Archive for October, 2007
October 17, 2007 at 8:42 pm · Filed under Mobile technology
I’ll cut right to the chase here. We didn’t go anywhere today and the most exciting thing was having tuna fish on toast for lunch. So I’m going to take today’s blog to rant a bit.
Today’s Thesis: Campground wi-fi is about as reliable as Nigerian banker with $20 million to share.
It’s not usually the campground owner’s fault. Many of them got swept up into the promise that wi-fi would be a money-making service for them. They’d provide Internet service and charge $6 a day for it. A few still try to do it, but many of them have just opted to allow wi-fi for free, figuring it’s another marketing tool.
But getting wi-fi into RV’s all over a campground reliably is trickier than it looks. Geography, trees, buildings, and aluminum sided RVs all interfere with the signal. Electric motors, cordless phones, and other wi-fi installations also get in the way. Given that they are giving it away, not too many campground owners are inclined to make the level of investment that is needed to provide a good consistent signal. The result is that at most campgrounds we’ve visited that promise wi-fi, only about half actually provide a signal we can use inside the Airstream.
If you can’t receive the signal indoors, it’s not very useful. In Oregon near Crater Lake National Park, I remember a park where the wi-fi was reachable only within a few feet of the office. I had to sit at a picnic table outdoors with mosquitoes chewing on me. If it’s not mosquitoes, it’s cold temperatures (try typing with frozen fingers!), wind, sun so bright you can’t see the screen, or rain. It’s rarely nice enough outside to work on a laptop.
Then it gets worse. The routers and cable/DSL modems commonly used occasionally have problems, caused by power outages, spikes, people tripping over the wires, etc. They often need to be re-set, but usually nobody in the management office knows how — or even is aware that something is wrong. So even when we find a signal, I often find something technical is wrong. The router may not be assigning IP addresses, for example.
A typical scenario is that the wi-fi works for a few hours, but then suddenly stops for no apparent reason. Sometimes it comes back, usually it doesn’t. When I tell the folks in the office, I usually get a panicked look and then some gobbledygook like, “I think the Internet is down,” or “I’ll have to ask Tony when he gets back next week.”
Sometimes they’ll give up and let me take a look at the system. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found myself on my hands and knees underneath someone’s desk sorting out dusty wires. Usually it’s a matter of tracing the power cables, discreetly pulling them out (because the staff gets nervous when things are disconnected, even for a moment), and reconnecting them in the proper order.
This is why, when I am told by prospective travelers that they intend to seek out “wi-fi campgrounds”, I ask if they really need to get online. If you intend to rely on the Internet as you travel for information and communications, don’t expect wi-fi in the campgrounds to work more than 50% of the time. Really, it’s that bad.
If intermittent and unpredictable access to the Internet is OK with you, then you’ll be happy. If not, you’ll need to consider either a cellular Internet card (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T/Cingular, and Alltel offer them), or a satellite Internet dish. I’ve talked about these options before in the blog, so if you are curious, just do a search on our archives.
I don’t have a lot of hope that the bad state of campground wi-fi will improve any time soon. The cost of putting in a real commercial-grade service is beyond most campground owners. For those who regard Internet service as essential as oxygen and drinkable water, expect to “bring your own” for the next decade or so.
October 16, 2007 at 7:01 pm · Filed under Travel / lifestyle musings
Our attempt to spend a few days in Vancouver was stymied by circumstance. I needed a campground with wi-fi available, to catch up on work, but I hadn’t thought to research it before we went into Canada. Once we got to the Vancouver area, it was raining (of course, because that’s what happens in the Pacific Northwest in the winter), traffic was heavy, and we had no clue where to find an appropriate campground.
After meandering aimlessly through Surrey for a while, and having lunch in a parking lot, we decided to head back across the border so that I could catch up on work with my Verizon card and phone, and skip Vancouver this time.
The good news is that we are safely on the Pacific coast. We got past the final barricade of mountains along Route 5 in British Columbia without incident. Although the weather will probably be rainy here on the coast whenever it isn’t foggy, it will mostly be mild. For example, the weather forecast for Birch Bay (about 100 miles north of Seattle) is virtually the same for every day this week: highs in the 50s, lows in the 40s, and a high probability of rain. Beats snow.
