Okay so let me pick up where we left off:

We spent the night just outside of Glacier N.P. on Saturday night. We found some national forest land and called it a night (after we popped our second tire in two days on the dirt roads). Sunday morning we made a last attempt at calling Goulet and then started on route 2 heading east. By the end of the day on Sunday we were in a Walmart in North Dakota….

Goulet called us on Monday, she had finally checked her messages…turns out while we were hiking on the west side of Glacier ( a fairly remote side of the park that not many tourist actually visit) she was driving on the west side on the same road we were parked on. If she had come a little further she would have run into our van…In fact while we were in the backcountry sleeping, she was camping in the exact same spot we were camping the night prior…What are the chances…the only reason she was even on that side of the park was because she had read about it when we visited it two months prior.

Anyway so we made our way west and by Tuesday we made it to the border in-between all the great lakes in Michigan and Canada. Oh, and we stopped and bathed in Lake Superior. So at the border they decided to check the van so the person at the gate told us to pull ahead…which we would have done immediately if the van would start. So I pushed the van into the inspection zone…where it would sit for 2 hours…. 

The two guards treated us like scum of the earth from the get-go, not once a smile on their faces. Of course we remained pleasant while they tore our van apart…every single item, out of every single space. They even had us unlock our phones and laptops so they could peruse through those. 

After a while they told us there was a lot of smelly things in the van,(they were particularly interested in the cat litter, which if they would have asked, we would have explained it soaks up the gas we spill when we fill up),then they asked us where we were hiding the drugs so they could speed this process up because they said it would take them a while to look through the whole van. We told them we agreed, it would take a while…and they would find nothing…no go….

They called in a local mountie with a drug dog to go over the van after they couldn't find anything. We waited 30 minutes for the drug dog, and in the meantime were sent inside to have our id's checked where there was supposed to be an officer waiting. Instead, one officer told us to go wait by the empty counter, while two other officers were playing on their cell phones at their counter stations…Finally an officer came out and checked our ID's and asked all the questions, like why are we working, what are we doing with a gun  blah blah blah blah. She finally sent us back outside, where we went to the bathroom before returning to the van…the officer searching the van chased into the bathroom and told us we couldn't go until the dog got there. Then he asked if our ID's were all set…and we thought to ourselves…"shouldn't you guys know that? or do you just take our word for it?…."

The dog finally showed up and the K-9 officer interrogated us about smoking pot and then even tried to turn me against Jon to flip on him…When the cop asked me if I was gonna stick to that story I smiled in his face and said yes…he was not amused. The dog spent 30 more minutes going over the van while we waited inside…After the officers were all smiles and telling us we were all set and thanks for cooperating. They were all very polite, and even offered us directions towards our destination…

Here's the amazing part…they searched the van for 1 hour and 45 minutes…wouldn't let us go to the bathroom until the dog got there….but then never searched us or even had the dog smell us…So they went through all that painstaking searching, wasting both ours and their time because we could have had weapons in our pockets and cocaine duct-taped beneath our clothes…unbelievable.

Joanne cooking us a feast

So we made our way into Quebec by Wednesday and met with friends Joanne, Andy and Rhianna Derby. They had an amazing feast waiting for us at their home in Sutton…Amazing…There was salmon, steak, corn on the cob, cornbread, potatoes, mushrooms,chili, beer, cookies, cake…it was awesome. After that all of us drove to a friend of their's cottage in Austin. We sat on the front deck and chatted for several hours and then they went back home. Oh but not before Joanne stocked us up with food…Seriously stocked us up.

Jon and I slept great and woke up to see how beautiful this cottage was in the daylight…all the balconies were high up in the trees, and a lake near by. The owners had left us notes in broken english as well as french and they were so nice. We spent the morning drinking coffee and eating breakfast sandwiches. 

Now we are headed into Quebec City and into Old Quebec for the evening..and then tomorrow…we will be in Maine…so surreal..

-Adam


Furthermore, that last leg of the trip homeward bound was very fluid, all van issues I mean, and as Adam stated it was a strange happening, a divine intervention if you will, that took place once we decided to head home on the Alaskan Hwy. It was the universe calling us and we just needed to take a hint and accept that Alaska was an impossibility..... and believe us... with that last break down the universe couldn't have been more clear about which direction it wanted us to head in. But by that time we had reached the farthest of road away from home and we had been gone longest we had ever been, (100 days) and so for us, home was the next trip... I felt equally as excited for home, as I did for the trip before I left! Adam couldn't wait to see his dog Nova, and I needed my desk and all that seemed so far away.. family and friends.. the smell of Maine! Trips like this one come seldom in life but they are the biggest reminder of whats important when all hope is lost, that family means everything so GET BACK HOME AND FOOL THEM ALL!

