Rhod and Anna's World Adventure

Let me describe a typical day in the life of an RV-er...

7:30 - Alarm. Decide who gets up first to endure the freezing cold and to turn the heating on. Back to bed until RV has defrosted and a temperature above zero is felt.

8:00 - A leisurely continental breakfast of fresh coffee, hot chocolate, toast with condiments, pancakes and a range of cereals. This may last anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes. Reading may also occur at this point in the day.

Post-breakfast: Rhod begins his glamorous morning routine of draining the waste from our tanks and disconnecting the electricity and water pipes. This is alot easier if the pipes aren't frozen. Unfortunately they usually are! My job at this point is to prepare the inside for departure, ie. making sure nothing will spontaneously jump out of the cupboards whilst driving.

10:00: Taking it in turns to drive through the national parks stopping at various lookouts to take an obscene amount of photos.

11:00: Elevenses of course! More coffee and hot chocolate as it was all of 3 hours since our last one.

11:15: A hike may be necessary at this point to work off the excess of the morning. Usually this involves meeting wildlife at various unexpected places, needing the loo in the middle of nowhere, scrambling through mud, snow, water and of course, taking lots of photos.

2:00: Congratulations, you have earned yourselves a gourmet lunch. Generally we favour a buffet lunch of sandwiches with a variety of fine fillings with a soup starter.

2:45: Back on the road. More sightseeing, more hiking, more stalking of wildlife.

4:30: A spot of afternoon tea. Generally this takes the childish form of chocolate milk and oreo cookies. More reading.

4:45: The sudden realisation occurs that we don't have a campground booked for the evening. Queue research in campsite directory, more driving, following a poor map which only chooses to list certain roads and arriving in dying light.

7:00: Panic over, we arrive at a suitable campground, preferably one that is level so we don't lose the contents of our fridge when we open it. The evening may then contain any of the following: eating dinner, more reading, writing diaries, doing laundry, utilising the campground's hot tub (if we're lucky) and running to and from the shower block in the freezing cold. I'm usually a little concerned when Rhod comes back from the showers as he seems to make a new friend each time! It seems that american men are quite sociable whilst doing their ablutions. Anna is jealous because she hasn't made any bathroom based friends. It's currently 3-0 to me!

Bedtime: Bedtime preparations are a necessity, or should I say heat-sealing the RV. As we have been experiencing temperatures of anything between zero and minus 12 degrees C for the last week, this is an important if not life-saving job. Curtains are drawn, cracks are sealed, the thermals are donned and the sleeping bags and blankets are loaded up. If we make it through the night without getting ice on the inside of the windows, it's been a good night.

So there you go. I hope I've managed to give you an insight into the glamorous life that is Rv-ing!

Ok let us get this straight. Yogi Bear - Jellystone Park. Rhod and Anna - Yellowstone Park. Is every body clear with that?

Yellowstone Park contains half of the world's geysers compared to London's east end which holds all of the world's geezers.

Now in London if you heard someone say "There's a geezer over there about to blow" it would prompt other people to say things like "Leave it aaaaaatttt" and "It ain't wurrrfff it!" However, in Yellowstone Park if someone says "There's a geyser over there about to blow" it would prompt alot of tourists to pick up their cameras and run to watch.

Yellowstone is not busy at this time of the year. The statement that the park is open is true but what it neglects to mention is that all but 2 visitor centres have closed down. Only 4 camp grounds are open, you can't buy any groceries and you can't buy any fuel. Luckily we had the RV well stocked up prior to entry so the only real problem this caused us was not really being able to find out any information. We survived staying out in the wilderness which might not seem such a great feat considering the luxury of the RV but when the temperature drops to -12 deg C I can assure you that even stuff on the inside of the RV freezes. We've had a few mornings fighting with frozen dump valves but we have lived to tell the tale. We did have 3 perfectly clear days in the parks so we even managed to take one or two photos.