So we can take our time from here. We’re no longer racing against the calendar. Our only scheduled obligation is to meet some friends for Thanksgiving in southern California, and even that plan is still tentative. Worst case, we have a month to drive 1,250 miles through Washington, Oregon, and California. That’s my kind of schedule.
The current discussion is whether we want to return to home base for Christmas. Eleanor and I had another one of those early morning discussions in bed about it. No conclusions yet. We have several possibilities and considerations which make it a tougher decision than you might think.
For one thing, in December RV’ers have a limited range of destinations. For decent weather out west and no risk of snow, we’ve got the valleys of California and Nevada (San Joaquin, Death Valley, and Owens Valley), the Pacific coast, southern Arizona, southern New Mexico, southwest Texas, and Mexico. Any place over 4,000 feet is suspect. Anything over 6,000 feet is very risky. That rules out the entire Colorado Plateau, and most of the western national parks, for examples.
But this is a fun problem to have. We’ll continue to mull it over as we cruise the coastline, and by the time we get to the San Joaquin Valley I’m sure we’ll have something figured out. In the meantime, the next stop will be in the San Juan Islands for a few days, and then over to Olympic National Park this weekend.
Our location: 48 °55’7.11″N, 122 °44’17.03″W
October 15, 2007 at 6:23 pm · Filed under Roadtrips
As expected, some weather will be coming in on Tuesday. After weighing the options, we decided to head out of Banff National Park today rather than depart on Tuesday and risk icy roads. We had considered driving about 80 miles up the Icefields Parkway to see the glaciers, but in the end it seemed best to enjoy a sunny day’s drive out of the park. We’ve gotten a taste of Banff, and now we know what we’ll want to do on the next visit (and when!)
The drive out was as gorgeous as expected. Heading west from Lake Louise the road passes through Yoho National Park, then Mt Revelstoke, and finally Glacier National Park. It winds through razor-sharp ridges carved by long-ago glaciers, along lakes, and following the transcontinental Canadian Pacific railway. Up above, several glaciers can be spotted, slowly sliding their way down the mountains (typically a few feet each year).
As we drove we spotted some very nice log cabins, probably vacation homes, and this kicked off a discussion that Eleanor and I have had a few times before. It goes like this: “Gee, isn’t that a nice cabin?” “Wouldn’t it be nice to have one?” “A nice weekend getaway!” “But where?”
And then we realize that although a getaway cabin sounds nice, and they look nice, we would already have one, with wheels. We like the idea of the log cabin but in less than a year we’d certainly be bored with it. We’d be thinking of all the places we’d like to go explore other than the same acreage around the cabin, and I’d get tired of the maintenance and expense “¦ and soon we’d be “getting away” from the cabin, too.
For a leisure vehicle, the Airstream is extraordinarily practical. It is much cheaper than a vacation home, requires less maintenance, and goes almost anywhere. I like the idea of living on a boat for a while, for example, but it would be much more limiting than the Airstream. I like the idea of a cabin in the woods, but it’s too much trouble. I like to stay in nice hotels once in a while, but they are vastly more expensive. That’s the problem with the Airstream. It’s just so practical that it makes the alternatives look like outrageous luxuries or financial traps.
Tonight the vacation cabin on wheels is parked in a less-than-exciting spot, a Wal-Mart in Kamloops BC. A light rain started almost the minute we pulled in, but since it’s much warmer (59 F) here at lower altitude there’s little worry about icing tomorrow. We are now on Pacific Time and will probably stay in this zone for at least several weeks as we meander down the west coast. Our short-term goal is Vancouver. If I can find good online access and a nice campground for a few days, we’ll stay and explore the city before crossing back into the US. Otherwise, we’ll cross back into the US and begin our travels in Washington state.
October 14, 2007 at 5:05 pm · Filed under Places to go
It should be no surprise that it is cold here. Every morning we have heavy frost on the ground and the snow we see at the mountain peaks is in no danger of melting. But during the day the sun has been pleasantly warming us and the Airstream, so that we are encouraged to go outside and explore. Today the warming was a bit slower than forecast. By 11 a.m. it was still in the 30s (or as I should say since we are in Canada, about 2 degrees C).
