Fly Fishing!

 I recently dug up some very old fly fishing gear that belonged to my mother's 1/2 brother.   He was sort of a father figure to my mother, and she kind of worshipped him.    She loved this gear, but, though she fished, she never fly fished.     When I dug it out a few months back I shared a photo on facebook, asking if I should take up fly fishing.    

Old fly fishing rod and reel

The feedback was a resounding YES, and one response was from a local friend I knew many many years ago, who offered to teach me.    His guiding credentials are impressive.    I had to take him up on this offer.    

After a few months of getting reacquainted, and some good casting and gear lessons, he offered to take me fishing on the McKenzie River in his drift boat.    This was special because, 47 years ago he took me on the McKenzie River.

1974, on the McKenzie River

So this past week, we did just that.   I took Waddles, he took his boat, and we met up for camping and fishing.    

Ready for adventure

The McKenzie River is spectacular.  The water is clear.  There are lazy sections, and adrenaline sections.    And the fishing is good.  Day 1 we put in at Silver Creek and took out at Goodpasture.

Ready to launch

A lazy section

A house being rebuilt after the 2020 fires

A not so lazy section

My first ever rainbow trout caught on my uncle's gear!!

Fresh trout for dinner!  YUM

Day 2 we put in at Quartz Creek, and took out at Silver Creek.  We only had 1/2 a day because it was, sadly, time to head home.   

Captain Mike

Beauty in the River

Fish On!

This area was devastated by forest fires last year.    A lot of the forest, and many many houses were burned.  Now there is a lot of salvage logging going on and houses are being rebuilt.    I can't imagine what the residents are going through.  The entire town of Blue River was burned, except for the school and the post office.     What I know, from working for the Forest Service for many years, it this will grow back, but it takes a very very long time.

There used to be a house there

Goodpasture Bridge

Eagle Rock

This wonderful trip had to end, but there was one more trout dinner with my brother when I got home.    

Yum!

I think I'm hooked on Fly Fishing!    If you need to hire a guide, I know where there is a good one!   Wy'East Expeditions

Beautiful British Columbia

Because I didn't have much internet access on my trip to British Columbia you are going to get the entire trip in ONE blog post.   This will be a long one....

I was heading for Prince George BC to attend a weaving conference.   A local weaving friend, who also has a teardrop trailer, drove up with her husband.  We decided to make a trip out of it, so we didn't go STRAIGHT to Prince George.

June 7:  Drove from home to Conconully, Washington.     I have been here before, staying in a friend's cabin.  It is a tiny place, but has a lovely lake and large 'city' park with camping and showers.  There was some sort of mud-bogging event going on, so the place was full of these:

But is was relatively quiet, and except for the HUGE thunderstorm that came through it was a nice place to be for the night.

June 8: Drove from Conconnelly to near Kamloops British Columbia.   The border crossing was easy.   I had to pull into the boat inspection area because of my kayak, but since it hadn't been in the water for quite some time, they were not at all concerned about it and sent me on my way.

That night I met up with my friends at Paul Lake Provincial Park to camp for the night.   This was a very nice camp ground and the lake was spectacular.

June 9-10:  From Paul Lake we drove to Mt Robson Provincial Park, which is very near Jasper, Alberta.   I make a brief stop at Rear Guard Falls, a quick little walk from the highway.  Not a large falls, but very wide, and you get very close to it, so the shear power of the water is very obvious.

We stayed 2 nights at Lucern Campground, about 30km east of the Mt Robson Visitors Center.   Again, this was a lovely spot, not at all crowded.   We tried to go for a hike, we were blocked by a train, which conveniently stopped RIGHT across our path.   The weather was iffy, but we had a good walk to that point.

June 11:  Drove to Prince George.    We were booked at Hartway RV park, about 8 miles north of Prince George.   From the web page it looked like a lovely place.   In reality it was an urban RV park and the proprietor, though very nice, was clearly into maximizing her income and JAMMED the RV's in as tight as possible.   I was sandwiched in  between 2 RV's that were somewhat permanent residents.

