If you’re clued-up on the jargon, ‘BC’ stands for British Columbia: a huge province in south-west Canada. We passed through BC on our way north before the ‘rona virus palaver kicked-off. Now, after four months in the Yukon, we’re back exploring BC. We also inadvertently prove the First Law of Overlanding: ‘only the vehicle part for which you don’t carry a spare, will break’. So we haven’t seen quite as much of BC as we’d hoped. Yet.

The Alaska Alcan

Leaving the Yukon, we took the main highway which links Fairbanks in Alaska to Dawson Creek in BC (at least it would if the border wasn’t closed for Covid!). It’s a 2,350(ish)km scenic, often spectacular, drive. Constructed in World War II as part of the North Pacific defences, it was paid for by the Americans who chose the imaginative ‘Alaska Highway’ tag. The thing is… over three quarters of the highway, around 1,880km of it in fact, is actually in Canada rather than Alaska. So Canadians sometimes prefer to call it the ‘Alcan’ Highway, not completely diss-ing the Alaska bit, but getting the all-important Canadian reference in there too. Sounds okey-dokey to me… a bit of neighbourly rivalry 😉.

Bisoned-out

There are huge distances along the Alcan between people-type-places, but you can’t go far on the central section without seeing a bison. Herds of them munching in the wide roadside verges, totally oblivious of any vehicles passing. Some occasionally eschew the tasty greenery in favour of random mooching in the middle of the tarmac. It’s not entirely clear whether they have any reason to be there other than maliciously to antagonise the drivers they force to stop and wait for them to move. Oh sure, they look very dour… but I reckon they’re just having a laugh, having a little wager amongst themselves as to who can keep the drivers waiting the longest. Wouldn’t you, if you were an Alcan bison?

Snailed-out

One of the main attractions on the Alcan is the Liard Hot Springs. Countless people had recommended them as a ‘must do’… “stunningly beautiful natural springs…” they said, “awesome hot-river bathing in the Canadian wilderness”. Sounds great, eh? We had really been looking forward to it. And with minimal tourism at the moment, surely we’d have them all to ourselves.

But when we got there… closed. Snails. Uh? Just how lethal can these killer-snails be? Turns out, it’s a combination of some very small, very rare, very delicate snails and the ‘rona virus. Neither the virus nor the snails would of themselves be considered sufficiently lethal to close the springs. But Covid rules require the area to be disinfected. The disinfectant kills the snails. Ergo, springs closed ☹. Disappointing, but we keep the chipper up… Covid closures are the ‘new normal’.

^{Out and about exploring British Columbia}

Route-planning

‘Mile 0’, the southerly end of the Alcan, is in the British Columbia town of Dawson Creek. It’s a bit of a legendary spot for North Americans starting their ‘road-trip of a lifetime’ up to Alaska, the Yukon and the Arctic. But for us it was the end of another chapter in our trip. South of Dawson Creek lies a whole new part of Canada to explore. There’s so much down there, it’s like some crazy dot-to-dot kids’ puzzle trying to pick-out a logical route between the highlights. Hopping around the eastern BC/western Alberta border there are the world-famous Rocky Mountains with Jasper and Banff National Parks, the Okanagan Valley, the Kootenays, the Kananaskis, Waterton and plenty more. We want to see all of these, with not much of Canada’s short summer left to see them in.

First, we had to blast down to the town of Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley. We had friends to visit there, but more urgently, we had to collect a parcel of some random stuff that we had ordered on-line. It should’ve arrived with us in Whitehorse weeks ago, but cutting a long and very dull story short, the best way for us to intercept it was to get to Kelowna in a few days before it’s ‘returned to sender’.

A good route for our blast down to Kelowna from Dawson Creek seemed to be a short hop into Alberta passing through the spectacular Jasper National Park. We had time to spend one day there, just enough to whet our appetite… watch this space Jasper… we’ll be back.

^{Stunning Jasper National Park in Alberta. We’ll be back to see it properly}

Kelowna Stay-cation

In tourist hot-spot Kelowna, we were extremely lucky to be invited to stay with fellow overlanders Jeff and Lois who are back home on a stay-cation from their trip overlanding around South America. Like so many travellers, they had to abandon their camper-truck (luckily they found a secure place in Chile) during the pandemic. The good fortune for us is that with them being home, they kindly showed us around Kelowna. We had a fab time with them wine tasting (very big in those parts!) and kayaking on Okanagan Lake. Huge thanks to Jeff and Lois for their generous hospitality and hopefully it won’t be too long until they can get back to the Andean roads.

Another visit to a friend near Kelowna came about due to our recent 15 minutes of fame in the Canadian media 😊. Out of the blue, we received an email from Marcus’ friend from UK. They had not been in touch for over 11 years, but it turns out that he now has a home in Canada. He recently noticed a random CBS story on his mobile news-feed about some crazy British overlanding couple who managed to get themselves stuck in a carpark in the Yukon during Covid. He recognised us and got in touch to invite us over! How cool is that?

First Law of Overlanding

So we’ve seen Kelowna, visited friends, now we’re off exploring more of British Columbia. But wait… noooo! We might, as they say in the hatchery, have counted our chickens just a bit too soon. Cuthbert has developed an engine air-leak and a major loss of power. Bugger. After a few carefully targeted investigations Marcus discovered the culprit: a hole in the intercooler. Bugger again.

North America is one of the worst places in the world for us to get Cuthbert parts. We found Iveco dealerships all along our routes through Europe, Africa, South America and Central America, but we knew that North America was potentially going to be a bit of a problem for getting spares. Before we set off, Marcus identified the items most likely to break and we carry a spare of most things that are feasible to have on-board.

Unfortunately, the First Law of Overlanding says that only the vehicle parts for which you don’t carry spares, will break. After over 220,000km driving through often rough and harsh conditions things are, sooner or later, going to go ‘pop’. So we ordered a new intercooler from UK. Our usual supplier of Cuthbert parts still isn’t back operational due to Covid, so we hunted around for another supplier who can get one for us, but…. y’know… it’ll take a while 🙄.

As always with these things, it’s a bit of a Good News/Bad News scenario. Good news: Marcus manages to do a rough ‘bodge-it-and-scarper’ repair with some sealant-cement that sort of works to limit the air leak. Bad news: this only really works for low-power driving (i.e. no hard acceleration or powering fast up hills).

The significant risk is that if we put too much pressure through the system, we could blow it out to make Cuthbert completely undrivable. Meanwhile, back in ‘good news’ land… Cuthbert seems happy tootling at a gentle pace (keeping under around 2,000 rpm) so we can explore the huge network of back-country dirt-roads, finding pretty wild-camp spots. The weather is lovely, we can paddle Boaty McBoatface out on the lakes and there are plenty of trails for hiking. And just in case you were thinking of sending an emergency ration pack, we do have beer/wine and chocolate, so we’ll survive.

We have to admit to just a teeny bit of frustration that we have only just got going after lock-down. Now we’re limited again! But adopting the ‘glass half full’ school of thought, we’re lucky peeps in a pandemic world. We appreciate what we can do, rather than get stressed about what we can’t do. And what we can do is way more than many other overlanders at the moment. So it’s happy days, Cuthbert is fixed and we’re off (again) to explore more of British Columbia… fingers crossed 🤞