We decided we were more interested in things north of here so we hitched up the Airstream and towed it 57 km up to Lake Louise. No reservations needed (or accepted) here either, this time of year. The national park campground is mostly closed down and in the one remaining open loop we are one of about six campers.
The village of Lake Louise is a much smaller place than Banff, with just a couple of streets and no large residential areas like Banff. The basics are here: a few stores, four or five restaurants, gas, repairs, medical care, visitor center, etc. There aren’t many people.
The campground is the northernmost one still open. All of the campgrounds in the neighboring national parks (Jasper, Yoho, Glacier, Mount Revelstoke, Kootenay) are closed for the season. Several people suggested we roam further north to Jasper National Park (227 km, 140 miles), but we can’t stay there without some place to camp, and it’s too long for a satisfying day trip.
Even here, the water has been turned off in the dump station. We found a single spigot near our campsite that still works, so we refilled our fresh water holding tank. Normally water is easy to find, but this time of year in Canada I’ve learned that we can’t take it for granted. We will be watching our water use carefully once we leave this spot.
The closure of the campgrounds will make things logistically tricky for us when we leave. There are Provincial Parks with campgrounds along our route, but we don’t know which ones are still open for camping. Normally I’d spend a half hour on the Internet researching and planning but we’re a bit limited there too. I found wifi in Lake Louise and that’s how I got the last couple of blog entries online. It’s $5 per day if you use your own laptop and work outside (the store that offers this service is very small, so there’s no seating inside.) I joined a group of Asian tourists who were all sitting outside in the 40-degree weather with their laptops. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a few last-minute issues related to the Winter 2007 magazine, and by the time I was done dealing with those, my laptop battery was flat and my butt was freezing from sitting on bare concrete outdoors. So, no time to research campgrounds. We’ll wing it.
By the way, a big kudos to blog reader Melanie who spotted the misspelling of Pete Townshend’s name on our Winter 2007 cover. Can you believe that four people reviewed that cover and nobody spotted it? I am grateful for you blog readers who are always there to lend a hand, on everything from yogurt to camping to spelling. In another 48 hours it would have been too late to fix it “¦
The big target for today was the Chateau Lake Louise, and the incredibly beautiful area surrounding it. The Chateau, as I mentioned yesterday, was part of the Canadian Pacific Railway hotel chain, originally built around the turn of the century (no, the other turn of the century) and extended and rebuilt several times since then. It was a way of boosting railway travel by bringing tourists to the scenery.
Lake Louise has an eery translucent green color to it. It drains through a creek and is very cold, so all the trees that fall into it don’t wash out, and they decay very slowly. Many of them are visible in the shallow end, making the lake look as if a hundred ice-fishing cabins fell into it. High above the lake is a glacier, looking like a giant snowdrift, and the sharp glacially-carved ridges that define this area.
A short (3.2 km roundtrip) and steep hike through the pine forest will bring you to a really terrific overlook of the lake and the Chateau. I recommend it for anyone who can hike. But if you won’t be getting up there soon, check out the photo “¦
October 13, 2007 at 3:58 pm · Filed under Places to go
This is the farthest we’ve ever taken this Airstream north ( 51 °11’0.62″N). In mid-October at this latitude, our solar panels still generate some power, but not nearly enough to compensate for the furnace. Nights are running in the low 30s and daytime highs are in the 50s, with the sun passing by at a very low angle. This is optimal weather for October but without a power hookup for the Airstream we’d still lose ground rapidly.
I ordered a catalytic heater from Vintage Trailer Supply last week. I don’t foresee us having it installed in time to use this winter, but it will be a welcome upgrade later.
Fortunately, this campground (Tunnel Mountain) has 30 amp electric hookups. That’s all we need to stay until our water runs out, which based on our Yellowstone experience could easily be more than a week. In this case, however, weather and work will be the limiting factors. The weather is forecast to turn gloomy on Wednesday and I’ll need to find better access to the Internet than the expensive “cybercafes” in downtown Banff and Lake Louise. That means we’ll be heading southwest through British Columbia, into Washington state by Tuesday.
