Well this is a short and sweet update! Just in case you thought we’d frozen into the ice of a Canadian winter, you’ll no doubt be relieved to know that we’ve been enjoying the snow, skiing our socks off for a full season in Big White, British Columbia and we’ve recently acquired a cool new Starlink satellite internet gadget for Cuthbert…
Overlanding puts a different spin on your world, causes you to think differently about ‘life, the universe and everything’. After seven years overlanding, we’re on a covid-induced hiatus in Canada, skiing our socks off through the winter. Yes folks… the struggle is real. But we can’t ski every day. On foggy days we get chance to ponder little overlanding nuggets like: why is it really so terrible to be a fast traveller? Is 15 minutes bartering with a third-world trader over $1 really time well spent? Will Officer Sanchez really arrest us if we don’t chip-in to his coffers? And why is orange jam called marmalade?
Well would you believe it??? It’s seven years since we set off overlanding in Cuthbert! Seven whole years!!! Blimey, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun!! Here’s the route map, some geeky (and not so geeky) facts, and some highlights of our trip so far…
2020… what a palaver that was! Who’d have thought, as we celebrated entering 2020 a year ago, that the world would look like this today. We’re lucky that we have been safe and suffered no more than a bit of disruption to our overlanding lifestyle, but it’s been a roller-coaster year. So we thought we’d end the year with a little round-up of our overlanding 2020 – Covid style!
A pandemic isn’t a great time to be overlanding, but if that’s where you find yourself, you could do worse than be overlanding a place like Canada. We spent a chunk of the autumn around Vancouver Island where it was (relatively) easy to stay safe from the dratted ‘rona virus…
An Alberta road-trip means touring the Rockies, right? But wait… if you limit yourself to the Rockies, you’re missing out on some seriously quirky and unique stuff!! How about some fancy-dressed gophers? A Star Trek town? The world’s largest whatever? Or a jumping buffalo site? Also, in the news… Cuthbert poses for his first ever professional photo-shoot (yup!!!). Here’s our latest from western Canada, still waiting-out the ‘rona virus palaver…
Rockies or Andes… Andes or Rockies? Hmmm… tough one. We like mountains. Glaciers and snow-capped peaks reflected in crystal-clear mirror lakes will get us out for a hike anytime. A couple of years ago back in South America, we zig-zagged the whole length of the Andes including Chile’s iconic Torres del Paine, Argentina’s legendary Ruta 40 and Bolivia’s spectacular altiplano Laguna Route. The Andes are full of awesomeness, but now we’re in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. Moraine Lake and Lake Louise are bucket-list spots and driving the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Banff is one of the world’s Top 10 ‘Must-do Drives’. So, Andes or Rockies? Discuss…
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.
In normal times, the Alaska Highway would take us (funnily enough) to Alaska, USA. But in these Covid-border-closed-times, we can go as far as Kluane National Park then we have to turn around. Sounds a bit ‘dead-end’, but the spectacular mountains, lakes, glaciers of the Kluane icefields make it worth the schlepp. And whilst we’re out there in the Kluane wilderness, the local ‘rona virus palaver turns a positive corner – a whole new world of Canadian possibilities starts to open-up for us again…
For many, the Klondike conjures up images of weather-beaten old prospectors in the Gold Rush days. If you came here to get-rich-quick on gold, you’d be kinda disappointed. But what you wouldn’t be disappointed with is the fabulous remote, desolate wilderness and wildlife – there’s plenty of that ‘round here. After 11 weeks of ‘rona virus lock-down in Whitehorse and our plans taking a few hits, we could finally cross the vast Yukon Territory to the Klondike and the Arctic Circle, do a bit of grizzly spotting, fail miserably at getting-rich-quick, see the midnight sun, enjoy a pretty ghost town, and reach the end of the road not once, but twice!
Like everyman and his dog, we’re gutted to put our life on hold for the ‘rona virus. For us, our pandemic stay-cation de-luxe was a car-park in the Yukon with a friendly welcome and a bit of media stardom! Here’s how it went for our overlanding in lock-down …
‘Two cultures divided by a common language’ is often used to describe the UK/US relationship. So far we’ve spent most of our six years overlanding in countries with cultures and languages obviously very different to our own. But Americans speak our language, so overlanding USA would be familiar, right? Well, yes… and no. During our ‘rona virus stay-cation in the Yukon, Canada, we’ve been taking a look back over our time in the good ol’ US of A.
Way back on the Bolivian Altiplano at around 4,000m asl, we had an overnight low of -18°C on our thermometer. Oh, how naïve we were to think that was cold! Here in the Yukon for our corona virus stay-cation, we’ve had temperatures as low as -31°C (without the windchill!). Now that’s nippy. We’re sure there are many out there with far more experience of seriously cold weather overlanding than us. But this real cold has been a new thing for us. By lucky happenstance, we did give cold-weather stuff some consideration when we ordered Cuthbert, so we’re not totally unprepared.
Blimey O’Reilly! How the devil did it come to this? One minute it’s social distancing and hand-washing, next minute… the world shuts down. Like everyone in these strangest of times, we’ve had some decisions to make. Somehow, we ended up in the Yukon. But first let’s wind back the clock just a few weeks, to very different days, when we arrived from the USA to start overlanding Canada.
The Pacific North West USA is a ‘great if you get the season right’ kind of place. Somewhere behind all the murk that we saw, is a stunning countryside just bursting to get out and show us its stuff. But are we moaning? Noooo. Despite the murky weather we found whilst overlanding the Pacific North West, we had a great time. We had glimpses of scenic fabulousness, alpacas, huskies, snow, cool cities and… errrrm… a bit of mechanical work required on Cuthbert.
Everyone knows California, don’t they? It’s pretty good at self-promotion and has a familiarity acquired from decades of movies and TV. There’s the odd ‘nugget of wonder’ to be found, but overlanding California isn’t really a surprise. If we have one Top Tip for California it’s ‘winter’. In winter we find crowd-free parks and coasts. We also find hippy-nirvana in the desert, TV sets, elephant seals, a super-cool city, very big trees and a winning streak at the casino!
This week we celebrated 6 years full-time on the road and living in Cuthbert. Here’s some geeky (and not so geeky) stats from the last 6 years…
It’s 2020. Blimey. How did that happen? We end 2019 and kick-off 2020 in the south US desert with some expensive food, a piece of England, a biosphere, a nuclear missile, a war hero, many overlanding snowbirds and two new Mexican crowns. Howsaboutthat for variety?
The parks of south west USA are splendid things. They conserve spectacular natural treasures and this place was certainly at the front of the queue when it came to dishing-out spectacular natural treasures. This part of the world has more than its fair share of spectacularity (okay… I made that word up, but I think it works). Park-life in south-west US is excessively spectacular; around almost every corner is some kind of awesome park, each with a ridiculous number of wow-factor views. So after the alien-geekery of New Mexico, we thought we’d better get exploring the south west’s park-life.
Aliens, space and rocket-geekery is a thing in New Mexico. We decide to investigate. But there’s much more to overlanding New Mexico, so we do check out a bit of the other stuff too: some sand, a Chloride time-capsule, a ‘Truth or Consequence’ and some wolves. But for us in New Mexico, geekery is where it’s at.
