leaving the safety of the harbor

After a hectic and busy August we departed from Slocan in early September with our family of five and our 40’ bus, Mona. We left just after dark and drove a half a kilometer to park for the night. I was hoping to leave earlier in the day and at least get a few hours of driving in but so many last minute things had to be tended to that by the time we actually drove away from our friends house in the village, i was too exhausted to drive any more. So we settled for a 3 minute drive to the beach parking lot and a determined attitude to get an early start!

Its been over month now since our leaving the BC chapter of our lives behind. I will try and recall the last moon cycle to catch folks up to present…We headed west to Vancouver to do our border crossing at the Peace Arch in Surrey. We had an appointment with border services to cross within a 4 hour window on a certain day…Needless to say we missed that initial appointment and had to reschedule because of circumstances beyond our control.

After reaching Vancouver and driving around the city trying to locate some bolt on seat belts for the bus so we could show the border guards that Mona was a worthy and safe vessel to enter port with , we realized the trailer hitch on the bus was hooped. I mean it was bent to the ground at a 45 degree angle and barely holding the tongue of the trailer, not safe. Definitely not worthy to cross over into uncharted waters. Now this was 3pm on a Friday afternoon and our “window” with BSA was that night at 5 pm! but there was no way to fix the hitch and make it there on time. So we called our immigration liaison and asked to re-schedule for the following week. He reluctantly bought our explanation and agreed to set our crossing date for the following week. That done, now we needed to park the trailer somewhere and track down a welding shop! Luckily there was a huge tire shop across from where we were stopped and so we went and explained our situation to the owner and he said we had till 5pm then they will lock the gates for the week-end. Phew i thought, ok now I’ll just make some calls and find a local shop to just hurry up and fix our bent hitch. After 5 calls to the closet shops only one said they could do it, now you have to understand, we have been up on our homestead for the past 10+ years and not traveling very far from it. The last time we traveled we used paper maps and stayed away from the bigger cities. So our experience with navigating with Google maps and such has been non existent till now and we were still not comfortable with the technology and ended up taking wrong turns and backtracking so much that I was ready to go back to paper maps when we needed to find this welding shop somewhere deep in the jungle of downtown Surrey. Now I need it to work, badly. with Inana navigating and me watching the curbs and pedestrians we made it to the shop without too much trouble. They were so quick and efficient at the shop they worked right there in the parking lot and had the bent hitch re-welded and painted in 45 minutes! Now all we need ed to do was get back to where we left the trailer and we still had 35 minutes. So we forgot to get the address when we left the place SO we needed to navigate by memory. Luckily, Aura our 16 year old has a great memory. She led the way back to the tire placce and over the next 20 minute I drove that hulking mass of steel like a champ thru busy traffic and stop and go lights. Lo and behold at 4:55 pm we approached the intersection where we thought the Napa was we got the seat belts and it was a totally different Napa at a totally different intersection!! I gave up. I threw in the towel. We’ll just have to find a place to park for the week end and come back Monday. “NO”, says the team! So we drove on to the next intersection and by golly there was the tire shop!

We expected to see the gate closed and locked but it was open so we pulled in and felt elated that we could get our trailer and continue on…Feeling jubilant that we overcame that debacle, we boarded the ferry and headed up to the sunshine coast for a couple of days of r&r.

I thought highway 101 along the coast in Oregon was windy but holy crow, the road up the sunshine coast might have it beat . By the time we got off the ferry the sun waas getting low and we did not have a place to stay yet so on we drove up the coast steering thius 40 foot land yacht like a real pro after a few kilometers. Luckily, we found an RV resort just as the visability was vanishing and for the record I took a vow with the crew and myself that I would NOT be night driving on this journey. Mostly because of my poor eyesight and adding any on-coming lights i go just about blind.

We stayed and spent 2 days resting and planning our route for the next leg of the trip. The kids explored the big cedar woods and rode bikes. I filterd veggie oil in hopes that no one would think I was changing the motor oil in the bus and filled up the veg tank with no confrontations. I was still concerned about the fuel leak and wondered how long we could go without doing something about it but for now the bus was running great although leaving a small puddle of diesel wherever we stopped…After 2 days we headed back to the ferry and to Surry, BC where we had an appointment to cross the border the next day. We were all feeling a little anxious about the crossing and said a prayer for a smoothm hassle free entry into the States. At 8pm we crossed after onlty spending 45 minutes talking to the agents. They took all of our house plants and said we were free to cross, yippee!! Aura was bummed cause they we mostly her plants and one she had had for years…It could have been worse, thank you Angels!

We drove south along the Puget Sound in Washington all the way to Olympia where Inanna and i went to college. It had been years since we were there. We parked behind the Farmers’ market that first night and when we woke the next morning Ivy went out to explore only to return and say “ theres something wrong with the hitch". I went to look and saw our new welding job was toast. The whole area of steel around the hitch on the bumber was bent to such a degree the hitch itself was poiniting to the ground at a 45 degree angle ! The trailer was almost off the ball. Shit. Now what.