A snowy Yellowstone Park:

Old Faithful Geyser:

Morning Glory Pool:

Bull Elk:

Bull Elk rutting:

A frosty Bison:

Grand Teton National Park:

Despite the collar this is not a large ugly dog. It's a female moose:

We still haven't seen a bear so this will have to do for now:

When we finally left the Cruise America office in our over-sized vehicle we headed straight for the supermarket to load up on food and accessories for our new home. It really was like shopping for a new house only trying to find the cheapest of everything (which usually meant the tackiest!) The dollar store also came in handy. Did you know it is possible to buy a saucepan for 1 dollar? My proudest purchase from there however was something that combines practicality with comfort...RV slippers! Rhod has an equally hideous ill-fitting pair in bottle green rather than hot pink. Again, you can't complain at those prices!

We knew we'd committed our first RV faux pas when we stepped out of the supermarket. It was dark and with a horrifying look at our watches we realised that we had been shopping for 5 hours!! Allow me to quote from the RV Assistance Guide: "Always try to arrive at your destination while there is still some daylight." Well, for a start we were about to arrive at our destination in the pitch black and secondly we didn't actually know where that destination was as we hadn't made a booking. No problem, we thought. We'll just turn up somewhere and book in. However, the first place we found had closed 4 hours ago! At this point the reality set in. We didn't have a place to stay for the night, we didn't have a map and we wouldn't be able to see what we were doing when we got there!!

For those who like a happy ending we did manage to find ourselves a campground for the night. Luckily we are in America, a country who invented the term 'customer service' so despite arriving after hours, in the dark and not knowing our sewerage pipe from our elbows we were well looked after by the lovely Brenda and Steve.

Lessons have been learned...

"An RVer is part of a fraternity that bridges cultural and economic boundaries with a common love of adventure and freedom."

Welcome to our new home for the next 4 weeks. Tired of hostels and restaurants we joined the cultural and economic bridging fraternity and got ourselves an RV.

For those not in the know, RV stands for recreational vehicle and is not the name Harvey spoken with an Essex accent.

On a tight budget we were forced to opt for the smallest vehicle. Fortunately USA small is European big so this "compact" motor home is 22 feet long, 12 feet high and 9 feet wide. As an American once told me "there's no replacement for displacement" so this Ford F-350 is powered along by a 5.4 litre V8 engine. I believe most of the area under the motor home is fuel tank as we are predicted to get about 8-10 miles per gallon from it! All a bit of a shock for a man more used to driving a 1.25l Fiesta. I love it! I even bought an RV log book and journal to track all the adventures. It's been a great help as I now know when and when not to dump and the importance of opening and closing the valves. Anna won't let me buy dungarees, a checked shirt and a truckers' cap which I think will help me really fit in. Perhaps that is for the best.

http://www.cruiseamerica.com

Darth Vader playing the violin; a one-man steel band playing Johnny Cash; a spliff-smoking hippie offering the antedote to George Bush, Tony Blair, Steven Harper and the Pope; (the antedote was a bottle of what he called 'hippie juice'?!?) a girl who mistakes waving her arms around and accidentally hitting someone as "unconsciously freaking out and attacking a victim"; and more than a Slip Knot concert's worth of goths.

If that had been your yesterday you too would want to try and escape it even for a few short hours.

We are in Vancouver Island at the moment and apart from dodging odd people, the main thing to do here is to go whale watching for killer whales. Last time we went in New Zealand we spotted only 2 sperm whales so this time we were hoping the killer whales would come out in their droves.

Last time we went some people got sick. Not us but others. Apparently if you feel seasick you should get in a position where you can see the horizon. This was easy today as the vessel of choice was a 12 man Zodiac. For those who don't instantly know what that is I will give you a brief description. Inflatable, rigid hull, bench seats, 2 x 135Hp engines and the key to avoiding the sea sickness...completely open air. Fortunately we remained a vomit-free vessel which is strange because our driver Mike enjoyed accelerating to reach top speed over the waves which resulted in an airborn boat and a lot of bumps. Luckily this also meant a lot of fun too and at one point I was laughing so much I didn't even care whether or not we saw any whales.