This time of year the options of “what to do” in Banff are more limited than in Summer. All of the campgrounds are closed except the one we’re in. The amphitheater talks are done for the season. Open hours are limited in many places, the “Ice Explorer” (a sort of giant bus than takes tourists over the glacier) stops running on the 15th, some roads and historic sites are closed, etc.
So we decided to stay close to home today and explore the town of Banff. Eleanor was completely charmed by it. It’s a small town with a touristy center (the main street is currently under reconstruction), but throughout there is interesting architecture, historic homes, walking trails, and a general friendly walkability that makes exploring on foot a pleasure. Everywhere you look, there is a view framed by the towering mountains, which catch the sunlight in all sorts of interesting ways.
Everything in Banff is expensive, which is probably why I noticed a lot of younger tourists eating slices of pizza on the street rather than going inside the cafes and restaurants. I checked a lot of streetside lunch menus: a burrito was $14, a “hamburger special” was $10, egg foo yung was $14, and fondue for one was more expensive than a lobster in Maine ($34).
But you don’t come here to save money. You come here because it is just spectacular to see. Along the drive through Kootenay last, we spotted a handsome black bear snuffling around in a meadow, gorging itself ( “hyperphagia”) in preparation for hibernation. Elk are a common sight right now, too. We saw a pair of huge bull elk walking through a residential neighborhood up the hill. From our windows in the Airstream we can see just incredible mountains and glacially-carved ridges which seem to change with every passing minute.
One of my interests is the former Canadian Pacific Railway hotels, which are found in almost every major Canadian city. (Now they are part of the Fairmont luxury hotel chain.) I like to go see them just because they are such marvelous examples of architecture, and romantic symbols of the railway era. The Banff Springs Hotel is one of the most famous, but there’s also the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal, the Royal York in Toronto, and the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa. We’ve stayed at all of those. Just about 60 km north of here there’s the Chateau Lake Louise, which we will most definitely go see tomorrow.
The mountains in this area are almost indescribably spectacular, yet somehow familiar. Both Eleanor and I puzzled about this for a few minutes in the morning while watching the sun come up and illuminate the high peak, before coming to the same conclusion. This area is the only place we’ve ever seen in North America that looks like Yosemite National Park. The rugged stone and dramatic elevation changes are reminiscent of the area near Half Dome, except that here the view is 360 degrees around us at all times.
You could easily spend a day just looking at the views. They are endless and constantly changing. Every street in town, every site in the campground, every minute of the day, has a different view ““ and they are all good.
One of our stops in town was Keller’s grocery, where Bles-Wold yogurt is sold. That’s the yogurt that Bill from Alberta has been recommending to me (not sold in the US). Sadly, Keller’s didn’t have any plain yogurt in stock, but I bought a quart of strawberry just so I could try it out. Bles-Wold is very creamy with a buttery flavor and I liked it. It contains no additives, so it passes the purity test. Too bad I can’t get it in the USA.
Our other little grocery purchases were several pastys for dinner, and a half-dozen interesting-looking Canadian candy bars just for fun. I snagged a Cadbury Wonderbar and a Coffee Crisp, which are two of my faves from Canada. Airstream Life is printed in Canada and our printer sends us a gift bag of candy every year, which has probably been the cause of this particular fetish.
Being this far north in the fall, and surrounded by mountain ridges, sunset comes early. By 6:30 the light was waning, with a final gorgeous golden display to be seen from the campground. This made us think about our next destination. If it were summer, we’d be tempted to head north even further, eventually to Alaska, but now we have no choice but to point the Airstream west to the temperate Pacific coast. There, freezing and snow will be much less likely, and we can spend months slowly working our way south if we want to.
There is one major barrier between us and the Pacific: the Cascade Mountains. The only low pass through that range that I know of is along I-84. There, the highway follows the Columbia River Gorge. It’s a really nice drive (which we did in July 2005) but it is so far south that it would cause us to miss nearly all of Washington state.