Yukon Jon  -  "cheese and bacon"  ;)

All the food Joanne got us for the cottage!

The Real Story

Okay so today is August 17th, by the time I post this however, we will have already gotten home and surprised everyone. 

So let me bring you up to speed: We have been battling an ongoing issue with the van: it stalls every 70 miles or so and we have to let it sit to get it started again…or so we thought. We discovered that if we put gas in it, it will start back up and drive another 70 miles or so…but it runs rough. We have narrowed the problem down to debris building up in the gas tank (rust most likely) and clogging the screen that filters the hose leading to the fuel pump…therefore the gas cuts out. When we let it sit, the suction fades and debris falls away. Also when we put gas in it sloshes around and pushes the debris out of the way…either way  we haven't been covering a lot of miles. If we are on curvy roads or in town it seems that is enough sloshing to keep it free of debris. On Monday August 12th we finally left Vancouver, covered 800 miles or so and made it to the ALCAN by Tuesday morning. As we turned left onto the ALCAN (north) the van sputtered and died…Even the putting gas in trick didn't work. We turned the van around and roll started it down the hill (now heading South) towards town…started and ran like a top…we took a look at the bank account and made the executive decision that neither the van nor the trip bank account were going to get us to Alaska….

The van started working perfectly the second we turned South on the ALCAN…for about 1300 miles going strong now without a problem…we took it as a sign we just weren't meant to go any further north.

We headed down to Montana to start the journey home…we arrived in Glacier National Park on Thursday. We knew that our teacher (in so many ways) was in the area so we tried our darndest to connect with her, even checked every parking lot in the park! Friday we got a back country camping permit and hiked 6.3 miles in to our camping spot on the west side of Glacier near Kintla Lake. Beautiful hike. It was pretty tough since we only had school type backpacks to carry everything (sleeping bags, tent, stove, food, water, clothes and such). 

We arrived at our campground hung our food (due to bears) and met out neighbors. About 30 minutes after arriving we spotted a black bear walking down the shore about 150 yards away heading right towards us. The bear veered off into the woods so we got off the shore and stood in our campsite with our neighbors completely still…the bear walked through our campground about 40 yards from where we were standing! Managed to get some video of it!

That evening some more neighbors showed up and we all conversed. In the back-country you have to prepare meals in the food hanging area so if a bear comes into the campground looking for food it wont bother everyone sleeping in tents in a separate area. So around 5pm everyone is making food in the same area.  We sat around the campfire that evening chatting and talking about the trip. (Note: every other person there had kayaked in..we were the only ones who hiked. so they had lots of pots and pans and even made brownies in a dutch oven…we ate beans…haha). Everyone we met was really down to earth and very friendly….great experience. 

On the hike out on Saturday some people told us they saw two more black bears on the trail, but we didn't spot them. It is now Saturday afternoon and we still haven't connected with Goulet. We are doing some laundry and then we will head east towards Canada (cutting through the Great Lakes is shorter than driving around them). We will stop in Montreal and Quebec and then be home!…Of course that part has already happened as your reading this…:)

-Adam

Where we swam in Lake Superior

The Fix

Frost Heaves

Well…we are almost there….definitely very little cell service through our wireless card, and therefore little internet. So no pictures, but I will try to describe the best I can and upload pictures when we finally cross the border. 

We are still on the Alcan but only about 300 miles from the Alaska border! Currently we are fixing the exhaust that fell off when we hit a frost heave…It was holding on by one bolt (there are three), the other two rattled off…which is frustrating since we put thread locker on them as well as 2 lock washers on each. We didn't have any spare bolts with us so ended up trying mechanics wire to secure it…no go…we got about 15 miles and that fell off. We ended up taking two padlocks which we had with us and used the padlocks as make shift bolts…there was definitely a leak…but at least  the catalytic converter wouldn't fall off. Now we have finally come across a store in Whitehorse, where we are now, and have the correct bolts, high strength threadlocker, which is generally thought of as basically a cold weld, and a lock washer on each...plus we double nutted the bolts…I'd like to see it rattle that off!

