Never Ending Adventure: Story of My Life: Christmas Adventure Part 1...Canada

This year for Christmas, Tristan and I decided to take a road trip to see his mom. She lives in on Whidbey Island in Washington, its located just outside of Seattle. Since we live on an island with the only way off being ferry or plane, we opted for the ferry.

When you decide to take a ferry out of Ketchikan you have two choices, the 8 hour ride to Prince Rupert, Canada or the 2 day ride to Bellingham, Washington. We chose to go down on the Prince Rupert run and come back through Bellingham, that way we could road trip through British Columbia.

Meet Key Lime...our mascot we bought in Key West

So we arrived in Prince Rupert at 3 AM and got very little sleep before we were up on our way. It was pretty foggy leaving Prince Rupert and as we headed through the valley's the weather was a little iffy. Our orignial goal was to make it to Quesnel which was halfway to Whidbey Island. It became apparent we weren't going to make it anywhere near Quesnel pretty soon. We made it to Smithers and stopped at a McDonald's with free WIFI so I could find us a new hotel in Houston, BC which was about another hour drive.

Our lunch view back through the canyon.

We got back to the car and there was a problem. Something about the generator being broken (even after a year and a half with Tristan I still know very little about VW beetle maintenance). This is when we realized how absolutely amazing every person we met in BC was. While Tristan worked on the bug, people came out of the woodwork to help offering rides and giving advice to where to go in town.

This is when we met Lance at FreeLance automotive. If you ever breakdown near Smithers, BC call Lance. He called everyone he knew all over town trying to find someone who had parts. Now keep in mind, we pulled up around 4:30, and it is now well after 5 on December 22nd. Someone finally gave him the number to a guy who had a shop at his house who collected old parts named Paul.

That's when the real adventure started...the directions we were given to Paul's house were something like this: "Go back out of town, over the bridge, then up the hill, and down the hill. After that there will be a sign for something a fort, park, or hotel...I don't really remember. Then you will turn right...and I don't really remember if it is before or after the sign. Then keep driving till you see the house with a bunch of shit in the yard...that's Paul's place."

So off Tristan and I went to find Paul's place...in the dark, in a snowstorm that had just started, and with a car we knew was on a time limit before it quit. Thankfully, after a few wrong turns, we found Paul. And he had the right parts. So we made our way back into town to spend the night.

The great thing about traveling with Tristan in the bug, is he can fix just about anything if it goes wrong. So once we found the parts, it just took a couple more hours and we were on the road. Of course now there is close to 5 inches of snow, and it is still falling. The bug has snow tires, so that really wasn't that much of a problem. The sun finally came out once we got over the mountain.

That night we made our way to Quesnel, BC. The next morning we were on our way and bound and determined to make it to Washington. Just like everywhere else in BC, the scenery was amazing! We drove through a beautiful canyon right along the river. And then we found another blizzard. Thankfully we were on the down side of the mountain when we got into it, and it wasn't for very long. Finally we made our way to the boarder.

We still had another hour and half, but at least the snow had stopped. We finally made it to Coupeville, after a quick stop in Eddison, WA at the Bread Farm to get fresh baked bread. Since it was so late, they gave us free cookies as well...and they were wonderful!

Once at Tristan's moms we realized that Tristan no longer had his wallet. At some point between the boarder and Coupeville, he had lost it. At some point he stopped to take his sweatshirt off at a pull out on the side of the road and we are pretty sure that is where it disappeared. Thankfully he had given his ID to me after customs, so at least he could get back to Alaska.

Driving through Canada in the winter was an adventure. Everything was covered in snow and was absolutely beautiful. The people of British Columbia are some of the nicest people I have met on any of my trips! Here are some more pictures of our wonderful trip.