Our preferred route is through British Columbia to Vancouver, or failing that, through northern Washington state to Seattle. But both of those routes will bring us over the Cascades, and if there’s any snow we will be forced to backtrack hundreds of miles to find an alternate route. So we’ve worked out several scenarios for getting west, and we’ll pick the one that looks the best based on the weather in the next week.
October 12, 2007 at 3:52 pm · Filed under Roadtrips
[Note: this blog comes to you via a wifi spot near Lake Louise. Since I have to post this sitting on a bench outdoors, I’m skipping the photos until later. I’ll update this blog with all the pics when I can.]
Before I launch into this blog I should share some background. Eleanor has been talking about visiting Banff for over a decade. It has become, as the result of years of fantasizing about it and seeing photos, an almost mythical destination for her. Being the wonderful husband I am (even though I’m not willing to spring for a night in the hotel as Danine suggested) I promised to get her here.
This helps explain why coming up here is worth the trouble and expense. And believe me, there’s plenty of both involved, especially this time of year. We’ve been routing ourselves since late August specifically to get to this particular spot. Every decision, every stop, and our entire schedule has been oriented toward getting to Banff before the snow made it impossible.
This morning we packed up, said goodbye to Bert and Janie, and began the 300-mile trek north on Rt 93. The trip took over seven hours because it’s almost all “blue highway” and of course we made a lot of stops: dropping off mail in Whitefish, MT, a final US gas stop at Eureka, MT ($2.91 per gallon), crossing the border, and of course the innumerable bathroom stops.
Border crossing is becoming a little more structured these days. We’ve gone into Canada dozens of times, with and without the Airstream, and in the past couple of years it seems that the friendly Canadian officials are becoming more like their US counterparts. They are asking more questions, checking things a bit more often, and taking more time. The crossing still took less than five minutes but I was interested in the fact that the agent asked me twice about weapons and was careful to verify our identities (even to the point of taking a peek at Emma and comparing her to her passport). While passports are technically not required for land travel across the US/Canadian border at this point, it won’t be long before they are.
Route 93 follows the western edge of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, so that there’s almost always a view of steep and craggy peaks to the right (heading north). They were green down low with pine and bluish above, lightly frosted with snow. Occasionally we’d see a bright yellow squiggly line winding down the sides of the mountains, caused by the fall foliage of the aspen trees. They follow the avalanche routes, because they grow more quickly than the pines following the scouring of a massive snow slide.
The other color delight is the delicious blue/green water that is found in nearly all the rivers and lakes. It’s a translucent Caribbean blue, but more amazing by being surrounded by sharp granite and pine trees. We don’t yet know why the water here is that color, but I will try to find out.
We picked this day to travel because the weather forecast showed a stretch of good weather for the next four days. This time of year, a snowstorm could make us semi-permanent residents. All of our escape routes involve high mountain passes where tire chains are required for vehicles towing trailers. We don’t have chains and even if we did I don’t want to tow the Airstream on roads that would require chains. So we’re counting on sunshine and will be checking the weather daily for reports of a storm over British Columbia or the Pacific that might suddenly drive us out.
Even today, a fairly decent day with a slight overcast, gave us a hint of how quickly things can change. From Route 93 at Radium Springs, we turned right into the Kootenay National Park and the road began to climb steeply into the mountains. At times the grade reached 10% (with a speed limit of 70 kph, about 35 MPH) and within a few minutes of this the clouds were thick and ominous, with occasional rain spitting down and temperatures falling rapidly into the low 40s.
Things began to go a bit off after we entered Kootenay. The corner gas station in Radium Springs, at the entrance to the park, showed a price of CDN$1.15 per liter (about $4.34 per gallon). Knowing that fuel along Rt 93 had been in the range of $1.02 per liter ($3.81 per gallon), I decided to skip buying gas there. We had 3/8 of tank according to the gauge.
In retrospect, I should have bought 3-4 gallons at the outrageous Radium Springs price just to fatten our fuel margin. Although we had plenty of fuel to travel the remaining 80 miles to Banff under normal highway conditions, I forgot to calculate in a safety margin for the extended climbing we were about to do, and the lower efficiency of the gas engine at high altitude. I also shouldn’t have trusted the fuel gauge, because it is not entirely accurate.