In New Zealand only one company go whale watching out of Kaikoura. Over here it's a little bit different. If you were at any point wondering where to find the killer whales the answer was easy. Look for the 10 tourist boats floating around in a circle and that is a pretty good guide.

We weren't disappointed. The first of the resident orcas to visit us was Ruffles the largest of the pod who apparently was one of the stars of the film 'Free Willy'. (Does that count as a celebrity spot?) We then stalked a group of about 4 orcas keeping a distance of about 100 metres. Being curious however they eventually made their way closer to us and surrounded the boat. We were even fortunate enough to watch one swim right underneath our boat...magical! There were no other boats around at this point I am smug enough to say. It's quite strange when you can see something bigger than the boat you are in swim directly under your feet.

The whole experience dispelled a long held myth for me. I thought killer whales just jumped through hoops, pushed people in wet suits around a swimming pool, nodded on command and splashed people in the 'splash zone'. I'm happy to have seen the error of my ways.

http://www.oceanexplorations.com

Us at Moraine Lake:


Anna looks out on Lake Minnewanka:

Sunrise on Mount Edith Cavell from the wilderness hostel carpark:

Standing on the Athabasca Glacier:

Lake Agnes:

Lake Louise from the top of Big Beehive Lookout:

Well, not wanting to be accused of being too snobby to slum it, Rhod and I decided to embrace the Rockies and stay for 2 nights in a 'wilderness' hostel. (This decision was actually forced upon us by the fact that there were no vacancies anywhere else for a reasonable price.) Anyway, all we knew was that these hostels were a bit off the beaten track and didn't have all the usual facilities that most city hostels have. Fine, we thought. No problem.

Well the brochure didn't lie but it also didn't tell us the whole truth. We were to be deprived not only of hot showers but of any sort of showers at all for 2 whole days! If you wanted to brave the loo it was a dash across the car park to some outdoor ones with no lights. Oh and don't forget that we are in bear country.

The only bonus was that the first hostel had a sauna, one that you had to share with a cold squirrel who had no intention of being moved on. Luckily we didn't meet a bear on our pitch black trips to the loos having been so careful to hide all our food in the cupboards in the kitchen. The downside of this however was a knawed loaf of bread and a half-eaten cereal bar the following morning by a slightly smaller animal.

We haven't seen a bear yet. I think it will be great to see one but I'm hoping we are sat in the car at the time. The thought of rounding the corner on a scenic alpine hiking trail and being confronted by a 300kg Grizzly does not sit easily in my head. We are following the rules when we walk and making noise every few minutes to alert the bears to our prescence. Apparently if one looks like it's about to attack us we should lay face down on the floor and play dead. I'm not sure my sense of self-preservation will allow me to do that.

There really is no need to feel down. You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal, you can do whatever you feel. That's right we've been staying in a YWCA and despite the names men are allowed to stay and it's not as bad as I was expecting. It is cheap but there are a lot of freaks staying there.

We are back in Canada after our brief stop with the southerners in Texas. We arrived in Calgary and after having enough of cities for a while we headed off to Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Our vehicle of choice is an old Ford Contour from a company accurately named Rent-a-Wreck. It was cheap but there is little confidence to be had setting off in to the wilderness in a car that has done over 100,000 miles and judging by the scratches and the dents it has done alot of those miles either on its side or upside down! Still it has a CD player and it is better than the one I refused to accept that was full of litter and dog hair! Cheap rental cars can be a double edge sword.

Yes, we are back in our winter clothes. It is cold here and a common event for us has been de-icing the car most mornings. I know, it's a tough life. Clearing the car windows so that we can drive past turquoise glacial lakes, snow-capped mountains and endless pine forests is tough-going. The road between Banff and Jasper is commonly thought to be the most scenic stretch of road in the world. It really is mind-blowingly beautiful.