Camping in July 2024
This was Bailey’s first extended road trip and she was a champ. She likes to bark at oncoming traffic though when we are driving on two-lane highways which is cute, but annoying.
We embarked at the end of June for BC and Washington. We visited friends in Vernon and Osoyoos, British Columbia, then headed to Fort Langley and south to Seattle-area, then returned home through Washington.
Our first stop, after a night just outside Calgary to visit my mother-in-law, was Cedar Falls Campground, for two nights. A nice park just outside of Vernon on the way to Silver Star, in the cedars (hence the name) and walking distance to BX Falls (hence the campground’s name). Cedar Falls is a pretty campground with a few amenities; the sites are nice, and it’s real forestry camping. The downside is the sites are really, really tight and wi-fi at the sites was non existent. We were told by the campground manager to turn on data to even make a phone call! Also, for RV-ers, do not take Pleasant Valley Road to the campground. The weather when we were there was cooler, so much so that we had to turn on our heat in the mornings.
Next stop was Osoyoos, BC for two nights to visit some other friends. We stayed at the Nk’Mip Campground again, which was extremely busy. I’ve written about our experience there before https://ourhotelonwheels.ca/2022/07/28/our-month-in-osoyoos-bc/ and not much had changed, but that was fine, we weren’t there much this time around as we spent a lot of time with our friends. That said, this was the first time we’d been there with our dog and she got a little freaked out at all the activity that swirled around her as she walked. We had to dodge kid cyclists gone wild and vehicles everywhere, when we walked her by the lake. Never say never I guess (we said last time we stayed at this campground in 2022 we’d never stay there again, but there are limited options for camping in Osoyoos, unfortunately.)
Onward and upward to our favourite campground of the lot. It was our fourth time staying at the municipal campground at Fort Langley, BC. Brae Island Regional Park encircles the campground and provides walking and hiking trails. The Fraser River is close by. Fort camping’s short walking distance to town to shops, restaurants, farmer’s markets, etc. makes this campground a desirable location. Additionally, this campground had the best wi-fi, many repeaters were installed in the campground, which became important to us as the temperature climbed. Initially we were worried the park would be a bit noisy as that weekend they were having an western-themed event at the campground, but fortunately our site was located far enough away from the hub of the event. Unlike the coolness of Vernon, Fort Langley got hot, hot, hot, so we walked in the mornings and stayed in our RV in the beautiful AC in the afternoons, and took advantage of the wi-fi to stream a couple movies on our IPAD. Fun fact : The antiques store in Fort Langley was used as the store in the Garage Sale Mysteries. In fact, lots of movies and tv shows are filmed in the area.
Four days later we made our way to just outside Seattle to Lake Pleasant RV Park in Bothell, a pretty, well managed RV park with a lot of amenities and a small lake good for catch and release fishing but not swimming.
The weather again was unseasonably hot. We did a little outlet mall shopping, but mostly just hung out at the RV park for the two days we were there. FYI – long gone are the days of cheaper food and clothing in the United States. Where we were, prices were about the same or maybe even a little higher than Alberta. Our outlet mall shopping just outside Seattle yielded few bargains especially with the exchange. We’d done a lot of food prep prior to leaving, so we didn’t have to buy a lot of groceries anywhere, thankfully.
We drove back home through Washington State to take advantage of the cheaper fuel prices, which were cheaper than BC and closer to Alberta prices. Driving from Seattle to Spokane, we left the vents in the trailer open and the fans in the vents running. Big mistake in super hot weather! Learn from our mistake -all that did was heat up the RV to nearly unbearable levels, the opposite of what we were trying to do. When we stopped at the KOA in Spokane, in the RV I was putting wet, cold cloths on Bailey to keep her from overheating, as well as myself to tame the heat induced hot flashes. The AC cooled the RV eventually so we could sleep thankfully. The next day we made our way across the border and spent one night at Fort Steele in BC. It’s a nice park located right off the highway but we didn’t hear any traffic at our site. There’s a convenience store where, too tired to drive back to Cranbrook for milk, we paid a whopping $6.25 for 2l of milk. There’s also a gas station. The next day we drove home.
We were grateful for the break as we were super busy at home before we left. Camping is a fair weather sport even with an RV, and if I’d known we’d have spent so much of our trip keeping ourselves and our dog cool in our RV, we could have done that for free at home. That said, we camped before fire season started and didn’t have to evacuate or detour due to wildfires, and we are very grateful for that. At the moment, work prohibits us from camping during shoulder season, but if there comes a time when we are fully retired, shoulder season camping’s pretty appealing – less crowds, cooler weather, less traffic….
Our Hotel On Wheels 