This was not too much of an issue because I was spending most of my time at the weaving conference, which was at the Civic Center in downtown Prince George.  And they had HOT showers and laundry facilities.

June 12 - 15 - Weaving Conference

Took a number of workshops.   One on Shibori Dyeing, one on block-weaving designing, and one on plying yarn on a drop spindle.   There was a market place, an exhibit hall, a fashion show, and lots more to see and do.

June 16 - Drove south to Wells, British Columbia.    It was nice to get out of the city and back to 'camping'.    This night we stayed at Lowhee Campground near the historic mining town of Barkerville.    Very quiet in the campground, and we had power and showers.

June 17-18 - Barkerville and on to Bowron Lake Provincial Park.   Barkerville is an old mining town that has been turned into a tourist attraction.   We decided it sounded interesting so paid our entrance fee and spent the morning exploring the old buildings, interesting history and staff who are dressed in period costume and playing the part.   There are hotels, restaurants and shops that are open for business and LOTS to look at and learn from.

From there we drove the 35km up to Bowron Lake Provincial Park.   This is a very interesting place.   Evidently renown for the canoe/kayak circuit one can do around a series of lakes.    It is in a spectacular location.   We hiked to the 'put-in' spot, about 2km from the campground, and were greeted by a busy beaver.   On the way back we encountered people who were going to start the circuit the next morning.    The trip has to be booked in advance, and is closely regulated, but what a great trip that would be!

There is a beaver out there if you look closely

One of 3 large piles of bear poop in the road on the way to Bowron Lake.  We saw one black bear crossing the road.

We settled for putting our kayaks in Bowron Lake for about an hour.   The campground was nearly empty, but the circuit parking lot was pretty full.   And the mosquitoes, black flies and no-see-ums were brutal.   We were so glad to have a bug tent.  I'm not sure we would have stayed without it.

The road to Bowron was not bad but VERY muddy.  Poor Waddles!

June 19 - Heading for home.    Long day of driving, but I took the scenic route and ended up at Allyson Lake Provincial Park for the night.    A small park, which I had completely to myself.

June 20 - Got up VERY early and drove the 2 hours to the border and continued on home.  

Waddles did very well on this trip.  I used the Pa Ha Qua side tent at any site where we stayed more than one night, and the bug tent (over the picnic table) was a life saver for sure.

The Norcold refrigerator worked GREAT for the first 4 days without shore power.  I was SOOOO excited about that.   The next 5 days I was plugged in to shore power, and started smelling a bit of an electrical smell.    At Lowhee campground I started getting the error light blinking, indicating low voltage.  My battery was fine, and I was getting the error whether I was plugged in to shore power or not.     So the Norcold simply quit working.  The lights come on, but it is unable to cool.    It might be the 20amp fuse, or it might be something else, but I'm afraid I maybe fried to Norcold.   We will be doing some investigation to see what's going on.  When I got home I reconnected to old wiring and plugged Waddles into the shore power and I still get the error light.    I may be switching to a regular cooler.  Stay tuned.

This whole trip was really wonderful.  The scenery was spectacular and I still LOVE having Waddles behind my car.

Next trips will be much shorter.  I have two scheduled for July.

Almost on the Road... and SUCCESSFUL fixes!

Tomorrow Waddles and I head north to British Columbia.   Our final destination is Prince George, to attend a weaving conference.   We will be camping with friends who  have a tiny home-made teardrop, so it will be fun to compare our experiences.    We will be traveling for just about 2 weeks, although 6 days in the middle will be stationed in Prince George at an RV park.




















In preparation, my mechanic/all-around handyman has been working with me to see if we could solve the mystery of why the Norcold refrigerator/freezer does not always work.   We have tested every scenario, and I've been reading a lot of the on-line T@G forums to see what others have experienced and discovered.    It runs fine when hooked up to shore power, and when the trailer battery is being charged (while plugged into the car, with the car running, or hooked up to the solar panel with lots of sunshine).   When it is running strictly off the trailer battery, with no other charging source, it fails.   It will not hold a cold temperature, and the error light comes on, indicating not enough voltage, even when the voltage meter says there should be enough.

