After 3 nights in Jasper we were ready to move in. It was 3.5 hours drive to the next main town but 8 hours later we still hadn’t arrived.

On the way we did a couple of short hikes to some waterfalls, which were lovely walks. And then our wipers stopped working again. Mike had only fixed them yesterday.

We stopped in a little town called McBride, where Mike had to take the bonnet off again to fix the wipers. It had been raining on and off so not really a good idea to drive without them.

While I was waiting for him I had a look in a retro kitchen next door for something to eat. It was really weird. You walk in through the kitchen they are cooking in. It was a couple of old ladies running the place and it has such an old vibe. And not a modern retro vibe. It was just proper old. I thought about having some soup there when Mike had finished but we got distracted.

The rubber bit he’d put on the wiper had come off and he was trying to put it on again but couldn’t get the leverage with his tool. A couple pulled up and asked if we needed help. They were Jill and Dave from Manchester and own the local rv park. Jill got a wrench from her tool box, and clicked the wiper bit into place. Sorted.

We chatted to them for ages. Dave is an ex-airforce pilot and owns a couple of planes in a hangar nearby, but hasn’t flown since COVID. As we chatted I noticed both Mike and I had our warm puffer jackets on, while they sat around in t shirts!

They also have a house in San Felipe in Mexico and have invited us to visit when we go down that way (maybe next year).

We finally headed on our way and stopped at the ancient cedar forest, where the trees were over 1000 years old. Not only was it ancient, it was also an inland rainforest.

It was just over an hours walk and it was lovely. in some of the larger trees, bears carve out the base and hibernate in them. Thankfully we didn’t see any bears on our walk. There were a couple of nice waterfalls though.

It was after 6pm by the time we stopped to camp at a provincial park (same as state park).

It was damp and in the trees, no power, but pleasant enough. A few mozzies were flying around but apparently not too bad for this time of year. Even though we had a nice picnic table, we opted to cook inside.

Hope it’s not too cold in the morning!