Then things began to go further awry. The campgrounds in all of Kootenay National Park were closed for the season. This mandated that we drive all the way to Banff, leaving no alternative to stop for the night. Occasional rain began to fall. The very early sunset of this northern latitude began to occur at 6:30, made worse by the heavy clouds. The peaks that surrounded us were now largely obscured by clouds. And the fuel gauge started to fall rapidly.
I did a quick calculation when the yellow “low fuel” light went on. We’d traveled 207 miles since the last fillup. If we got 8 MPG (our absolute worst-case fuel economy, reserved for days when we tow against 20-knot headwinds), we’d run out at 224 miles, about 10 miles short of the next fuel station in Banff. If we got 9 MPG, we’d have about two gallons to spare. I don’t like shaving it that close. I was envisioning myself pedaling along the highway breakdown lane in the dark for ten miles, with rain hitting my face, and then hunting down a fuel can and begging a ride back “¦
Fortunately we did make it to Banff without a problem, and when I calculated our economy I found we averaged 9.1 MPG for the route. The tank took 25.4 gallons at $1.00 per liter, for a record-setting fillup of CDN$96. (Canadian and US dollars are only two cents apart now, so figuring the US-Canadian conversion doesn’t make much difference.) It will cost us at least $200 in gas for our trip to Banff, counting side trips, but Eleanor is worth it. She reads this blog, you know.
October 11, 2007 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Mobile technology
Parked in Bert & Janie’s driveway, I have dug through enough work to escape for a few days to Canada. In the past 36 hours I’ve worked nearly 20 hours. I feel like a rodent gathering seeds for winter, constantly working so that I can take a little time off.
Except that I won’t hibernate. The weather forecast for Banff looks pretty good, with highs in the upper 50s and lots of sunshine. Considering the altitude and the time of year, that’s about the most we could have hoped for. So we’ll scurry around and try to see half of the great things that everyone has told us about: Radium Hot Springs, Icefield Parkway, historic Banff, Jasper, Lake Louise, the Post Hotel, etc. — in a few days.
I’m also reliably informed by loyal blog reader Bill that I can get a great Canadian yogurt while we are in Banff. If you’ve read this blog more than a few weeks, you know that hunting yogurt that contains just milk has become a peculiar passion of mine lately.
I’d like to stay up in Alberta and British Columbia for a few weeks, roaming west toward Vancouver and slurping down yogurt, but again the demands of work interfere. My Verizon Wireless card will work in parts of Canada, but Verizon will charge me a punishing $2 per megabyte to use it. That means a typical load of daily email would cost me $25-50. It’s the same with my phone: brutal per-minute rates. So those tools that I normally use every day will not be used.
And unfortunately, timing is against me. The Winter 2007 issue of Airstream Life is going to press next week and I need to be online for at least a few hours Tues-Thursday to review final page proofs. That means I need to find a wi-fi hotspot or cybercafe in Banff. It shouldn’t be terribly hard, just slightly inconvenient. You retirees have got it right. I need to retire!
Seriously however, a job well done is a reward in itself and I do enjoy my job. I’m not sure that I would enjoy our travels as much if I wasn’t also publishing the magazine. The two go hand-in-hand, for me.
I am also proud of my staff for pulling together to create a great magazine issue. It feels good to complete any issue of the magazine, but especially so when it looks great, and comes in on time and under budget, as this one has. The Winter 2007 issue should be well received. I’m particularly happy with the “newsstand” cover, the one that appears only on the magazines that are for sale in book stores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders. Want to see a sneak preview?
I thought so. Here it is:
Now, don’t tell anyone you saw this! It’ll be our secret until it comes out in November, OK?
The plan is to head out on Friday, mid-morning. We should be across the border within an hour and in Radium Hot Springs by early afternoon. Most likely I won’t be able to blog from there on Friday night but it’s hard to say for sure. At some point over the weekend I’ll try to get a blog entry up, and as usual, once I do get connectivity to the Internet I’ll backdate a few entries.
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