The on-line forums indicate that the only successful fix is to rewire the refrigerator directly to the battery.  Evidently the original wiring is only 16 gauge wire, and should be 10 gauge, and it is routed through the kitchen outlets, so there is not enough juice getting through the wire when it is only powered by the batteries.

So we bought a new cord for the battery which plugs directly into a cigarette lighter to see if we could by-pass the issue.    We only tested this by running the cord through the trailer cigarette lighter, which didn't solve the issue.  We then cut the cigarette plug off the cord, and hooked it directly to a battery and BEHOLD, the refrigerator works; holds a cold temperature, doesn't error out, and has a much smaller drain on the batteries.    This is a puzzling thing, but it works.  So.....

Mechanic-man went to work.... (there is a parts list at the end of this post for anyone who might want to know)

First he ran the 10 gauge wire through a 1/2 conduit, just like what the factory wiring runs through (although mine is white and heavier because that is what we had on hand).  He says 7' of conduit is more than enough (mine is not a T@G max, just the little one). In this photo the black conduit is factory, the white is what he added

Then he drilled a small hole in the back of the refrigerator area (carefully).  See the white dot in the back right corner?    We ran the 10 gauge wires up through that hole.

We were not able to find just the PLUG to put on the end of the new wire, so we spliced the new wire into the cigarette lighter cord we had purchased.

Securely spliced together

We left the old wire, but secured the new wire to the trailer in place of the old wire.  See the old black wire coiled up and hanging now.

With all that in place it was time to move to the front of the trailer.   Remember, we have already replaced the old 12 volt battery with 2 deep cycle 6 volt batteries so that is what we needed to attach the new wire too.

There is now a nice rubber washer holding the wires in place where they come through to the front of the trailer.

All wires outside the conduit were wrapped in this spiral covering to protect them.

We could not find a 10 gauge in-line fuse so we went with 20.  Overkill, and we will likely replace this if/when we find a 10.

The in-line fuse is outside the battery cover so I can easily pull the fuse when I'm not running the refrigerator, which I also do with the regular fuse because of the phantom drain that occurs.

I am so very excited to have a refrigerator that works!   The first 4 nights of my trip I will not have shore power, so I was worried about food going bad, and was prepared with jugs of frozen water to help hold the temperature in the fridge.

With this issue solved, I believe that Waddles and I just may live happily ever after.

Oh, one other 'fix' I've done since the last trip.   If you recall, I use a small-ish propane Heater Buddy for a quick warm up in Waddles when it's cold outside.  

Others have recommended using a little electric heater when plugged in to shore power, but the way my trailer is configured I could not plug it into the wall plug without it touching something flammable.   SO, I purchased a long, flexible extension cord, now I can hang it up where it is safe.     I am looking forward to trying this out during the time I'll be on shore power (about 6 nights on this trip).   The electric heater has a thermostat and a timer, so it will turn itself off, although I'm pretty sure I will never go to sleep with it on, nor leave it on in the trailer if I'm not there.  The inside space is so small it doesn't take much to heat it up, and it stays pretty cozy.

I think we are all ready to leave in the morning.... let the adventure begin!

For those who want to know, here is a materials list for the rewiring project:

• 7' of 1/2" conduit
• 2 1/2" u-clamps to clamp it to the frame.  You can see how the factory conduit was installed, same thing.
• 12' of 10 gauge wire, one red, one black
• New plug for the Norcold if you don't want to use the factory one.  We used the cigarette lighter cord plug because we could not find just the plug anywhere.
• In-line fuse - 10 gauge if you can find it, we used 20
• Electrical splicing pieces for putting the plug on one end, and for putting the in-line fuse on the other end
• Battery terminal rings for connecting to the battery.

As my mechanic said when we put this list together, "It sounds so simple when you list the parts".   This project took all day, and he didn't take many breaks.