Now as for the gas flow issue…like I said in last post we have narrowed the problem down to the gas tank getting clogged…therefore we have bypassed it…what I mean by that is we have placed the jerry cans, previously on the back of the vehicle, in the back seat of the van and have a hose running from them (one at a time) to the fuel pump located on the underneath of the van. (an idea thanks to Bob at Carquest in Waterville) Luckily there used to be a heater under the rear seat that ran off of the vans coolant system but we took that heater out, however the hole where the coolant hoses came up through the underside is still there. So that is how we snaked the fuel hose down to the pump. This is rather inconvenient, but it does the trick. We do only have 10 gallons now (two 5 gallon tanks) and we have to make sure we fill up frequently, which is difficult here on the Alcan…luckily there is a fair amount of traffic, so if need be we can hitch a ride with our gas tanks.. When we get to Anchorage we will take the tank down and flush it out.

We have had a long couple of days of driving, and the going is slow thanks to the frost heaves that everyone warned us about…they sneak right up on you! After so much barren landscape and nothingness we have decided to spend today and tonight in Whitehorse just relaxing and gearing ourself up for our final push for Alaska! At this point, we are not going to have as much time as we had originally thought, we planned on being back around September 13th, but we still have plenty of time to smell the flowers, see the bears, climb some mountains, ect.

The milepost (book borrowed from Frank), tells us we are about 300 miles from the Alaskan border, and our map tells us we are about another 300 miles from Anchorage…We are hoping to make all that distance tomorrow….

Wish us luck at the U.S. Border! :)

-Adam

Casper...the little van that could!....?

Spotty service, but we are technically in Yukon Territory now. British columbia was very pretty to drive through even though the van was raising our anxiety level.. The van is giving us some grief, but we are confident we can make it. It has been breaking down quite often, and thanks to a friends advice we now are fairly certain the fuel tank is getting clogged with debris. No worries. For now we will keep trekking and probably address the tank when we get there. It will be slow going though. Regardless of the Van, we WILL enjoy ourselves, this trip is something very few people get the chance to do.

Sorry the blogs are not frequent here in Canada, the internet is spotty and 25$ per 100MB while roaming...so we try and look for wifi...but theres not a whole lot out here. Hopefully when we get there we can do a major blog update! I would say anywhere from 5-10 days and we should be able to post a nice long blog and catch everyone up. But for now wish us luck and cross your fingers for the van! You can try calling I have 1000 minutes in Canada, but like I said service is spotty. Text messages are free and reliable!

-Adam

Hurry up and Wait

We are spending our days in and out of café's and antique stores while we await the van to be diagnosed. Vancouver is quite nice. Yesterday we walked for a few miles and wandered into China Town and a little festival with many food venders. We have got our bikes so we are just exploring...the hills are tough, so for the rest of today we are probably going to explore the lower part of the city down by the water.

The van is at a shop that specializes in VW's and has excellent reviews online. The employees are very courteous and we should have an answer by the end of the day, if not, definitely tomorrow. 

The city is nice and theres lots to do...if you have $$$...which we dont...haha We are excited to get out of here and make our way up to the Alcan Highway...not that sleeping in the city isn't great...haha

Wish us luck.

Camping Spot #1

The joy of staying in the city

Camping spot #2

Canadian Camping in Vancouver

   So we have hit a few bumps in the last weeks worth of road miles. We have broken down twice now in 200 miles and are scheduled for a diagnostics first thing in the morning on Monday, it really seems like one more thing after another. Last night we were going strong when the van out of nowhere on I 5 in Washington just kind of gave out so we played with a few theories and nothing worked, so we called a tow truck which brought us to a Wal-Mart for the night, this morning the van starts!! YEAHHHH! So we cleaned off all the grounds, re-attached the catalytic converter which we thought may have cause the engine failure the other night and took off! We got 10 miles past the border before the engine came to a puttering hault and would not start again so here we are in Vancouver! We did cross the border with no trouble, they took Adams pepper spray but that was anticipated. Considering we crossed with a firearm though it was cake! Now we just have to get past all of our engine problems and begin the final leg of this trip! We have too brave a couple nights in the van with it parked on a main street here in Vancouver so say some prayers for us to get out of this one with a little cheddar left over to get us to Alaska and back home! P.S Jonathan didn't activate his international phone plan correctly and has no service in Canada! Au revoir!

Some Wal-Mart south of the border

The Canadian Border Crossing

Not much of a breakdown lane on this street! 

The second lucky van escort within 24 hrs

Quick update

About to cross into Canada, therefore will not have Internet unless we find wifi. So, no map position on blog, and fewer blog entries until in Alaska.