Never, Ever

Websites and other user’s RV park reviews can sure be deceiving!  We left Coeur d Alene yesterday morning after dumping our tanks at the sheriff’s office?? and headed north to the Canadian border at Kingsgate.  We waited in line longer for the road construction than at the actual crossing.  The female border agent in the gatehouse asked Michael, “What do you have in the rig?”  OK—do you want the really long list or the short version???  Michael replied, “a little of everything.”  She then smiled and began to ask us the usual questions—“any firearms, nope, any alcohol, yes, 5 bottles of wine (which is one over what we should have had but she didn’t bat an eye), any tobacco, nope and we were on our way.

We drove through some spectacular scenery, lakes, huge mountains.  Michael and I always say British Columbia has the biggest mountains!  The tallest peak we could see, probably Mount Fisher, has fresh snow on its top!

On to Skookumchuck and a great big yuk!  We missed the turn off for the campground where we had reserved three nights, drove up the road a bit, unhooked the jeep and I drove back to check out the RV park.  The two sites the owner wanted to stick us in would have barely held a 30 foot RV much less a 40 foot RV.  The park was a scrambled mis-mash of sites here and there along with cabins occupied by guys I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley!  Tight, narrow little roads and turns.  Talk about misrepresentation—the photos on the park website made it look really good!  And the reviews were good! 

When I told the owner we just couldn’t stay there she became VERY belligerent!  And for those who know me you know I don’t tolerate belligerent very well but you would have been proud of me.  I remained very calm and quiet while she got red in the face and yelled at me.  Told me she was charging me for all three night and a five night cancelation fee.  Nope, not happening!  We finally agreed on my paying ONE night and I was out of there.

OK, now it is 5pm on a Friday night holiday weekend—now what???  The provincial park just up the road was packed so off we went.  Each RV park I stopped in with the jeep was full—OK, where are the Wal Marts—not in this part of BC for sure!  How far are we from John and Brenda??  Finally we came to Dry Gulch Provincial Park and got lucky—after 7pm now!  A guy with a loaded truck and travel trailer was trying very hard to get backed into a difficult spot, we took the spot across from him but is was uphill and very unlevel.  Got in the jeep and drove around the loops, found a perfect spot, large, fairly level and just what we were looking for.  OK, we made it, deep breath, glass of wine to celebrate and dinner.

Michael and I are morning people, if we sleep until 7am we feel as if we have slept in.  This morning when Michael got up to turn on the coffee to perc—he said, “you won’t believe this but it is 8:30am!!”

We are off on new adventures today, taking a 4X4 road out to the Bugaboo Glacier. 

Now as for the title of this blog, I made myself a promise—“never, ever make RV park reservations!”  If there is space when we get there fine, if not, we will punt like we did yesterday.  We do have a 3 month reservation in Florida for this winter but there is no cancelation policy at that RV park and as the RV Dreams folks Linda and Howard have stayed there (and they are picky) we feel fairly safe.