the ‘country mile’ or they had a different time scale

George

The other photos from Cache Creek. George

Departing Cache Creek early the intention was to reach Lake Louise that evening, the locals told us is was a good 8 hours driving They told us that in Vancouver too and we had already been on the road for 2 days
Did I mention the awful coffee Yeah I did. Still awful but someone on the cruise recommended trying Tim Horton’s and at last we found one, 24 hour coffee and donut shop with a huge selection of donuts and coffee in a real cup! Not bad, especially for the money, a couple of coffees and donuts only about $6. Rather oddly, I thought, most places selling coffee sold iced tea and cappuccino but you couldn’t actually buy a cup of tea or a cappuccino Beats me.
So on the road it was more good roads and scenery, for some reason I had in my mind we went through Vernon so took that exit only to spend a couple of hours getting there and back onto Hwy 1 but it was still lovely driving. At the Vernon information centre a nice Dodge Pleasure-Way outfit looked like a good way to travel
Out of Vernon we found a roadside market so stopped for a look, nothing grabbed me to buy but there was a commercial van selling ice cream, trying to at least, the temperature was only about 8 degrees I couldn’t help notice a stall holders GMC pick up with a few minor corrosion problems, still registered although I guess it’s not structural, it would have a chassis Lunch stop was at a spot called Craigellachie where the last railroad spike was driven to join the east to the west. It was cold and wet but there were quite a few RVs in the car park, a special parking area being provided for them. The only building there was a little museum/gift shop about the size an outback dunny (the rest rooms were bigger) so everyone was in their RVs. A Toyota motorhome parked near us with a Chinook body that looked just a tad optimistic given the power source and then for the first time something that looked at least half familiar, a little pop up Starcraft caravan Caravans of any size we found were very much in the minority, RVs and 5th wheelers seem to rule.
For interest I asked the lady in the museum how long to get to Lake Louise, answer, about 8 hours what had we been going all morning, were we ever going to get there
Considering how good the roads were I couldn’t believe how little distance we were actually covering.
The Craigellachie photos on next post.
With cold and rain, and I have a feeling a little sleet at times, we drove on and after what seemed an eternity entered the town of Golden which was bathed in sunshine about 5pm. It was extremely busy, everyone stopping for fuel, food and so on, we headed for a motel. When I got fuel I checked our distance and we had covered about 850km since leaving Vancouver and it had taken three days

George

Here's the photos at Craigellachie lunch stop. George

Golden was another of those towns between a river and a hard, high place although more scenic than Cache Creek and home to a few more soles, 3800 approximately.
It had been hectic when we arrived with cars, trucks, vans and RVs going in all directions. There was a Boler (the photo was on the first post) then an old 70s Cadillac towing a similar era van, which I only just caught as it went past at the lights Next morning it was a different story though, the place was quiet and we headed off to Lake Louise, the outside temperature at 7 degrees according to the Mazda. It was uphill from Golden and the longer we drove the colder it got until it was showing just 1 degree and we were glad we were doing the trip in summer
The elusive Lake Louise was finally reached so we had a quick drive about, picked up a parking voucher and headed to the Lake with the temperature now around 7 degrees. The car park was huge but filling quickly from when we had driven through, RVs and vans had a separate car park and I didn’t venture there or I may have never gotten away to see the sights. The Lake and the Fairmont Hotel were certainly spectacular; we walked about part of the lake and gardens and checked out the hotel foyer and shops. I was looking for a 16 GB USB card and there was a photo shop in the hotel but the prices were at the upper range and no discount because the manager was an Aussie. I later found the cards were 2 for half the price at Wal Mart when I found one While checking out the shops in the hotel I saw this kids book in a display case but it didn’t say what shop had it and to be honest I wasn’t game to move in some of them in case I broke something and had to pay for it We got a great seat in the restaurant looking over the garden and lake and had a soup, roll and a coffee (in a real cup but still crap coffee) then headed off to check out the Moraine Lake before setting off to Banff. But only after we had a photo taken to prove we were there George

The Moraine Lake was well worth the look but the parking was an absolute dog’s breakfast and I was lucky to duck in as someone was leaving and resorted to a bit of Aussie push and shove to get it There were lots of RVs there but I was starting to get more selective so took a photo of an OKanagan on a Ford which looked quite stylish but may have been a bit claustrophobic. An old Dodge took my fancy too. Banff became our overnight stop, good dinner and beer at the Irish Pub an absolute licence to print money Next morning a drive about to look at the sights and the Fairmont Hotel which was most impressive, hard to imagine how they fill the thing
A big Outback van on a Chev pick up took my fancy for a photo. Leaving Banff the objective was to try and get to Vauxhall but not long after getting onto Hwy 1 there was a traffic jam, cars and RVs and buses stopping up ahead I thought there must have been an accident. As it turned out though there had only been a bear sighting, everyone stopped, absolute chaos I hope they never tour here and do the same if they see a kangaroo
We stopped on the outskirts of Calgary for fuel and a coffee (absolute rubbish coffee at the servo ) and headed on. The road was fantastic and we passed Calgary but we could see huge RV and caravan centres, can’t begin to imagine what their stock was worth .
After a couple of hours driving I checked the map and decided Vauxhall was not attainable without putting the rest of our trip off schedule as it was still about 250km and we had to come back over half of it. So we took Hwy 9 to the north to get to Drumheller and Wetaskawin which were also on the agenda. Drumheller had a dinosaur museum we had been told was a must see and Wetaskawin had a car museum I wanted to look at so Vauxhall had to fall by the wayside
As it turned out we stopped at the small town of Irricana, about 1100 people, the same as Vauxhall. We were looking for something for lunch and a toilet but couldn’t find a public toilet and the only place open (Sunday) was a combined convenience store, take away, servo with a very dodgy looking menu and no toilet so we opted for some of our cheese, biscuits and fruit in the park. Our toilet needs were only sated when I headed for the showground RV park where the Native American caretaker let us use the facilities I took a photo of a huge tri axle caravan that was emptying its tanks and then turned my attention to a small camper trailer and a nearby Chev camper van. The caretaker owned the camper van and had just bought the Chev in order to upgrade before the winter which seemed like a wise move There were half a dozen assorted RVs and vans in the park which were owned by men on gas and oil drilling rigs which dotted the area. I could only imagine Vauxhall would not have been any more exciting but I was disappointed that we hadn’t made it there all the same
George